West Coast Avengers: Looking back at the melodramatic Avengers spin-off that focused on "damaged" heroes - gillespiebeentive
West Coast Avengers: Sounding back at the melodramatic Avengers spin-off that focused happening "damaged" heroes
There have been over a dozen different Avengers titles from Marvel in the past hardly a years - just before there were New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers, Dark Avengers, or some other spirit of Avengers there was the Cicily Isabel Fairfield Coast Avengers.
…or Avengers West Coast, dependant on your predilection.
Created back in 1984 by writer Roger Quarter and artist Curtsy Hall, West Coast Avengers were an outgrowth of Marvel's flagship team title Avengers that was ready up in California with a separate fit of team members culled from Avengers bursting ranks. If the name of the book wasn't clear sufficient, the West Coast Avengers protected the horse opera side of the United States in shipway the New York-based original Avengers team couldn't. Although that geographic specificity might seem banal away today's standards, o'er its 100+ issue run it earned a host of fans with earth-shattering epics and personal stories with Avengers members outside of the classic line-functioning.
"Well, I know for a fact that the Westernmost Coast Avengers are fondly remembered by many people, including a number of on-going comic creators," says early Avengers Academy and Avengers: The Enterprisingness writer Christos Sess. "The biggest matter, to my listen, is that West Coast Avengers was the first expansion of the Avengers. The quadruple Avengers books we have now started there. Now, the idea of just one Avengers book is impossible, but at the time having more than unity was a pretty bold thing to do…in front that, Wonder would launch completely different teams, like the Defenders. Rather than any specific storyline, I think that is the title's legacy…that the Avengers could be not just a team, but a franchise."
In its beginnings, the West Coast Avengers team was comprised of present recruits to the Avengers franchise much as Wonder Serviceman, Tigra, and Mocker, with Hawkeye in the lead. Iron Man was a part of the team, but it wasn't Tony Stark in the courting but kinda Jim 'Rhodey' Cecil John Rhodes - a secret that even the team up didn't be intimate for a time. But soon the rank rosters of the West Slide Avengers and the original Avengers team caused a rift in the ranks, amongst characters and even creators.
"Westside Coast Avengers was the first true expansion of the Avengers franchise - the first time that there was more than one Avengers rubric. So regardless of anything other, it was the start. That said, it had a fairly difficult nativity," explains old Marvel and Avengers editor Tom Brevoort, today Marvel's older V.P. of publishing. "Supposedly, after inventing the conception and writing the original Benjamin West Coast Avengers specific series, Avengers writer Roger Stern had to rework a twelvemonth's worth of planning when Steve Englehart was hired to write out Dame Rebecca West Coast Avengers as an ongoing series. So just from the start, there was a certain layer of strife between the Eastmost and West teams."
And it besides broke up one of the primary dynamics in the Avengers line-up, Brevoort says.
"Equally Mark Gruenwald lamented at a certain channelis once he complete what he'd done, it was the creation of the West Coast Avengers that wound up rending upwardly the 'Vast Three' founding Avengers for much a 10 - you didn't undergo Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor on the same team up together again until West Coast Avengers was a thing of the past."
Superficial indorse on the original West Coast Avengers title and its run from1984 to 1994, it seems somehow quaint that the Avengers would need a separate branch on the W Coast only 2790 some curious miles away from the Avengers Manse when the team up routinely – both then and directly – travels to satellite blank, other worlds, and foreign countries nonetheless.
"I love the West Coast Avengers but they'Re destined to be a footer in the evolution of the Avengers," explains Sam Humphries, who has written two Avengers spinoffs - the Ultimates and Avengers AI. "When John Byrne took terminated the main title, he made the rank flexible to include some Avenger in the history of the squad. When Brian Michael Bendis took over, he blew it wide open to include the entire Marvel Universe. Jonathan Hickman's era on the book was marked by flat broader horizons. With a scope like that, the concept of a second, separate team four hours away by commercial airplane seems quaint, doesn't it?"
The fact is that while West Coast Avengers was based connected the West Coast was unity of their biggest and almost recognizable selling points, it also came to be one of the keystone things that doomed information technology from returning in modern comics with its larger-than-life scale. But traveling foregone that, being the first Avengers spin-off title gave it the latitude for many distinct advantages and the landscape to do a different kind of superhero team story.
"It's the same thing that's happening like a sho with the current Avengers titles," Bob Hall, cobalt-creator and artist of the original West Coast Avengers series, told us back in 2013. "Back in the '80s, the Avengers had so many members, many of them fan-favorites, that there simply wasn't enough board to feature them dead one title. Splitting it off like we did on West Coast Avengers, it gave you a chance to see more Avengers each month."
"Likewise, while the main Avengers title at the time tended to feature Wonder's A-list heroes alike Captain America, Thor, and Iron Military personnel World Health Organization had titles of their own, West Coast Avengers were almost exclusively characters who didn't have their own titles," Hall revealed. "Editorially they were looking at to spotlight characters who couldn't quite hold their own books, but creatively information technology gave the writers a chance to tell more own stories that mattered to those characters without stepping on the toes of a separate solo championship."
Namely, Hawkeye.
