X-Men vs Avengers

[Captain M]

I'm a big fan of both and I love that X-Men are getting so many new books and a lot of activity in their line and I don't want it to stop at all, keep it going for sure!

But that said, with the new Uncanny X-Men announcement which looks great, I can't help but be disappointed that Avengers line isn't getting nearly as much attention by marvel editorial? We have 1 ongoing Avengers book with soon to be 2 but that's about it. No events in sight, no other books, nothing. Lots of big and smaller name Avengers are in no team while that Uncanny X-Men tease has a ton of characters on it and I miss Marvel doing that for the Avengers too.

I feel that we desperately need more Avengers or Avengers related books. Wasp, Spectrum, Scarlet Witch, Hank Pym, Herclues, Quicksilver, Vision, Hellcat, Falcon, Black Widow, Wonder Man, Tigra, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, Ant-Man, Songbird, Pod, Synapse, Toni, Doctor Voodoo, Blue Marvel and so many more characters they can use. So why are they not doing anything?

What do you think? Do you think it's fine as is? Or would you like to see more done with the Avengers line?

[Crimz]

The X-line has only recently gotten the attention it's deserved. For the past few years Marvel has been putting minimum effort into the franchise. This new Uncanny book seems a lot like No Surrender and it could end like it too with there only being one X-book left.

I think reducing the amount of Avengers book was the right decision as too many books can dilute the brand. But having only one or two is a bit too few. The characters you listed should definitely have or be in books, but I think they should be called something else other than Avengers. Create new teams with them instead of using the Avengers name for everything.

[Crimz]

Double post

[UltimateTy]

I honestly like that I can follow just one Avengers book but I can see how one would be annoyed with their favorite characters being in limbo

[XPac]

I'm a big fan of both and I love that X-Men are getting so many new books and a lot of activity in their line and I don't want it to stop at all, keep it going for sure!

But that said, with the new Uncanny X-Men announcement which looks great, I can't help but be disappointed that Avengers line isn't getting nearly as much attention by marvel editorial? We have 1 ongoing Avengers book with soon to be 2 but that's about it. No events in sight, no other books, nothing. Lots of big and smaller name Avengers are in no team while that Uncanny X-Men tease has a ton of characters on it and I miss Marvel doing that for the Avengers too.

I feel that we desperately need more Avengers or Avengers related books. Wasp, Spectrum, Scarlet Witch, Hank Pym, Herclues, Quicksilver, Vision, Hellcat, Falcon, Black Widow, Wonder Man, Tigra, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, Ant-Man, Songbird, Pod, Synapse, Toni, Doctor Voodoo, Blue Marvel and so many more characters they can use. So why are they not doing anything?

What do you think? Do you think it's fine as is? Or would you like to see more done with the Avengers line?

I think weirdly enough, the Avengers line becoming almost interchangeable with marvel as a whole sort of is responsible for the Avengers seemingly getting less attention.

Most marvel events are basically Avenger events... so it's not necessarily advertised as Avenger centric events. And most solo characters with books are Avengers. OUtside the obvious ones like Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor even guys like Hulk, Wolverine, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, and Spider-Man all go around carrying Avenger ID cards in their wallets now. The entire Fantatic Four are Avengers. Who can't be considered an Avenger at this point?

The marvel line is so interchangeable with the Avengers line at this point, that it's usually not necessarily to even distinguish them a lot of the time.

[Magneto]

The Avengers have been the main focus of Marvel for the last 10 years...

[Tiamatty]

It kinda cycles, a bit. Paranoid fantasies notwithstanding, Marvel never really pushed aside the X-Men, though they have spent the past decade or so pushing the Avengers a bit more. (The X-Men still had their own X-overs, they showed up in major events, often with minis, and there's always been plenty of X-titles being published. They've gone in a couple directions I haven't agreed with, but the idea that Marvel's been trying to kill the franchise, or hasn't been putting effort into it, is absurd. The Avengers getting attention doesn't mean Marvel hates the X-Men. The X-Men have had, on average, 6-10 monthly titles each month, plus pretty regular minis. And that's not including Deadpool, by the way. Include him, and the line has about 50 frigging titles a month, because gods forbid we got 5 goddamn minutes without Deadpool. I like Deadpool well enough, but holy ****.)

