The Avengers have a certain reputation in the Marvel Universe. They’re the big leagues, the team that every hero wants to join. A hero knows they made it when they join the group. These heroes get to work with the best, and are able to survive and thrive fighting the most deadly villains out there, enemies that would freeze the blood of lesser teams. Over the years, the team has fielded some amazing rosters, groups of heroes that combine the most powerful and skilled superheroes on the planet. Some Avengers rosters stand among the greatest hero teams of all time, and have saved the world and the universe numerous times. However, not every roster is built the same.
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Over the years, there have been some rosters of the Avengers that weren’t exactly the best. There are lots of reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the simplest: sales. A successful team of Avengers will get keep getting published, remembered fondly by those who bought the books, while a roster of great heroes that no one remembers is usually forgotten because no one bought their comics. These seven Avengers rosters are the worst of the worst, teams that we’d all rather forget about.
7) Post-Civil War Mighty Avengers
The ’00s were undeniably popular for Marvel but not everything landed, and Mighty Avengers is an example of something that didn’t. The book told the story of the Initiative Avengers team, which consisted of Iron Man, Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel, the Wasp, Wonder Man, Ares, Black Widow, and the Sentry. On the surface, that seems like a good team. It has some classic Avengers, some formidable powerhouses, and had the full power of SHIELD behind it. However, the group wasn’t the sum of its parts. It felt like the second string Avengers team, and no one really remembers anything they did, because they didn’t really do anything anyone cared about. They were just sort of there.
6) The Avengers (Vol. 9) Team
Let’s be real for a second — the current run of Avengers (Vol. 9) is not popular, and it seemingly should be. It’s a team full of great Avengers — Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Sam Wilson as Captain America, Black Panther, Storm, Vision, and Scarlet Witch — and yet no one really cares about the team. They are undeniably powerful, and yet fans just aren’t connecting to them or getting into their stories. This is one of the strongest rosters ever, with a good balance of skills, but for whatever reason, they’re failing as a team of Avengers. It’s honestly kind of mystifying that they are as unpopular as they are, but the proof is in the lackluster sales.
5) Avengers AI
There are many popular Avengers teams out there, and then there are the teams that no one remembers. The Avengers AI Squad is one of these teams. Hank Pym brought together a group of tech/AI themed heroes like Vision, the Protector, Victor LaMancha, and Doombot. Like the last two teams on the list, there’s nothing wrong with the team and it could honestly be pretty formidable. However, it’s not exactly an awesome roster of heroes that everyone wants to read about. The team just couldn’t find a readership who cared enough about them to buy the book, and it’s been forgotten. There’s a good chance that a lot of Avengers fans know nothing about the team whatsoever, it having faded away from the fan’s collective unconsciousness.
4) Avengers #300
Steve Rogers is one of the greatest Avengers leaders, and usually the teams that he leads are the best versions of the group. However, not every Rogers-led group was a hit and the team introduced in Avengers #300 is a perfect example of that. Steve was the Captain at the time, having lost faith in the US government, and brought together a new group of Avengers consisting of Thor, Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and the Eternal Gilgamesh the Forgotten One. It’s such a strange mix of heroes, and it turned readers off immediately. This version of the group is usually only remembered to be mocked; while they could honestly take down a lot of powerful villains, it’s just not a team that anyone wanted to read about.
3) The Second Avengers Unity Squad
The Avengers Unity Squad came about after Avengers vs. X-Men, a group that combined the two teams and built in-roads between mutants and humans. The first roster of the group was amazing, with members like Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, Rogue, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Wasp, Havok, and Sunfire. It was a great mix of A and B-list heroes with compelling stories. After AXIS, a new Unity Squad came together, with Rogue and Scarlet Witch recruiting Quicksilver, Sabretooth (whose morality was reversed by Red Onslaught), Sam Wilson’s Cap, and Brother Voodoo. This seems like it would be a great team, but for whatever reason, it just didn’t take off with fans. On the one hand, you could blame Secret Wars for the loss of the team, as Uncanny Avengers (Vol. 2) only lasted for five issues before that story ended and soft rebooted everything; but if it had sold well, it would have stayed around.
2) All-New, All-Different Avengers
All-New, All-Different Marvel was a failure. The publisher moved a lot of legacy heroes into the A-list hero identities, and it didn’t really work. One of the flagship titles of this time was All-New, All-Different Avengers, starring Iron Man, the Vision, Jane Foster as Thor, Sam Wilson as Captain America, Miles Morales as Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, and Sam Alexander as Nova. This seems like a pretty good team, but name one great story from this roster. You really can’t, and that’s because this version of the team bled readers like it was going out of style. It just didn’t work at all, and faded away into the background of an era of Marvel that completely failed with readers.
1) The Leather Jacket Team
The ’90s were one of the worst eras of the Avengers. The stars of the team nearly all left and Marvel tried something new with the group. See, the publisher had watched the Justice League International, a team of B and C-list heroes, get popular at DC and decided to try some of that with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. This led to the what we know call the leather jacket team. This roster consisted of Black Knight, Sersi, Hercules, Black Widow, Crystal, and the Vision. The team didn’t have any stars on the roster (back then, Black Widow wasn’t as popular with the general readership as she is now), and while it had potential, it just never gelled.
What is your least favorite team of Avengers? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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