The Avengers earned the sobriquet of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” in their early days and have spent decades trying to live up to it. They are a tried and true superhero trope — a combination of a publisher’s greatest heroes — and have done a fantastic job of showing why it works so well. The Avengers have helped change the way that readers look at superhero comics and have given them some of the best Marvel stories ever. While the Avengers comics haven’t always been perfect, they have had moments that changed the way superheroes operated. The Avengers comics have changed many times over the decades, and some of those changes have truly been fantastic.
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Over the years, there have been multiple factors in the success of Avengers comics. Some of these factors have been more important than others and have helped make the Avengers stories into some of the best on the market.
These 10 moments in Marvel’s Avengers comic run have truly raised the stature to create one of the best team comics ever.
10) Roy Thomas’s Tenure on The Avengers
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Avengers, but there’s a reason that fans don’t talk a lot about the Lee/Kirby years. Their Avengers stories weren’t bad, but they weren’t amazing. In fact, it wouldn’t be until Lee’s protege, Roy Thomas, took over writing Avengers with issue 35 (until issue 104) that fans would get their perfect Avengers.
This 69-issue run truly made the Avengers into the legends they are today. Thomas gave the Avengers one of their best rosters and defined what it meant to be an Avenger. Thomas understood how to balance superhero spectacle with adroit character work to create some of the best Avengers stories ever. Nearly everything you love about the Avengers came from Roy Thomas.
9) The Marvel Event Cycle
Marvel has created some of the best event comics ever. The ‘Marvel event cycle’ (big annual crossover events) began with 2004’s Secret War and has run pretty much uninterrupted ever since. The Marvel event cycle is simple — a story is built up in a flagship title that leads to an event comic, which plants seeds for the next event in a flagship title.
If one team has benefited more from the event cycle than any other, it’s the Avengers. Most of the best Marvel events of the last 20 years have their genesis in the Avengers titles, and for years, Avengers/New Avengers/Mighty Avengers/Dark Avengers were the books you had to read to understand Marvel events. This put more eyes on the Avengers books and made them more popular than ever.
8) Dark Avengers
“Dark Reign” changed the Marvel Universe after years of Avengers dominance. Dark Avengers starred a team of villains, led by the former Green Goblin Norman Osborn, doing their best to save the world, deal with being good guys, and fight against the various forces arrayed against them.
The book was able to take the Avengers formula that writer Brian Michael Bendis had established (more on him later) and tweaked it, its character-focused storytelling digging into characters that rarely got the spotlight. The series only ran for 18 issues and one annual, but it’s one of the best Avengers series of all time.
7) Roger Stern’s ’80s Run
Roger Stern is one of Marvel’s greatest creators of the ’80s, and his time writing Avengers was amazing. Stern first wrote the book in issues #189-190 and #201, and would start a long run on the book with issue #227, staying on board the book until issue #287. This 60-issue run was able to inject modern storytelling tropes into the Avengers, and gave readers one of the best Avengers stories ever with “Under Siege”.
Stern’s Avengers was mostly drawn by John Buscema, and his adroit art made the stories that much better, bringing great art to the amazing writing. Stern’s run on the Avengers is one of the best Marvel runs of the ’80s, and entirely changed the way that fans looked at the Avengers.
6) Cap’s Kooky Quartet
For the first 15 issues of Avengers, readers were treated to a team that starred all of Marvel’s solo superstars. However, the old order would change with Avengers #16, as the team got its first roster shake-up. However, this was early ’60s Marvel, so there weren’t all that many heroes to choose from. That’s why Cap’s Kooky Quartet was born.
Captain America recruited three villains — Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver — and began the mighty Marvel tradition of bringing villains onto hero teams. Cap’s Kooky Quartet changed the Avengers forever; not only did it change the dynamic of the team, but it also introduced three members who would become integral to the Avengers in the years to come.
5) Captain America Joining the Avengers
There’s one character that everyone thinks of when they think of the Avengers, and that’s Captain America. Captain America wasn’t a founding Avenger; he didn’t join the team until Avengers (Vol. 1) #4, found by Namor frozen in a block of ice that was picked up by the Avengers. Cap was thawed out and joined the team; since then, he has become the Avengers’ greatest leader.
Captain America gave the Avengers that one member the team couldn’t do without, and he’s become the heart and soul of the group. There’s a reason why all the best Avengers comics have Captain America in them; he’s the most important member of the team and has been since he joined.
4) Brian Michael Bendis Becoming Writer of the Avengers
Brian Michael Bendis had his Marvel big break with Daredevil and Ultimate Spider-Man, and soon became Marvel’s most popular writer. In 2004, Bendis was given control of the Avengers, starting with “Avengers Disassembled: Chaos”, then relaunched the team as New Avengers. New Avengers became Marvel’s flagship comic, the engine of the Marvel event cycle.
Bendis brought character-focused drama back to the Avengers and introduced great new members to the team like Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Ronin, and Wolverine. Bendis’s run on Avengers has its problems, but it made the Avengers Marvel’s most popular team for the first time in decades.
3) “The Kree/Skrull War”
The Avengers were Earth’s Mightiest Heroes from the beginning, but it wouldn’t be until “The Kree/Skrull War” that they would truly become the greatest team in the Marvel Universe. The Avengers got embroiled in the millennia-long war between the Kree and the Skrull, fighting to keep the Earth safe from the alien races.
This story saw the Avengers act beyond Earth for the first time and began the idea of the Avengers as the greatest defense force in the Marvel Universe. “The Kree/Skrull War” is one of the most important Avengers stories because of how much it changed the way everyone looked at the team.
2) The Kurt Busiek/George Perez Run
The ’90s weren’t the best time to be an Avengers fan. The X-Men became the most important team in comics, and the rise of Image Comics seemed to overshadow the classic heroes of the Marvel Universe. Marvel tried to make the Avengers trendy, but just told bad stories that fans hated.
After the failure of “Heroes Reborn”, Marvel teamed writer Kurt Busiek with Avengers legend George Perez for Avengers (Vol. 3). Together, Busiek and Perez gave readers some of the best Avengers stories of all time (Avengers (Vol. 3) #4 and “Ultron Unlimited” are fantastic, but they’re the tip of the iceberg). These two creators showed that the Avengers could still be the best team in comics, and their run still stands up almost 30 years later.
1) Jonathan Hickman’s Run on Avengers and New Avengers
Jonathan Hickman’s run on the Avengers is perfect, and that’s all there is to it. Hickman took over the Avengers after years of Bendis’s largerly Earthbound stories and took them to the stars, literally and figuratively. Hickman created the largest, most powerful Avengers team ever, and threw them into massive universe-shaking battles in Avengers.
Meanwhile, in New Avengers, Hickman dealt with the morality of saving one Earth when all of them were in jeopardy, and how far heroes would go to save their world. This is peak Avengers, and the team had never reached these heights before or since. It’s amazing, and everything you could want from the Avengers.
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