I read an article about the 9 Worst Avengers yesterday, and for the heck of it I wrote up my own Worst 9 Avengers. Since it's a little slow here (and the next Abandoned Legion isn't finished yet) I thought I'd post my list.

Anyway, my list of the worst 9 Avengers, in no particular order, would be the following. Keep in mind my list does not include those who were just on the Dark Avengers line-up (since they're not Avengers in my book).

1. The Sentry
- The Sentry is supposed to be the most powerful being on the planet. He's also mentally unstable. That is a bad combination, in my mind. So rather than focusing on getting him help, he is added to the roster to keep an eye on him.
The Avengers need to be able to trust each other. Captain America has stated before if personal business doesn't affect the Avengers, then it can stay private. But if it is a matter that affects the team, he needs to know about it, since the team is trusting each other with their lives (this was around the time Ms. Marvel lost her Binary powers and became Warbird in the Busiek era). How can you go into battle not knowing whether the atomic bomb strapped to your back (AKA The Sentry) is going to explode or not?
He was a terrible teammate; if there was a big threat, you didn't know if he was going to come out and help you or stay at home and cry on his couch (World War Hulk).
I can't believe that Captain America would allow an unstable person that powerful on the team without at LEAST having a powerhouse like Thor around who might be able to contain him if he goes nuts.

2. Dr. Druid
Right from the first time I was introduced to Dr. Druid I didn't like him (during the class "Under Siege" storyline by Stern). He struck me as being really creepy, and his constant undermining of Captain Monica really drove me to dislike him. When he died I was a happy camper.

3. Wolverine
I actually don't have a problem with the concept of Wolverine being on the Avengers, it's the reason why he's on the team and the logistics of it that bother me.
Wolverine was brought onto the team by Iron Man to be the team's executioner. Iron Man felt that when a situation presented itself where killing was required, it would be easier with Wolverine around. Captain America argued a bit, but relented fairly easily in my mind. The same Captain America who was outraged that Iron Man led a faction of Avengers to kill the Supreme Intelligence during Operation: Galactic Storm, I might add.
Killing isn't supposed to be an easy solution, it's supposed to be the last ditch option. If you compare it to his battle with alcohol, Tony is just bringing an enabler into the team.
Then there is the fact that Wolverine is on the X-Men, leads X-Force, and conducts the Broxton Philharmonic on the side (okay, I made up that last part). In what is supposed to feel like a cohesive universe, how are we supposed to believe that Logan is able to participate on all of these different teams, especially when the X-people are now based on the opposite coast?

4. Namor
He's only had a couple of short stints on the team, but that's part of the problem. It never takes long for Namor to get caught up in Atlantis business, or decide that he no longer wants to work with the surface world, he wants to conquer it.
The other problem with Namor as an Avenger is that if the battles don't all end up conveniently near a body of water (which they usually do, this being comics), he quickly becomes ineffective. Stingray suffers from the same problem; water-based characters rarely work on teams long-term because you can only have "trouble at the docks" so long before the reader tires of the effort to get the battle near the water. Aquaman might be the one exception to this, as he has served on the JLA for decent stretches of time, but it does mean the writer has to find a way to include a body of water in the stories.

5. Mantis
I've never liked Mantis. Because I don't like Mantis, I usually avoid re-reading stories centered around her. So her inclusion is basically because I really can't stand the character. Sue me, I never said things wouldn't get personal.

6. Jack of Hearts
After his first story arc, Jack just spent all of his time locked in the Zero Room because he was going to explode. Yet somehow the guy locked in a room took up a lot of page space in that time. His rivalry with Ant-Man (Scott) felt forced, like when the writers changed (I think it was Geoff Johns who used him first, then *ugh* Austen took over) a switch was flipped and Jack went from grateful to the Avengers for help to a big jerk.
His death scene was also terrible. Yes, he saved Ant-Man's daughter (though really, Scott couldn't handle one guy with a gun? Approach him at ant size, then grow and take him from behind, shouldn't be too difficult), but then he flew the guy out to space to blow him up. And Ant-Man looks up in awe and remarks "He was an Avenger".
Avengers don't blow up civilian threats in space!

7. Thunderstrike
I'm actually a big Thunderstrike fan, I love his solo series (I just need to find #23!). But though his solo book told me he was an Avenger, we almost never saw him in the Avengers book. To me he was a lip-service Avenger only. He never really felt like a member of the team.

