"There are men so godlike, so exceptional, that they naturally, by right of their extraordinary gifts, transcend all moral judgment or constitutional control. There is no law which embraces men of that calibre. They are themselves law."

The Avengers History


Created by Stan Lee, The Avengers were made up of several superheroes and were published by Marvel Comics. These superheroes were already in existence when the first issue of The Avengers came out in 1963.

The original team consisted of Wasp, Thor, Ant-Man, the Hulk, and Iron Man. They were called Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The team would change from time to time like when the Hulk left, Captain America joined and led the new team. The team kept rotating members and the Avengers became known for rotating members.

The one constant the remained however is that the Avengers always banded together to fight foes that they could not defeat by themselves. Their battle cry was "Avengers Assemble!". The Avengers' team has been made up of robots, humans, aliens, gods, former villains, and even supernatural beings.

This first series of The Avengers came out twice a month until issue #6 in July 1964. It changed to once a month after that and through issue #402 in September 1996. Then some spin offs were done which involved some annual editions, some miniseries, and a sister series that happened quarterly for a short time in the mid-1970s.

West Coast Avengers (another spin off) was a 4 part miniseries in 1984. Then came a 102 issue series from October 1985 to January 1994. With issue #48 it got renamed to Avengers West Coast and then the forty issue of Solo Avengers in December 1987 to January 1991 was renamed Avengers Spotlight in #21.

Marvel brought out The Avengers title 3 times during 1996 to 2004. In 1996, Marvel hired other companies to do the Heroes Reborn group, which included 4 titles. One was a new Avengers.

An alternate universe was the location of this series and the history was totally different from the mainstream theme Marvel had for The Avengers. The Avengers volume 2 had 13 issues from November 1996 to November 1997. With the final issue they did a blend with other titles from Heroes Reborn and made the characters return to the Marvel Universe as they were before Heroes Reborn.

With The Avengers volume 3 the series was reborn and had 84 issues from February 1998 to August 2004. In honor of the 500th issue of the 1st series, Marvel skipped some numbers in order to number the next 4 issues 500, 501, 502, and 503 from September 2004 to December 2004.

The final issue was called Avengers Finale in January 2005. In this story The Avengers break up after one member, Scarlett Witch, goes insane and two other members, Ant-Man and Hawkeye, die. This led to the new series called New Avengers in January 2005.

In February 2005 the New Avengers was renamed the Young Avengers. The storyline changed to be about heroes that were teenagers sculpted after past members of The Avengers. Then the Mighty Avengers came out with issue #1 in May 2007.

The Avengers are still going strong as is evident with the announcement in August 2006 by Marvel Entertainment that The Avengers is a property under development for a film, with Zak Penn as screenwriter.

In a May 5, 2008, report to shareholders, Marvel Entertainment announced the release dates for two planned Avenger movies. The First Avenger: Captain America (working title) is scheduled for May 2011, followed by The Avengers, scheduled for July 2011.