When The West Coast Avengers first appeared, I thought that it was a great idea. There were too many members of The Avengers at that time to feature on a single team, so I loves the idea of a second group operating on the other side of the country. I especially liked the idea of Hawkeye as team leader - he had always claimed that he could do a better job than Cap, so I was glad to see him finally get his chance. Of course, these days, Marvel has completely overdone the concept, with new Avenger spin-off teams popping up on a regular basis. It once was a big deal to be granted Avengers membership, now it's hard to think of many Marvel heroes who aren't a part of the team.
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Remember when Busiek and Perez relaunched The Avengers? It was like the entire Marvel Universe had been a member! They were doing a lot of those fold-out covers for "backstory" and character bios. It was an alphabetical laundry list of heroes. I had never even heard of D-Man...
In the 1980's I was able to read comics much more than I am now. Today I run a business, go to school and have a family. In the late 1970's to mid 1980's I thought they had a great line up. Vision, Scarlet Witch, Hercules, Wasp, Yellowjacket, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Thor, Beast, Iron Man, Captain America, Wonder Man, Black Panther, Captain Mar-vell, Moondragon and Quicksilver were among the cast over several issues. (And I likely left some out.) Imagine that bunch teaming up with the JLA. When I was in law school, I was not able to read as much and somewhat lost touch, but I have heard some of the stories as relayed to me by friends and looking at summaries online. I am disappointed to hear that the Avengers in the comics today are more like the Defenders of old. Like Ross said, it was a big deal to be an Avenger at one time. Now he/she who is in the Marvel Universe is or has been an Avenger.
I loved the idea of the West Coast Avengers when they first came out too. I made perfect sense to me that the Avengers would want to "franchise". And of course, I agree that today there are far too many Avengers teams. The Avengers was a title that meant a great deal to me for a number of years. Today when I pick up an Avengers title, I hardly recognize any of the members!
I blame the over-extension on the post-Secret Invasion Tony Stark and Norman Osborne. The latter, especially! I mean, what do we have now, because of him; 3 spin-offs of SHIELD?
A.R.M.O.R. H.A.M.M.E.R. and S.W.O.R.D. Oh, my!
But, GL Hal Jordan as a West Coast Avenger? I can dig it!
Although I was never a big collector of Marvel comics, I thought the idea of having Spiderman (traditional loner) and Wolverine (exclusively X-men) in the Avengers to be sacrilegious and off-putting.
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