8. Masque
Why was a clone of Madame Masque determined to be Avengers material? Seriously? Whether you rate her by moral fiber, combat skills...she doesn't make the cut. She has goons to do her heavy lifting for her.

9. Starfox
I never found Starfox to be that useful, especially considering he is an Eternal. He has the same abilities as Sersi, as I understand it (he was able to molecularly restore a team of Avengers rendered "inert" by Sersi to survive the Nega Bomb in Galactic Storm), but he always struck me as being fairly useless, not a potential powerhouse like Sersi.
And yeah, his "love powers" are pretty creepy, though I admit, would that same standard be applied to him if he was a female character?

I've read very few appearances by the Sentry, but for me the character just has "bad idea" stamped all over him. He's so far into "Mary Sue" territory (and honestly, that's a phrase I wasn't familiar with until prior discussions here, but it's unavoidable to see now) that he just grates on my nerves. He's supposed to be as powerful as a "billion exploding stars" or something? Could you set a more ridiculous standard? He may have actually eclipsed my scorn for "Xorn"'s "star for a brain" power explanation in that regard. But heap on the fact that all the major characters of the Marvel Universe know him and consider him their bestest friend and it's insanely groan-inducing.

I wish comic writers would realize that shortcuts rarely work in comics. You can't just introduce a character at the head of the pack... You have to earn that place through stories.





Aside from "Under Siege", I don't know that I've read any of this character. Wait... there were a few more forgettable storylines from around the same time. Either way, I never remember his existence unless someone points him out to me.





That was the explanation for Wolverine? I shouldn't be surprised, what with Hawkeye wanting to murder Osborne recently, and Mockingbird arguing against it, and nobody *ever mentioning* this complete role reversal from the very fight that broke up their marriage.*

*Admittedly, so I'm told. I still can't summon up enough interest to read Bendis Avengers, even when their free on my I-pad.

I had thought at the time it was originally announced that there was the possibility for a good story to come out of Wolverine as an Avenger. But then it turned out that the team was being recreated in such a drastic way as to make the significance meaningless... When the team is random and disconnected from its history, what difference does it make who is on it?





I agree. Honestly, the "once an Avenger..." thing never worked for me, as there are plenty of characters that really weren't fully integrated with the team. Now, as I mentioned with Wolverine, the significance of being an Avenger is pretty much shot. It's like being a Major League ball player... rare, but there have been so many that you'd need an atlas to remember all the guys who came and went.

I personally feel that to really be a part of a team, a character has to have some kind of definable relationship with at least 2 other characters on that team, be it as a love interest, rival, buddy, mentor... whatever. If it's a general thing (most of the team dislikes the guy's attitude or something) then it doesn't count. There are probably some specific characters that have done enough in a title to be an exception, but not too many.

Likewise, I tend to think the best writers of team books tend to forge those connections between their casts, while the forgettable runs throw characters into the mix who easily drop right out again as soon as they leave.




I really like nasty characters on teams, and I enjoy hating them as much as I like them. I think they help to keep both the writer and the characters honest, as by including a sarcastic, antagonizing voice in the inner circle it keeps everyone aware when things begin to get too self-indulgent in the personal drama.

That said, my affection for Mantis is mostly based on her being a catalyst to progress the Vizh/Wanda relationship. Remove that, and she's way too trippy of a concept to take seriously, and Englehart was much too fond of her. (See that comment about shortcuts above.)




I think I read his entire run as an Avenger, and I barely remember the guy. Interesting look, but otherwise completely forgettable to me.





For me, I think the big problem with Thunderstrike is that I'd rather just have Thor or Hercules on the team, depending on what role I needed filled.




I don't really recall anything about her either, and didn't know the character from her villainous days. In her defense, I gather whatever plans there were for her to be added to the team were lost in the creative reshuffling the title underwent. I don't believe she was even supposed to be a clone at the time she joined, was she?




I kind of enjoy the occasional character like Starfox, who doesn't take the job seriously. It can add some fun conflict and lead things off into different directions. They're not built for the long haul, but now and again they can be fun.

I kind of get annoyed at the need for modern writers to indulge themselves in pointing out certain creepy interpretations of characters. I can't really argue against them, but is it really necessary to rob them of the more innocent bend for some cheap self-aware writing?


Fun list, and some fun comics discussion!

Originally he had "the power of a million exploding suns", then they adjusted it to "power of a thousand exploding suns"; either way it was stupid.

