A couple of days ago during a Q&A promoting the Blu-ray release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel Studios executive Jeremy Latcham revealed that the current team-up of superheroes in the Avengers movies will get a facelift by the time that Avengers: Infinity War is all said and done. The final moments of Age of Ultron hinted at a possible new line-up for the titular team, but the permutations are limited only by which Marvel characters are currently off limits due to contractual agreements. Much like the comics themselves, the Avengers within Marvel's Cinematic Universe will feature new and relatively unfamiliar faces in the years to come.
With that in mind, we've put together a list of some of the strangest team-ups ever to bear the title of "Avengers." You should recognize a fair few of them: Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor pop up fairly often. And though you surely recognize Spider-Man and Wolverine, not everyone knows that they too once flew under the Avengers banner. But Gilgamesh? Venom? Squirrel Girl? These characters form some of the stranger, more obscure teams, which you can check out below.
Everyone Is an Avenger
Back in the 90’s, the Avengers were going through an unconventional time. The reins of the property were handed over to some of the creators of Image Comics to add a fresh take to the franchise. The team was rebooted in an entirely different dimension from the one that we know and it was apparent that, after a short amount of time, the team was missing something from not being in the main universe. It was eventually decided to bring the team back into the Marvel Universe proper with Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s take on the gang. In order to start their run off with a bang, the duo decided to have a story that had any character that had ever been an Avenger assemble to fight a worldwide threat. From Darkhawk to Thor to Sandman to Stingray, any and every character who had assembled in the past was at least referenced at some point during this story arc.
The cherry on top was that once the massive team had been put together, the villainess of the story, Morgan Le Fey, used her magical abilities to change everyone into medieval versions of themselves who would act as her personal bodyguards. So at that point, not only were you getting nearly a hundred Avengers fighting monsters and magic, but you were getting a hundred Avengers in knight armor and jester hats. Busiek and Perez’s run is often regarded as the greatest Avengers run of all time, and rightfully so, as many of the ideas that they presented were used in the films we see today, such as Age of Ultron.
The Gilgamesh Gang
During the X-Men crossover, “Inferno”, demons were spilling onto Earth from another dimension and unfortunately, the Avengers had just so happened to disband the issue before. Who will heed the call when the heroes we’ve known are at odds with one another? None other than Thor, Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, Captain America (in a black costume calling himself, “The Captain”) and Gilgamesh the Forgotten One! To be fair, half of the Fantastic Four are dragged into the proceedings because the demons are looking to use the power of Franklin Richards, Reed and Sue’s son, for their own nefarious purposes, but nothing can excuse the inclusion of Gilgamesh. It’s funny because Gilgamesh’s origin and character aren’t exactly the most ridiculous things to be found in the Marvel Universe, but nine times out of ten, when you ask a “Marvel Zombie” which Avenger is the worst, they’ll go with Gilgamesh (and the other one choice will be “D-Man”). His costume certainly didn’t do him any favors to be sure.
This team, thankfully, lasted only a couple issues before they realized that the group was just too strange to live moving forward. To be fair though, this story gave us the first instance of Captain America lifting Thor’s hammer and using it to bat away some enemies giving him trouble. This team was also one of the first examples of trying to incorporate members from other teams into the Avengers fold, something which is commonplace now as EVERYONE has been an Avenger at present.
The Justice League of Avengers
Actually, they were called the “New Avengers” at the time but the idea was the same. With DC and the Justice League, the company took their most popular characters and placed them onto a team to battle all sorts of threats. With Marvel, the Avengers, while popular, usually had been a gathering of a few “A-list” characters and mostly “C” and “D” listers. Creators Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch decided to shake things up and break a cardinal rule of the team: never let Spider-Man and Wolverine join. Following a particularly nasty story wherein the Scarlet Witch went insane, destroying their HQ and killing Hawkeye, the team decided to disband once again, until a new team was inadvertently made consisting of Captain America, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the Sentry.
Incorporating Spidey and Logan into the crew did wonders for sales, and it allowed for the revival of characters who had been lost to comic book limbo in the forms of Cage, Jessica Drew, and the personality disorder-riddled Sentry. To put it simply, without this run, we would not have the Avengers movies that we do today. This series of stories was the catalyst that got the Avengers franchise on the right track to make them the most popular super team on the Marvel roster, overtaking the long time kings that were the X-Men, and cementing their book as the one to buy if you wanted to know what was happening in the Marvel Universe.
The Dark Avengers
During the storyline, "Secret Invasion", the Marvel Universe was infiltrated by a race of shapeshifting aliens called Skrulls. When all the heroes took a last stand against the alien hordes, Spider-Man villain Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, managed to get the killing blow against the alien’s queen. Already sporting a cushy government job, the U.S. decided that a guy with a purse and a flying broomstick should really be in charge of all their defenses and so Norman essentially became the new Nick Fury. The Dark Avengers, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, saw Osborn create a new team of Avengers primarily made up of the worst villains of the Marvel Universe, disguised as heroes. Venom, Bullseye, and Moonstone were but a few that made up this villainous powerhouse of a team.
The Dark Avengers storyline is a fantastic one, showing how a group of villains would handle the world threatening scenarios that were the heroes’ standard fare. Unfortunately, it’s a story that had an expiration date, as having the main super team be made up of bloodthirsty murderers isn’t exactly going to be able to sell lunchboxes on a regular basis.
The Great Lakes Avengers
Squirrel Girl! Mr. Immortal! Dinah Soar! Big Bertha! Flatman! The Great Lakes Avengers are arguably the worst superhero team ever created, but they still make for some hilarious protagonists. A group of misfit heroes looking for credibility, the GLA dubbed themselves the Avengers but were subsequently sued so that they would never use the name again, instead opting to call themselves the “Great Lakes X-Men”. The cycle continued as each team would sue them and they would be forced to change their team name to something new. Never having much more than their own mini-series, if we were to ever see them show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it would definitely be as the butt of a joke.
The most popular member of the team, Squirrel Girl, has her own series and is set to join the main Avengers roster, if you can believe it, when Marvel relaunches this October once again.