Avengers Assemble! (Yeah, we'll wait...)

14. For the first 110 issues of the series (roughly 1963-1973) Marvel’s premier super-hero team, the Avengers, managed to get by with just 14 official members (and that number includes 3 “blink and you’ll miss ‘em” members: The Hulk, the Swordsman, and the Black Knight.)

14 Avengers (the others were, of course: Thor, Iron Man, the many faces of Hank Pym, the Wasp, Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Hercules, the Black Panther, and the Vision) during the course of a decade’s worth of issues (mostly written by two guys: Roy Thomas and Stan Lee)…kind of an exclusive club and that was pretty cool.

Since that time though just about every writer who has come on the book has felt the need to put a personal stamp on the series by adding new faces to the team; a fact which has caused the membership to be something less than exclusive with seemingly dozens of heroes (including a couple of X-Men and three-fourths of the Fantastic Four) carrying Avengers ID cards over the years. There are enough Avengers to fill an auditorium and yet all these writers feel they need to add their pet characters to the mix (as opposed to just drawing from the already incredibly deep bench of formerly active Avengers.)

With the recent announcement that the beloved character Red Hulk would be joining up, the beat goes on.

Hell at this point they might as well just issue every costumed hero in the Marvel Universe an Avengers ID card and tell them “we’ll call you when we need you.”

Don’t get me wrong, I know that some of the later characters have gone on to have distinguished Avenger careers (Beast, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Luke Cage come to mind offhand) but just once I’d like to see somebody take over an Avengers title and not feel the need to add somebody new to the already lengthy roster of Avengers.

That’s probably not gonna happen but I, as long time Avengers fan (the book was my first favorite Marvel title back when I started reading comics in the 60’s), I can dream…

14…imagine that…