These 5 Avengers Are Powerhouses but Everyone Forgets About Them

The Avengers are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, a conglomeration of the greatest heroes on Earth. Over the years, basically every kind of hero you can imagine has been on the team, but since the beginning the group has been known for one thing – its powerhouses. The original Avengers boasted Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man, three of the most powerful heroes of the day. In the intervening years, even more powerful heroes have joined the team. Like many other superhero groups, the Avengers has a “core” line-up of heroes that consists of heavy hitters like aforementioned founders, except the Hulk, Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Hercules, Wonder Man and many other notable names. However, not every powerful Avenger gets remembered.

One of the most fun things about being an Avengers fan are the roster changes. It’s great to see a C or D-list favorite join the team and awesome when heroes from other parts of the Marvel Universe join them. So many heroes have been members, that some just sort of fall through the cracks, a fate that has befallen many of the most powerful Avengers. These five Avengers powerhouses never get remembered, and we’re starting with one who just had a stint with the group.

5) Storm

Storm is one of the premiere X-Men, a former leader of the group who has always been considered the heart and soul of the team. Her weather-manipulating powers have made her one of the heaviest hitters of them all. This is a woman who can drop an F5 tornado, a Category 5 hurricane, the biggest blizzard you could imagine, and a once in a lifetime lightning storm on a place one after the other or all at once. Since weather is influenced by electromagnetic energy, she has control over it, giving her power over one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. Her ancestry stretches back to divinity, giving her largely untapped magical potential.

She’s also one of three Marvel heroes who has been an X-Man, a member of the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers, with most fans not really knowing about her with the other two. She first joined Earth’s Mightiest Heroes during the “Heroic Age”, when she was married to Black Panther and left during Avengers vs. X-Men. Right now, she’s coming off a stint with the team. You’d imagine that meant that people remembered she was a part of the team, but no one read Jed MacKay’s Avengers run. Storm has legions of fans and the vast majority of them have no idea she’s been an Avenger.

4) Gilgamesh

The Eternals had a moment in the sun in the 2020s, their first in ages. They were created by Jack Kirby in the ’70s, but never really caught on. The people who are into them love them, but even after the movie, not enough fans cared. Sometimes, you’ll find an Eternal in the wild in various Marvel books, but for the most part, they’re nowhere to be seen. This has been the normal state of affairs for them for decades but the Avengers have actually called several of them members. All three of them will be on this list.

The first is Gilgamesh. Ol’Gil was the inspiration for the legends of Gilgamesh and has forgotten he was an Eternal numerous times. He’s one of the strongest of them (although I would say that Ikaris is stronger) and has been fighting evil for millennia, even without his memories, leading him to join the Avengers in Avengers #300. This short-lived team consisted of him, the Captain, Invisible Woman, and Reed Richards. As an Eternal, beyond his strength, he also was invulnerable, super-fast, could fly, and manipulate cosmic energy. He’s probably one of the most powerful Avengers ever and no one knows about him.

3) Sersi

The ’90s were a momentous decade for Marvel, although not always for the best reasons. One of the biggest victims of Marvel’s mistakes in the ’90s were the Avengers. The team entered the decade coming off the success of the ’80s and just sank like a stone. However, the group did have some cool members during this period, including the second Eternal to join the group, the woman known as Sersi. She’s always been one of the most important members of her race, as well as one of the most powerful, and she brought all of that to the Avengers.

Sersi had all of the regular Eternal powers – vast super strength, indestructibility (the only way to kill them is to break their molecular bonds, so invulnerable isn’t correct terminology), super speed, and flight – but she also had psi-powers and the ability to manipulate matter. So, she’s basically a Thor-level combatant that can read your mind, find your greatest fear, and transform you into it. She was big powerhouse of the Leather Jacket Era of the team, but she could hold that spot in any part of the group’s history.

2) Captain Universe

If you’re a longtime Marvel fan, the above picture of Captain Universe should be familiar even if you don’t know who she is. Captain Universe has been a mantle that many heroes have held, including Spider-Man. It comes from the Enigma Force and it grants its bearer extreme cosmic power for short periods of time, making them into Captain Universe. In the early days of the Incursions, a new version of the Captain appeared. She had no memory of her prior life and had come to the team to help them save all creation. It was learned that she was once a woman named Tamra, who was in a coma since a car accident, her comatose form commandeered by the universe.

See, in a very real way, this Captain Universe was the living embodiment of the Marvel Universe. With the Incursions endangering her very life, she decided that she needed to take an active role, possessing Tamra and joining Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, who had saved her many times in the past. She had cosmic power on a godlike level, allowing her to do pretty much whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. She was only a member of the team for about two years, and most fans haven’t thought about her in ages.

1) Hyperion

Hyperion, and Captain Universe, both joined the team during Jonathan Hickman’s blockbuster Avengers run. Much like the Captain, Hyperion joined because of the Incursions – he was from one of the destroyed Earths, having tried and failed to push the two worlds apart – pulled to Earth-616 by AIM. He escaped and ended up joining the Avengers, who had dealt with numerous multiversal versions of Hyperion. He helped the team in their battles against the Builders, Thanos, and the Beyonders, earning the respect and admiration of Thor.

He’s the third Eternal, with powers equivalent to Superman (even down to strength level). He’s more powerful than most of the Avengers that fans of the team can name. However, the problem with him is that he’s just one of many Hyperions. If you didn’t read Hickman’s run, he doesn’t really standout all that much. It doesn’t help that he completely disappeared after Secret Wars; we actually haven’t seen this version since he and Thor fought an army of Beyonders. He was a fantastic Avenger, but there’s a good chance no one will ever remember him.

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