The other problem the character suffered from what inconsistency; nobody can really say what his powers are, after all this time. Sometimes he seems to be just like Superman, in one appearance had had power over molecules (exactly like the Molecule Man), he supposedly has psionic powers (which is how everyone "forgot" about him)...it's impossible to get a bead on the guy.




Exactly.







Until I got the 30 years of Avengers DVD (collecting the main title from the 60's to the first few issues of New Avengers) I hadn't read any other appearances from him other than Under Siege. I didn't like him in Under Siege, and I didn't like him after I read more of his stories on my computer.










You get free comics on you I-Pad? Nice.

I read Bendis' Avengers for about 30 issues, then dropped it. I like him on books like Daredevil, but he can't handle large super-powered casts very well. I am admittedly getting Avengers Prime though, which is supposed to be the reconciliation of Cap, Iron Man, and Thor. The smaller group should work well for him I hope.




If you'd named the New Avengers the Marvel Knights I would have enjoyed the book more. The name was the only similarity.







And now there are 3 Avengers teams running around (New, Secret, and adjectiveless), so it gets muddied even more. That being said, I picked up the first issue of Secret Avengrs and really enjoyed it (the line-up is really fun; Steve Rogers, War Machine, Black Widow, Valkyrie, Moon Knight, Ant-Man (the new one, Eric), Beast, and Nova).







Or a character is introduced to drive a single plot and then has no use afterwards.
















The character was around well before his Avenger days, and I don't mind him on his own. But he just wasn't use well in the Avengers at all.







I think at the time Hercules was suffering from a severe lack of confidence (he was a supporting character in Thunderstrike's solo book), and I'm not sure if Thor was on the team at the time. I think it was just Defalco's attempt to get the character more exposure, but the writers on Avengers didn't really buy in.







She did turn out to be a clone, I believe.







I agree; D-Man is one of my favourite Avengers simply because of his concept. I haven't actually read the story when he gets inducted by Cap, but whenever I see him pop up (like in Avengers #1 by Busiek) it makes me smile.




I agree, but even when I was more innocent of such things I still found Starfox kind of creepy. And useless.




The original had Wonder Man on it, which I'm guessing you would approve of.

~Hat~

Considering that one exploding star is enough to wipe out the solar system, does it really matter what number they put before it? I like how we've gone from "more powerful than a locomotive" to this level now.





They should have given him a cellophane Sentry symbol on his costume that he could throw at people. Well, hopefully he stays dead for a good long while, and never shows up in any movies.





How much was the DVD? I ask because...




I believe the Marvel app works on I-pod touches and I-phones as well. It's a remarkably good comic reader on the I-pad screen, very quick and responsive, and the Marvel store has a new assortment of free issues every week or so. When the I-pad launched, it was consistently on the "must get" lists of apps...

Which is why I'm really disappointed that Marvel seems unwilling to commit to it. It's obviously a toe in the water at best, because the comics that you can get for it are all old ones... recent enough that they would already have digital files for them all, but usually at least a few years old. It's like one random back-issue bin, only they charge $1.99 per issue, which is *way* too much. There are no deals, no collected versions... They'll put out the six issues of a storyline, and you have to buy them individually for $2 each. The price might work if I could buy a specific storyline I want, but the comics available seem to measure around maybe a hundred total. So there are something like 14 Avengers issues (a Geoff Johns story arc and the opening "New Avengers" story arc) for instance. As a result, I haven't bought a single comic.

It's extraordinarily stupid, because every now and again I'll hear about a comic and go look for it in their store, and of course it's not there. You can't read any current comics, and you can't get hooked on a title because they add them randomly... so after you finish one story arc, lord knows if they'll ever get around to offering the next story arc in line for sale there. And $2 for a digital copy only is *way* too high a price. There is zero collectors value and zero printing costs (while programming and conversion costs are probably much lower).

I have to assume the reason they didn't go with a more reasonable $1 per issue is that then it would be a much better value for people who just want to read the story to buy the app copy rather than a published graphic novel of it, and they don't want to undercut that side of the business. I have trouble understanding why they aren't offering new comics at all on the thing... hell, even comics a month or two behind the newstands, but added as ongoing series so that people could get hooked and keep buying. It's such a blown opportunity to expand the audience for comics. I hate that there's a beautiful app which most everyone with an I-pad downloaded, and now they won't offer me anything for it that I would want to buy.





I very much agree with Ian's point that Bendis writes crime stories well, but those have very different needs and story beats than the more grand heroic fiction. As such, IMO he's very good a creating horrible situations, and very bad at giving the heroes a triumph in the end.





