Summary
- Earth's Mightiest Heroes, also known as The Avengers, were popularized through their portrayals in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- Various versions of The Avengers have been depicted in comics, movies, and animated shows, each with unique rosters and storylines.
- From classic animated lineups to powerhouse collaborations like The New Avengers and The Uncanny Avengers, Marvel's heroes face grand challenges.
The team of Marvel's most elite heroes who assembled to save the world are known as The Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. They were already a popular superhero team that then had a meteoric rise in popularity through their portrayals at the heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With having their own big three in Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor, powerhouses like the Hulk, and agents like Hawkeye and Black Widow, the team lives up to their mighty epithet.
There have been many very different versions of Marvel’s top team in comics, movies, and animated television shows. Here are five of the greatest Marvel Avengers rosters shown in each of these mediums.
5 Earth's Mightiest Heroes
The Famous Animated Roster
- First Seen: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1, Episode 1, "Iron Man is Born"
- Date: October 24, 2010
This is one of the most well-known iterations of The Avengers. Just as the Justice League Unlimited animated series introduced a new generation of children to the Justice League, The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes introduced a new generation of kids to the intricacies of The Avengers as a team and the world they live in.
If The Original MCU Avengers Members Fought, Who Would Win?
If we were to pit Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye against each other, who would come out on top? It can be spun in a variety of ways, given the number of adaptations there have been of the Avengers and all of their respective members, but you would think most of the time it would come down to Thor or Captain America. Hawkeye and Widow have the disadvantage of being human, and Iron Man is heavily reliant on machinery (granted, very advanced). Hulk may cause some problems, but without synergy with Banner he doesn't pose as much of a threat. If it came down to one, I would say Thor, but Captain America would give him a run for his money 10 out of 10 times.
This team included Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, and The Wasp as its initial members, with Captain America (who is typically a founding Avenger) joining slightly later on, along with Hawkeye and Black Panther, to make up the main team. Later on in the series, more easily recognized and powerful Marvel heroes join the team, such as Vision and Ms. Marvel, and even heroes such as Spider-Man, Luke Cage, and War Machine.
The series gave us two seasons to familiarize ourselves with this roster and the trials and tribulations they would have to go through. In the first season, they challenged villains such as Baron Zemo, Loki, Ultron, and most infamously, Hydra. In the second and final season, the stakes rise with villains such as Doctor Doom, Red Skull, and Galactus facing off against the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
4 The New Avengers
An Updated Squad
- First Seen: The New Avenger #1
- Date: January 2005
Any Avengers team that includes both Spider-Man and Wolverine as key members is a quality team for sure. That is the case with The New Avengers, a version of the team that appeared in a series of comics written by Brain Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman. Promotional art featuring the New Avengers shows Carol Danvers, The Thing, Luke Cage and, as mentioned previously, Wolverine and Spider-Man. This should give fans an idea of how powerful a team this is.
The founding members of this team were Iron Man and Captain America, as is usual with Avengers teams being founded, but also Wolverine, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, and Sentry, which is not as typical. As the team grew throughout these storylines, they were joined by immensely capable members such as Iron Fist, Ronan, and Power Woman.
The New Avengers dealt with issues such as rioting superhuman criminals, agents from S.H.I.E.L.D., mega mutants, the whims of the Scarlet Witch, manipulative masterminds, their reality being meddled with, superhero registration acts and grand civil wars taking place between many superpowered beings.
3 The Uncanny Avengers
X-Men Assemble
- First Seen: Uncanny Avengers #1
- Date: December 2012
The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in collaboration with the heroes who are sometimes referred to as the next step in human evolution. What happens when an assembled Avengers squad and the Uncanny X-Men are combined? You get the Uncanny Avengers, a team featuring members such as Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, Rogue, Scarlet Witch, Havok, Wonder Man, Sunfire, and The Wasp.
For anyone looking for the strongest Avengers and X-Men in the Marvel Universe, they will find them on this team. Its roster boasts the likes of Quicksilver and Vision, as well as powerful individuals who are not typically key members of either team, such as Deadpool and The Human Torch. With heroes and antiheroes like that alongside Sabertooth and Doctor Voodoo, it's no surprise this team is so great.
In ‘The Red Shadow’, we see the team's beginnings, with Captain America and Thor offering Havok the opportunity to lead an Avengers team. The Avengers Unity Squad was later formed, featuring Sunfire, Wasp, and Wonder Man. They fought together against the Apocalypse Twins, used Kang the Conqueror's technology to save the planet, and went on various other adventures in this collaboration of pure Marvel power.
2 Hickman's Avengers
A Hectic Roster
- First Seen: Avengers #1 by Jonathan Hickman
- Date: April 2015
A strategic Avengers Machine was used to build a vast squad of powerful heroes, including Captain America and Iron Man. This was the case in the storylines for the Avengers created by Jonathan Hickman. In it, during a galactic war with the Builders, a team that included both a mix of new heroes, old villains, and classic Avengers combined to create quite an intimidating force.
Hickman’s Avengers are a vast roster of heroes, from Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor to Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain Marvel, Captain Universe, Hyperion, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Woman. This Avengers iteration is a stacked team of raw power with heavy hitters in every rank.
With this version of The Avengers, great threats must be faced, including villains with mysterious shadowy abilities, alien races equally as dangerous as they are ancient, bomb threats on foreign planets, altered humans, and genetic coding. The Avengers deal with problems on Earth and in space through these runs. From minds being wiped to Mars being terraformed, there are a whole host of interesting and strange scenarios, conflicts, events, and battles to be explored when reading Hickman’s Avengers run.
1 Endgame Avengers
The Many Saviors Of The Universe
- First Seen: Avengers: Endgame
- Date: April 22, 2019
This is the Avengers team that most people will be familiar with, hailing from the record-breaking box office-destroying finale and the most important arc in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. The Avengers roster showcased in Avengers: Endgame, including that of the ranks shown during the final battle, is one of the largest and most powerful Avengers rosters ever shown to fans of the franchise.
The team is lead by the MCU Big Three: Iron Man, who during the film used his genius to create time travel, Captain America, who was shown to be worthy of wielding Mjölnir, and Thor, who had almost single-handedly killed Thanos in the last outing. There is also a version of the Professor Hulk in this movie, with this universe’s Bruce Banner combining the brains and brawn of both sides of his persona and making them work together, as well as a Hawkeye who has trained as Ronin, and an even more determined and trigger-happy Black Widow, to make up their core members.
Should The Avengers Have Ended With End Game?
While End Game saw us say goodbye to some of the most memorable and loved characters of the MCU since its first phase, the Avengers as a group will continue in further films. With a new team together consisting of the likes of Shang-Chi and Falcon as the new Captain America, I feel like I would have been satisfied with that storyline altogether ending there and then. With other big names still making their mark in the MCU like Spider-Man and Deadpool, I don't think the Avengers are really needed and it won't hit quite as well this time around, but I will happily be proven wrong.
That alone would have made these Avengers incredibly powerful, but the army they fought Thanos with in the final battle was far more expansive than that. The Endgame roster contained Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, The Wasp, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther with his Wakandan army, Spider-Man, Valkyrie, Rescue, and more. This was the Avengers squad that destroyed Thanos and revived half of the universe, making them easily one of the greatest ever seen.
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