COMICS 101: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES, PART I
November 5, 2003
By Scott Tipton

(excerpt)

AVENGERS #144 (Feb 1976)

DC Comics may have invented the concept of the “superhero team” with the Justice Society, and later the Justice League, but they were never much on refining it. In the DC Universe, superheroes formed super-teams because, well, that’s just what superheroes did. (Sure, there were rare exceptions like the Doom Patrol, but they were short-lived.) You had the JLA and their junior version, the Teen Titans, and that was pretty much it.

Marvel, on the other hand, developed distinct identities for each of their superhero teams, providing them with much more of a uniqueness of purpose, and an individuality that lent itself to a successful series. The Fantastic Four was a family, first and foremost. The X-Men were outcasts, banded together by human society’s hatred and mistrust. The Defenders, a successful ‘70s team book, was billed as a “non-team,” consisting of loosely affiliated misfits who found themselves hanging out together out of desperation and a need to belong, to anything. And the Avengers? The Avengers were the varsity team, the first line of defense, the “Big Guns” of the Marvel Universe. Anybody could be a Defender, and no one wanted to be an X-Man, but if you were a superhero and you were invited to join the Avengers, you’d made it: you were in the big leagues now. I think it’s this air of prestige and responsibility that helps make the Avengers so consistently popular. While the Fantastic Four are exploring the cosmos and the X-Men are looking after their own, the Avengers are in the trenches, saving the world, year in and year out. Combine that with one of the best core memberships in comics and a frequently changing roster, and you get what is, for my money, the best superhero team series ever published.