I would have preferred that myself. Now I wonder, had they done that, would we be getting a "Marvel Knights" movie in a few years instead?





I thought the new Ant-Man was a criminal who used his powers to watch Ms. Marvel shower or something?








Speaking of characters introduced to drive a single plot point...

I never really hated Simon as much as some posters, although he's really the definition of that plot-point example, two times over in fact. He was a throw-away character his first appearance (given the Wonder Man name to annoy D.C.), and then brought back to screw with the Vision's sense of identity. And then he just... hung around... and while some writers made him fun, nobody knew what to do with this extra, generic hero, and things got messy.

I like the idea of the hero-as-a-would-be-star that they tried, but the thing is the character was too defined as other things before they got to that point. He's really the ideal kind of character to do as an "Ultimate" version, because he has so many false starts that could be pruned away until you had a character with a clear point and purpose... but then, that's not what the Ultimate Universe ever did well anyway.

Mostly, these days it's just sad to see that the Vision has been so totally wiped out of the Marvel Universe, and Wonder Man's mostly a reminder of this for me. All of the Vision's relationships have been stripped away and hung on other characters. (The entirety of the conflict with Ultron has been shifted to Pym, despite Ultron's origin being mostly a subplot in the introduction of the Vision. Not surprisingly, once Simon came back, the Grim Reaper's focus shifted to him. They moved Wanda's relationship with Vizh into more of a Wonder-man subplot, and they made his twin boys entirely Wanda's kids, with him never being mentioned any longer when discussing them.)

But then I remind myself that I pretty much have to go back to the 70's to when the Vision that I liked was in comics. Kudos to Bob Harris for beginning to bring him back in the 90's, but then Heroes Reborn happened and that was the complete end of him. Considering the amount of time that has passed, I think the wounds have scabbed over.

Yeah, it's all hyperbole; I don't think there was any actual power deviation when they started saying a thousand versus a million.







Unfortunately the ending of Siege where he died left the perfect out to bring the character back; Thor killed him and then sent his body into the sun. Considering he has the "power of X exploding suns" a writer could certainly revive him later with that connection.

I hope they don't though.







At the time it came out it was worth between $30-$50. However, Marvel stopped putting the collections out because they wanted to make more money off of their digital comics service instead. Collections were done for Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Hulk, Captain America, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, and the Avengers (may have been one or two more, I'm not sure off the top of my head). Unfortunately the company licensed to produce the collections hadn't got the Thor one out yet!

Now these DVD collections can go from anywhere between $30-$200 on E-Bay. I only managed to get 4 of the collections when they were reasonably priced; Spider-Man (which is on about 10 CDs instead of 1 or 2 DVDs), Avengers, Iron Man, and X-Men.













That's my biggest beef with the digital delivery system. The costs to the producers is much lower (no material costs, shipping, etc), yet the price is the same as if you bought the DVD, CD, or book in a store. And you don't actually own anything with the digital comics, do you? I thought you just bought the rights to see the books on-line (though I could be wrong about that).

I don't even know if we can get the digital comics in Canada, especially on the iPad (since it just came out here; I do not understand why Apple delays things in Canada compared to the US). Since I have dial-up internet, I haven't looked into it.




That would make sense to me; delay the release a month or two, but put it out sequentially. You're probably right though, they don't want to undercut the tpb business, but why not try and build both up to be strong? I think a lot of readers still prefer to have a copy on paper than an electronic one.







Exactly.







I would be quite happy to see a movie with Spider-Man, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist actually.







He was, then I believe he became a part of the Thunderbolts. Guess he reformed enough there to make the cut on the Secret Avengers. Having an Ant-Man on the team does make a lot of sense or an espionage team, and they also need that rookie perspective on the team, so he fits the bill. I don't know that Hank would be well suited to the cloak and dagger stuff anyway (though Scott Lang would have been good if he hadn't died for shock value in Disassembled).
















I enjoyed his time with the West Coast Avengers, watching him go from insecure to confident to cocky. It was a nice progression.




Yeah, teen Vision just isn't the same. At all.




To me Vision and the Scarlet Witch will always be one of those "eternal" couples, like Cyclops and Jean...wait, no, like Peter and Mary Jane...nope, Daredevil and Karen Page...umm...Luke Cage and Jessica Jones?

I keep waiting for Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman to split up; they're the only "meant to be" (in my mind, anyway) couple still around.

It's funny how the movie versions of the characters feature the classic romances, but almost none of them still exist in the actual comics.

~Hat~