Has Marvel Made the Avengers Useless?

Marvel has many teams, but there’s one that stands above them all in the pecking order of the Marvel Universe — the Avengers. Over the years, the Avengers have had some amazing adventures, giving their all to save the universe. The best Avengers runs are things of beauty, stories that combine the greatest heroes in the Marvel Universe together to battle enemies that would destroy lesser teams. The Avengers have been known as “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” for ages now, and the Avengers are the cream of the crop, the varsity football team of Marvel. Not all Avengers are created equal, but being an Avenger is still supposed to be a great honor. Or at least, it used to be. Things have changed over the years with the Avengers, and it’s led some to question the team.

The Avengers had a precipitous fall from grace in the ’90s, but things got better through the late ’90s and ’00s, culminating in New Avengers becoming the bestselling book in the industry. This made the Avengers into a big deal, and suddenly there were more Avengers books than ever before. More books means more members, and some of them weren’t always Avengers caliber. Membership in the Avengers used to mean something, but Marvel has seemingly ruined that. Since then, the Avengers haven’t been nearly as potent or popular.

Everything Special About Being an Avenger Is Gone

Above is part of the first cover of The New Avengers (Vol. 4) #1. Now, there are some people on the team that are definitely Avengers caliber — Wiccan, Hulkling, Sunspot, and Cannonball are all powerful and important enough to be Avengers, although there are some people who don’t like Sunspot and Cannonball as Avengers (don’t listen to those people; they’re sensational characters and you don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.) However, there’s also Squirrel Girl, a joke character that is powerful, White Tiger, a street level vigilante that has never been popular, and the second Power Man, who has since disappeared. This is the problem with the Avengers lately. The Avengers has become big business, and Marvel likes to put as many Avengers books out as the market can handle. This has meant digging into Marvel’s lower tier or into the mutant corner of the Marvel Universe to fill out the team. In some ways, this is a good thing; it’s good for new characters to get a chance to be Avengers. It shakes things up, so it isn’t always just the same characters. It also gives lower tier characters the chance to move up the pecking order. Many low level heroes have rode the Avengers into stardom. However, it’s gotten to the point where there have been so many new heroes brought into the Avengers that any prestige is gone.

RELATED: Six Years Later and This Avengers: Endgame Moment Still Makes No Sense

Being an Avenger used to mean something special. It meant that a hero had reached the next level and was ready to be a part of the greatest defense force the Earth had. Graduating to the Avengers was a big deal, but it’s since become a lot less special. While Marvel has definitely cooled it with overexposing the team with multiple Avengers teams running around doing Avengers stuff, the damage has been done. If you look at lists of people that have been Avengers, there are plenty of heroes that had no business being there. They weren’t particularly powerful or important, and were just there to fill the roster. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes used to mean something, but that is in the past. It’s gotten to the point where the Avengers rub — where joining the team made characters more popular and important — is gone. Becoming an Avenger is just part and parcel of being a Marvel hero. If a character has existed long enough, they’ll get a chance to become an Avenger. That’s not what the team is supposed to be and its frankly made the Avengers kind of useless, even when it has a powerful roster of heroes. There’s no prestige.

The Avengers Have Never Recovered From the Expansion of the ’00s and ’10s

There have been some great Avengers titles over the years. Secret Avengers was brilliant for its entire run in the early ’10s. The first volume of Uncanny Avengers is very good, even if every subsequent volume was worse. However, Avengers A.I.? The last West Coast Avengers before the current one? The Avengers Idea Mechanics of The New Avengers? Most of these books are forgotten, and for good reason. They took a bunch of characters who never should have been Avengers, and didn’t last very long. The Avengers were always the big time, the A-list. Now? Well, there’s a reason that the Avengers haven’t been a bestselling title in about a decade, and that’s because of the way Marvel watered down the team over the years.

The Avengers were once the kingmakers of the Marvel Universe, but that’s long in the past. On top of that, teams like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four have gotten even better over the years, building new favorites, like Magik, Quentin Quire, and Valeria Richards, and keeping core teams of the most powerful and skilled heroes in the Marvel Universe. The Avengers are just sort of there now, filling a place that honestly isn’t needed. Becoming an Avenger is meaningless, because most low tier characters aren’t going to be able to make themselves into anything special on the Avengers. The Avengers are useless to Marvel in building new stars, and that’s a very big problem.

What do you think about the Avengers in present day Marvel? Sound off in the comments below.