Once upon a time, the Avengers weren’t considered Marvel‘s greatest team. In the Silver Age, the Fantastic Four was the most popular and important team in the Marvel Universe and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes were a solid number two. In the Bronze Age, the Avengers almost took the crown, but then Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men became the most popular team book in comics. They honestly wouldn’t be until the ’00s, with the rise of New Avengers in the comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe taking over the multiplexes that the team has been counted as the greatest. They became the focus of everything, and have gained numerous fans over the last twenty-some odd years.
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Fans love the Avengers; there’s something about a team that combines numerous favorites that will always get people interested. However, looking at the history of the group, there are definitely some unpopular opinions about them that have the ring of truth to them. Marvel fans don’t like to admit these five things about the Avengers, but they are all true.
5) The Avengers Are Marvel’s Least Interesting Team
Marvel has three main teams. The Fantastic Four are a family of scientists; they fight villains, but their main thing is exploration while trying to keep their family together and strong. The X-Men are the civil rights metaphor; they save the world from villains, but they also have to deal with the darkest sides of humanity. The Avengers are the varsity football team, and that’s it. There’s nothing deeper to the team. They aren’t a family. They aren’t even a found family. They’re just the guys who fight the biggest threats and this has led to their stories not reaching the same levels as the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. The Avengers have some amazing stories, but they rarely if ever have the kind of thematic resonance that Marvel’s other teams do. If you want a great battle, their comics are for you, but if you want anything else, you can skip the team.
4) Black Panther Is a Bad Avenger
Black Panther is Marvel’s greatest king, and is one of the few success stories from the MCU to comics. The Wakandan monarch was long a B or C-list character, but Marvel pushed him to the big time when his film debut was announced. It’s honestly been hit or miss; for every Ta-Nehisi Coates on Black Panther we also get a John Ridley run. If we’re being honest, one of the biggest misses has been T’Challa as an Avenger. He has a history with the team, but it’s always been one that was slightly antagonistic; he fought for Wakanda first, and was even spying on the team more than once. His position in the Illuminati made sense, but Black Panther as an Avenger in good standing is always weird. He’s rarely the leader of the team and when he is, he doesn’t do anything interesting and plays the whole thing straight. He’s a mixture of Captain America and Iron Man most of the time, and it doesn’t really work. He’s mostly just there because of the MCU and it’s never all that interesting.
The Team Hasn’t Made a Star in Decades
Back in the day, the Avengers made numerous stars. Captain America returned in the book and became the leader of the Marvel Universe. Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver (who hasn’t kept his popularity) all joined the A-list because of the team. The Vision became a Marvel icon, and Scott Lang got his start there. They were a pretty great vehicle to get characters in front of the greatest number of readers, and it worked pretty well. However, when was the last time that the team made anyone a star? Luke Cage or Spider-Woman from New Avengers? They got popular, for a few years, but have since faded away. The team used to be a kingmaker, but it seems like every time that Marvel tries to use the book to give a character a push, it just doesn’t work.
2) The Bendis Years Weren’t Great
Brian Michael Bendis was Marvel’s most popular writer of the ’00s, and arguably his most important work was his time writing Avengers/New Avengers/Mighty Avengers/Dark Avengers. Bendis began writing the team in 2005 and would be the main architect of their books until 2012. Bendis’s time writing the Avengers allowed them to take the top of the sales charts for the first time ever, basically. The team became a huge deal and fans still look back on those seven years with fondness. However, it’s time to be real: Bendis’s time writing the book wasn’t as great as fans pretend it is. There were some cool stories and ideas, but the way that they were executed was always the problem. Bendis was great at superhero soap operas, but he was terrible at coming up with big threats (his Avengers books were surprisingly street level), and he couldn’t write a compelling fight to save his life. There’s a lot of nostalgia for this time, but once you go back and read his bloated, badly paced stories you’ll see just how mid it all was.
1) We Don’t Need the Avengers Anymore
This is the one that is going to be the most controversial, but we don’t need the Avengers ever again, and we haven’t for about a decade no. In 2013, we got the Hickman run on Avengers/New Avengers, and it was the ultimate word on the team. He created the greatest roster ever, and set them against a threat that was destroying the multiverse. There were huge stakes, brilliant action, and it felt like a team made up of the greatest heroes ever as they fought the most dangerous threat. Since then, the team has never reached those levels. The various Avengers comics of the last ten years have been a cycle of diminishing returns. There have been some good stories, but nothing special. Hickman wrote the ultimate Avengers story, and nothing else can match it. There’s nowhere interesting to go with the team anymore and no one really buys their books anymore. The concept needs a rest, at least, or just needs to go away.
What are your unpopular Avengers opinions? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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