"Sometimes IT was hard to secernate, but you can't have West Coast Avengers without the evolution of Hawkeye," Humphries says. "Remember, that blackguard used to Be a criminal. As an Avenger, atomic number 2 gained a righteous scope, and as the leader of the West Sea-coast Avengers, he 'grew upwardly' and became a pillar of the Avengers. Atomic number 2'll forever be a smart bum, only without Westernmost Sea-coast Avengers, you don't have him at the center of the Marvel Universes - both cinematic and otherwise."
The West Coast Avengers rubric became a wanted home non just for Hawkeye-centrical stories, but also other worthy members outside the nucleus.
"What I liked about West Coast Avengers, and I tried to continue to this approximation with the faculty of Avengers Honorary society, is that the West Coast Avengers was rather the 'damaged' Avengers: Smoothing iron Man, Hank Pym, Hawkeye, Tigra, Wonder Gentleman's gentleman…they altogether have checkered pasts and/or on-going issues," Gage tells Newsarama. "There was a real feeling that they were trying to exploit things tabu and attain some kind of redemption. I've always had an affinity for these types of characters, from my very first job in comics, Deadshot, to current projects."
By beingness an Avengers title but non 'the' Avengers entitle, West Coast Avengers also allowed for to a greater extent free-range when it came to extended runs for creators.
"There was as wel, I smel like, a greater consistence of writer, at least last a certain gunpoint - the entirety of the series was beautiful much written away three guys, Steve Englehart, John Byrne, and Roy Thomas," says Brevoort, who began working at Marvel in 1989 as an intern. "So in that respect was a greater emphasis placed along the issue-to-progeny soap Opera of the characters perhaps than was apparent in Avengers."
Indeed what storylines stick ou in retrospect? In the prehistoric few years, Marvel has collected much of the 112-issue original run of West Coast Avengers, and the entirety is available on digital platforms.
"This is just my opinion, mind you," says Brevoort, "but I think the three most unforgettable West Coast Avengers stories (separated from things like-minded Operation: Galactic Storm or other similar crossovers that intersected the series) were 'Lost in Space-time continuum,' 'Vision Quest' and the final issue and the switchover to Effect Works that unsuccessful to redefine the team and set them up as something different - which didn't quite work, but that's the way things go sometimes. I remember a caseful could also constitute made for Englehart's Ultron-12 story, but once more, that peerless is a little bit divisive among Avengers fans for the manner in which it handled the unorthodox Ultron, 'Mark.'"
'Lost In Space-Time,' which ran from issues #17 to #23, saw Englehart and veteran Marvel artist Heart of Dixie Milgrom concoct a time travel epic that transverses seven time periods in the arc's seven issues.
"People remember it for Mockingbird killing Dark Passenger, which led to a rupture betwixt her and Hawkeye, only there was other stuff passing on too, like Hank Pym struggling with suicidal thoughts and the interaction between the atheist Pym and openly religious Firebird," says Gage. "Information technology was pretty deep for the time."
The Little Jo-part 'Vision Call for' arc showed writer/artist John Byrne at the tallness of his career doing the instance story for the Avengers power couple of Vision and Scarlet Witch As their lives are lacerate obscure, presaging the events of Avengers: Disassembled, House Of M, and ace of the key pillars of Brian Michael Bendis' run on Avengers years later.
"This was a sensational storyline the merits of which are still debated by Avengers fans of the menstruum, but it definitely got hoi polloi paying attention," says Brevoort. "And Byrne at this point was calm phenomenally popular, so there was a important draw to seeing him some write and illustrate an Avengers series."
West Coast Avengers ultimately ran for 102 issues and eight annuals (with a title switch midway through its life to become Avengers Westbound Coast), at long las concluding its run in January 1994. As Brevoort alluded to, Marvel attempted to cover the spirit of the book in a non-geographical-central rubric called Military force Works but IT failed to secure a place for itself on comic shelves. It wasn't until the successful relaunch of the Avengers franchise in 2004 that a by-product title was reasoned again, this time prosperous with Powerful Avengers, New Avengers, and Dark Avengers amongst others.
Westbound Coast Avengers didn't counte in that wave of Avengers enlargement - instead, it was revived in 2018, riding a wave of California-based heroes so much as Kate Bishop, who at the time had her own Hawkeye series, and the then-past conclusion of the Schoolboyish Avengers. In the fugacious series, Bishop teamed with the some other Hawkeye, Clint Barton, who helped tie the series punt to the '80s roots.
Although that series ended after 10 issues, it redefined what West Coast Avengers could personify loss forward - not a squad of Avengers for that character of North U.S., only a team of heroes local to that area on their have accord. This is something similarly being brought rising in the topical United States of Master America series with local Caps acting as part of the 'Captains Meshing.'
But hopefully, always with a Hawkeye As part of the ledger.
West Coast, East Sea-coast, whatever… here are the world-class Avengers stories of all time.
Newsarama Senior Editor Chris Arrant has covered comic book news program for Newsarama since 2003, and has also written for United States Army Today, Life, Amusement Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Risible Shop News show, and Cosmic microwave background radiation. He is the author of the book Mod: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Squeeze' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a underestimate for the Will Eisner Comic Manufacture Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a extremity of the North American nation Depository library Association's Lifelike Original & Comics Round Table. (He/him)
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