How did you become an Avengers fan?

[ed2962]

It was the late 70's and I might have been 9 or 10 yrs old. A kid in my class invited me to hang out at house. He and his brother were huge comic book fans and their favorites were The Hulk and The Avengers. I read a few Avengers comics and like them enuff to continue reading. It basically how I got into comics in general. This was right during the end I guess of the Steve Englehart run. He had just brought the Beast to the team and was doing the Serpent Crown story. Just all kinds of crazy stuff was going on. Marvel also was doing reprints of the 60's comics, The titles that reprinted the Avengers were Marvel Triple Action and Marvel Super Action. As a teenager, I was able to get a hold of the original comics.

The Avengers really only seemed like underdogs to me during the Kooky Quartet era and the Roy Thomas /Buscema days say from #50-ish until 90-ish. In those days it was really about these B-Level characters running the show.

[Dark-Jacket]

My first comic book ever was the first appearance of Yellowjacket, which is still my favorite character. I can't find much stories outside the avengers books so I went with them and learned to love the other characters. ^^

[maklelin highbain]

I ordered a grab bag of 50 random marvel comics from Milehigh Comics back in 1988 ($10.99) as I didn't know what comics to buy and I only knew that I enjoyed the medium. When 4 months later (I lived in Saudi Arabia at the time) they arrived I discovered this little gem in it and was hooked from that day forwardAvengers_Vol_1_260.jpg

[Mary Jay]

Watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

Then, as I wanted to really know the characters and how they started out in the comics, I started reading Busiek's run, then went back to the very beginning with the 60s comic books, and moved to West Coast Avengers, then got to read Avengers Academy... from then, too many to list here

[Matt Parker]

I posted already, but I though of another point that some here might really disagree with. I. always was interested in Captain America and Thor, but I could never get into their solo comics. However, in Avengers books, I find that those two (especially Thor, who is my favorite member of the team) are able to shine as Avengers in a way that they can't as solo heroes.

[Tien Long]

Interesting thoughts all. Cool to see how all of us were brought to the Avengers, whether it was through old comics or an MCU movie!

Some of my thoughts:

I'll admit, I first became aware of the Avengers through older comics, specifically one of the West Coast Avengers issues, and then watching Iron Man's 90s cartoon (he did have one, even though it wasn't as popular or long-lasting as the ones for Spider-Man and the X-Men) and seeing characters there who were from the West Coast Avengers team that was later revamped as Force Works. Then there was the short-lived Avengers cartoon that debuted around 1999-2000, and while it was in retrospect a poor showing for the overall franchise (on top of lacking the Big 3 in Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, though the first two made guest appearances), it still attuned me to the existence of the Avengers.

It's funny that you mention the West Coast Avengers. I think that was one of the first times I ever heard about the Avengers, through Avengers West Coast. The name always stuck with me because it wasn't some complete, one phrase kind of thing, but the description came after the team name. It was unique and different and, come to think of it, was one of my first Avengers comics. Indeed, Avengers West Coast #100 with its holographic red cover was the only Avengers book I had for a long time:



Great main story, but there were great side stories featuring War Machine and U.S. Agent.

If I may be honest, I didn't fully get into them until the shakeups of the 2000s spearheaded by Brian Bendis, and what I found so compelling about them in that period was the willingness to address more explicitly the social and political implications and ramifications of an organized team of superhuman crimefighters in a setting relatively close to our own in that era. As controversial as a lot of that was, it did bring me fully into the Marvel fold for more than just Spider-Man and the X-Men, so mission accomplished, I suppose. Like Tien Long pointed out, I can also appreciate the Avengers being the underdogs of the Marvel Universe despite their status within the comics as "Earth's Mightiest Heroes," though, which simultaneously parallels and contrasts Spider-Man and the X-Men being the underdogs within the same setting while being beloved, iconic characters and franchises in real life at that time.

Yeah, as much as the superhero purist in me was apprehensive with Bendis' shaking up of the Avengers, I appreciated it. It felt really adult. The title (and other related Avengers titles) started to feel like prime time television, not Saturday morning cartoon stuff. Mature themes, politics, Civil Wars and Secret Invasions, that made for compelling reading, especially since I was in college at the time and could appreciate those themes.

I posted already, but I though of another point that some here might really disagree with. I. always was interested in Captain America and Thor, but I could never get into their solo comics. However, in Avengers books, I find that those two (especially Thor, who is my favorite member of the team) are able to shine as Avengers in a way that they can't as solo heroes.

Fascinating bro. I got into the solo titles of Cap and Thor at around the same time as I was getting into the team book. For me, they complimented each other and were connected. Yeah, it was Cap's solo title, but you could expect to see Thor or Iron Man make an appearance. Yeah, it was Thor's title, but sometimes you saw Namor or Scarlet Witch. Were there discrepancies b/w the solo and team book? I think there was still consistency amongst the solo and Avengers title.

[JohnnyPresley21]

Easy it was New Avengers,I was a strict X-Men only fan then but with the team being totally rebuilt and bring in Wolverine & Spider-Man to go along with Cap and Iron Man I thought it was loaded with the top tier characters in Marvel and was a good jump on point.Being collecting the main Avengers title still to this day,also got me hooked on Cap who in turn became my all time favorite comicbook character overtaking Wolverine.