Anyway, the Avengers were the centre of Marvel's focus for a while. Now, Uncanny X-Men is being brought back after a little over a year without it, so it's getting a lot of attention. And honestly? Once Disassembled ends, the line as a whole will probably continue as it always has. 6-10 ongoing titles a month, big annual X-overs, minis to tie into the big line-wide summer events which will remain more focused on the Avengers. And the Avengers line will go back to being 3 or 4 team titles with Avengers in the name, and a bunch of solos.

And Marvel will somehow still neglect to give a solo to their greatest character, Big Wheel.

[phantom1592]

Ehhh… Between Avengers, New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers, Avengers Academy and whatever else I'm missing, There were WAY TOO MANY Avenger books. I really miss the days when it was "Avengers' and "West Coast Avengers' and that was it. They had ironically turned the Avengers brand into this monstrous Hydra-like entity with its tentacles stretching and linking all the whole Marvel Universe together.


X-Men in the 90's was nearly as bad with all their multiple crossovers, but I would love, love LOVE if they scaled back on the franchises and gave some books to some Solo characters for a change. I loved how in the 90's Darkhawk and Sleepwalker and even Dan Ketches' Ghost Rider were given their own books upon their creation and just let run for 50+ issues without ties to ANY of the major franchises.

[gurkle]

The current Avengers cast is unusually poor, but the Avengers are always in a weird limbo between having a coherent identity and regular cast, and being an all-purpose catch-all term for crossover events. Hickman for example wrote one book that had nothing to do with the Avengers (New Avengers) and another that deliberately avoided any references to the team's history. But it's not just the comics line. We just had an Avengers movie where the whole point was that the Avengers didn't exist any more, and the Avengers name was just slapped on a massive Marvel universe crossover event.

That "massive Marvel crossover event" seems to be Marvel's preferred definition of the Avengers right now, so many of the characters you mention - the ones who have a history with the team and are part of the core supporting cast for Avengers traditionalists like me - get shafted in favor of bigger stars. Which is how we get an Avengers launch with Doctor Strange instead of Scarlet Witch, and an overarching plot that is about the secret history of the Marvel universe, instead of the Avengers specifically.

What works in favor of the X-Men supporting cast is that the X-Men can't be an all-star team, because it's all mutants, and most mutants except for Wolverine are not famous as anything except members of the X-Men. So it's much harder to put the core X-Men into limbo the way most of the core Avengers are currently in limbo.

[Drops Of Venus]

This new Uncanny book seems a lot like No Surrender and it could end like it too with there only being one X-book left.

That was my thought as well. X-fans are happy now, but if they decide to take the X-line into the same direction they took the Avengers line, many people will be displeased about not enough books to follow their favorite characters on. It's a tough situation, because no matter what they decide to do, people will complain.

As for the OP, yes, I'm 100% a supporter of going all-out with the Avengers brand. There are a lot of stories and characters I want to read about, and I feel like that would only be possible if more Avengers titles were being published. I mean, yeah, they could publish other titles with those characters without using the Avengers name, but it's been months now and I'm not seeing any announcement for a new Ultimates or Defenders book to make up for it. We had WCA, which was nice, but even Brevoort pretty much said it's not a ''real'' Avengers title, which implies that's the only reason they even let them use the name. If it's just gonna keep being like that, then screw it, just bring the spin-offs back already, because Aaron's run is not enough, IMO.

[Killerbee911]

There was another way to approach this you can't be jealous at the Xmen attention when Marvel benched Xmen and FF to spite Fox and in the process gave Avengers a boost like they had before.

A better way to put this Avengers line need a little separation from main Marvel line and more of its own entity like X-men line which does a solid job of push out content that is strictly specific to themselves. But I can't support the approach of this thread because Marvel literally deemaphize a properties and looks like they are giving them focus they should have always had I mean think about last time you have seen a xmen cartoon.

Me personally I wish Marvel focused on "Shield" line with same amount focus they give Avengers and Xmen. I think a GI joe like but with superheroes line would be amazing and would be a place where Captian Marvel, War Machine, Black Window, Mockingbird, Quake, Hawkeye, Nick Fury, etc could shine but that is just me.

[JudicatorPrime]

I think reducing the amount of Avengers book was the right decision as too many books can dilute the brand. But having only one or two is a bit too few. The characters you listed should definitely have or be in books, but I think they should be called something else other than Avengers. Create new teams with them instead of using the Avengers name for everything.

I still think the Ultimates was the right idea for an Avengers-adjacent book. But the roster needed to be tweaked, if not expanded, in order to attract a larger audience and deliver the kind of epic, character driven stories that we're accustomed to reading from Marvel.

[theoneandonly]

when the avengers are everywhere they complain about dilution of the brand and neglect of other brands and when the titles are weeded out there are more complaints of favourites missing from the spotlight. anyways I don't think that marvel will be interested in starting another avengers title in the vein of ultimates or whatever at the risk of irritating Aaron who will undoubtedly be unwilling to let the storyline he has planned be messed up by having other teams operating and perhaps honing on his plots and action.

[JudicatorPrime]

when the avengers are everywhere they complain about dilution of the brand and neglect of other brands and when the titles are weeded out there are more complaints of favourites missing from the spotlight. anyways I don't think that marvel will be interested in starting another avengers title in the vein of ultimates or whatever at the risk of irritating Aaron who will undoubtedly be unwilling to let the storyline he has planned be messed up by having other teams operating and perhaps honing on his plots and action.

Well, with a team like the Ultimates, it all depends on where you base them. The omniverse is a big place. Even bigger if you have a writer who isn't bound by conventional NY-centric "mainstream is the only stream" thinking. Consider the entire time/space continuum (back and forth in time; all of the divergent realities); the regions outside of the known universe -- the Neutral Zone and beyond -- that the Ultimates have visited previously; the places on the far distant edges that have yet to be explored; the Microverse, which rarely seems to be impacted by what happens in the mainstream universe; the Macroverse, where an Ultimates ally presently exists; the Dark Dimension, otherworld, Limbo, and other magical dimensions, all of which tend to be unaffected by what happens on mainstream Earth; and on and on. More importantly, there is crap going on out there in those parts of the omniverse that existed long before sentient life developed on the Earth. You could place the Ultimates team in a place where they are figuratively a universe unto themselves. They wouldn't need to step on the toes of the main Avengers team, or any plots that any of the writers from the flagship books intend to hatch. The Ultimates doesn't have to be on Earth proper, yet still be engaged in a mission that saves the Earth and/or promotes its interests. Isolating the team and allowing it to build its own legend, its own following, might be good for sales in the long run.

All that said, you're right: whatever the reason, Marvel would rather continue on its current direction, even if it means missing out on a few readers here and there.

[Nomads1]

I've always suported a single and powerful Avengers team. Hated the whole franchise stuff with Uncanny, Secret, New, etc.. I always thought it weakened the brand. That said, having more books does allow for slightly different flavours (I did like the chemestry between the ECA and the WCA in the 80-90's. Bascically both teams had the same functions just with a geological divide). I really can't stand Aaron's writing. Find it boring and pretentious (however, I still intend to give the first TPB a chance). So, while I support the idea of a single kick-ass team (and in that department it does seem to fit the bill, with Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Capt Marvel, She-Hulk, BP and Doc Strange. I really just don't like GR, especially the one with the car), I think, perhaps, they should have a larger team (bringing in old time favorites such as Vision, Wasp, Wonder Man, Spectrum, Hawkeye, Spider Woman, etc..) and two books, each spotliting the missions of smaller units (with different wriers on each book, giving us a "different flavor"). Once or twice a year, we could have a huge saga, assembling the whole team, and interconnecting both books. I think it would be a good set-up.

Peace