[gurkle]

I'm another who got into the Avengers through the Busiek/Pérez run. The 2012 movie had everyone talking about the Avengers, so I thought I should pick up a trade and get to know the franchise, and I saw an article that compared that Avengers run to Grant Morrison's JLA as the two big "back to basics" team books of the late '90s. The "Avengers Assemble" trades collecting the full run were being released so I picked up the first one.

I think two things probably got me into it. One was that I was already a fan of Pérez's art, mostly from his DC work, which I knew better than Marvel at the time.

The other was that I was also a fan of the Justice League cartoon, and the first story of the Busiek/Pérez run, where Morgan Le Fay and Mordred take over the world and turn the superheroes into medieval versions of themselves, reminded me of an episode of Justice League where where Morgan Le Fay and Mordred take over the world and turn the superheroes into children. Now I wouldn't be surprised if the choice of Morgan Le Fay for that story owed something to that Avengers story (though maybe not, she and Mordred are public domain characters after all). But it was instantly comprehensible to me because of that.

Yeah, as much as the superhero purist in me was apprehensive with Bendis' shaking up of the Avengers, I appreciated it. It felt really adult. The title (and other related Avengers titles) started to feel like prime time television, not Saturday morning cartoon stuff. Mature themes, politics, Civil Wars and Secret Invasions, that made for compelling reading, especially since I was in college at the time and could appreciate those themes.

The Avengers needed something like that. Geoff Johns tried to blend the traditional Avengers cast and style with more mature themes and it didn't really work, the concept of the team really needed to be rethought.

I just wish Bendis and the editors had been less dismissive of the old cast and their fans. I believe Bendis has mentioned that it probably was a mistake to come in and break all the toys like that.

[Dreaded Porcupine]

Mine was reading Marvel Triple Action in the 70’s that reprinted the Avengers. The original Avengers minus the Hulk. The other was seeing the original Avengers in a Hulk 1966 Marvel animated episode. The one with the Space Phantom from Avengers #2. When Iron Man had his original bulky all gold armor. In this episode it was re-painted red and gold (see my avatar). I was blown away seeing this episode titled Enter the Space Phantom. I was confused by Iron Man’s armor. Before this episode I only seen his sleeker armors. I thought he looked so cool in this armor. Been a fan ever since. I use an actual clip from that episode as my avatar. It is the only time his old bulky armor and new armor color scheme were combined like this. I grew up with the original Avengers and that is still my favorite Avengers team. With and without the Hulk.

[charliehustle415]

For me I was always a X-Men kid, but then the name that changed it all for me was BENDIS. New Avengers to me captured everything I loved about the X-Men but gave me more variety with the different heroes belonging to different "families".

[Montressor]

The naive wonder of childhood did it for me. In other words the idea of superheroes who each had their own separate books, their own adventures, their own villains would come together as a team to combat even GREATER menaces. That was just cool to me, as a kid--a writer working with a living god with a magical weapon, a guy wearing a tank as a suit of armor, an ageless soldier from the battlefields of history, an African king, an artificial man--and bringing them all together as a team. The very concept of the 'super team' is just epic in and of itself, and it's fitting that the Avengers would be one of the top teams to exemplify the idea of modern gods protecting the Earth.

[MRP]

As a young kid in the early-mid 70s, I got to get 1 book a week at the drug store when I went with my dad, usually on the way to the bowling alley on their league night to keep me occupied. One of the first books I picked up was Marvel Triple Action #23 in late '74



reprinting old Avengers books, and I was hooked. It gave me a chance to see a lot of characters all at once, and I had become a fan of Cap, Thor, Iron Man through some Viewmaster reels I had. Whenever I had a chance, I would get a new Avengers comic, either reprints in Marvel Triple Action or the regular Avengers book. By '76 I was getting almost every issue (newsstand distribution was spotty in my area, sometimes you missed issues), and then I got a copy of Son of Origins for my birthday, and got to read Avengers #1.

I read the book regularly whenever I could (college and the first few years after graduation were lean for budgets), and always got caught up with back issues when I had to skip comics for a bit, until the Heroes Reborn book came out. I came back for the Busiek book and hung on for a little bit of the Bendis era, but I was more into other types of comics than super-hero stuff, and sometime around '02 or '03 I sold off all my older Marvel stuff (near complete runs or Avengers, Iron Man, Cap etc.) to pay for a wedding and a cross-country move. I have some of the older stuff in trades, and check in every so often on Unlimited, but haven't really followed the Avengers in comics for some time, but still thrill to their adventures in other mediums.

-M

[Ying Ko]

I remember reading Avengers #5 at my friends house when I was a very small kid, but it was the Michelinie/Perez/Byrne run that hooked me (somewhere around #170-200 or so).

I was actually reading Fantastic Four and X-Men long before I was into the Avengers.

[chamber-music]

I had read Iron Man and Captain America comics. It was probably The Avengers: United They Stand cartoon that got me into the Avengers more.

[BruceWayneJr.]

Nice to see so many others whose gateway was Busiek. I was a huge X-Men fan at first, and gobbled up almost all of the Onslaught stuff. Marvel's marketing got me into Heroes Reborn, and even though I bought and read every issue, I knew it didn't feel right. In the meantime Busiek's Thunderbolts knocked my socks off, so I was delighted when he got the Avengers book. Busiek and Perez's respect for the past while keeping an eye on modernity and forward movement really shaped the way I look at comics.