Comic Book / Mighty Avengers

The Mighty Avengers is a comic book focused on The Avengers. It has something of a Non-Indicative Name (the group did not call itself "The Mighty Avengers", but simply "The Avengers"). It was not the only team claiming to be the Avengers at the time.

The comic book began in the aftermath of Civil War (2006), and it was composed of the Avengers that supported the Registration act. They fought against Ultron, an army of Venoms, Doctor Doom, and on occasion, their fellow Avengers. This team was disbanded after the Secret Invasion (2008) and the beginning of the Dark Reign. The New Avengers were around as well, running away from the law.

After Secret Invasion, the title underwent a revamp, going from being written by Brian Bendis to Dan Slott, and venturing into more "traditional" super-hero fare. This team was led by Henry Pym. The New Avengers were still on the loose and the new government sponsored Avengers were the Dark Avengers, Pym's team had an international approach instead, forming in the wake of an international magical crisis. They lasted until the end of the series, where they disbanded. The series altogether lasted for 36 issues (May, 2007-June, 2010)

The second volume, written by Al Ewing, revolved around an entirely new team formed during Infinity, and lead by Luke Cage and it included among its cast Monica Rambeau, White Tiger (Ava Ayala), Power Man (Victor Alvarez), The Falcon, and She-Hulk. During AXIS it was relaunched and rebranded into Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, though it still contained the same characters and plot as before. The title lasted only ten issues before being softly cancelled in the build-up to Secret Wars. During Secret Wars, Ewing wrote a two issue mini-series, Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders, which had similar characters and themes. Ewing has since brought Blue Marvel and Monica Rambeau over to the Ultimates series, while White Tiger and Power Man reappeared in New Avengers.

Issue #1 - #20

Tropes used by the first team (2007-2008) include

• Amicable Exes: Wasp and Hank Pym are not this, after several years of getting along just fine. Justified by how it's a Skrull posing as Hank who naturally doesn't want Janet getting closer and maybe figuring out the truth.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Secret Invasion (2008) tie-in issues focus on the Skrulls infiltration efforts, along with Nick Fury gathering the Secret Warriors, along with how Elektra was captured by the Skrulls.
• Art Shift: The scenes of Dr. Doom in The Middle Ages with Morgan Lefay were intended to resemble paintings. The scenes set in the time-travel to The Silver Age of Comic Books resemble the coloration by points used at that time.
• Artistic License – Law / Artistic License – Military: The Avengers invade Latveria and arrest Doctor Doom, using S.H.I.E.L.D. resources and personel, on the basis that a weapon he made infected people with symbiotes, which is admittedly illegal, and it is Doctor Doom, but they still launch an attack on an entire nation just to capture one man.
• Badass Normal: Elektra, naturally. The first Super-Skrull sent to replace her doesn't succeed. Or the second, or the third. It takes the fourth using invisibility to get the drop on her.
• Because I Said So: Ms. Marvel, leader of the Avengers, doesn't want Spider-Woman on the team, or at least have a vote. But no. Spider-Woman is incorporated into the Avengers because Tony Stark, head honcho of S.H.I.E.L.D., says so.
• Berserk Button: Don't hurt Lindy Lee, or the Sentry will kill you.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Wasp (brunette), Ms. Marvel (blonde), and Black Widow (red).
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Skrull infiltrators see being replaced / killed by them as an honor.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Fury deals with the Skrull that replaced Valentina de Fontaine.
• Butt-Monkey: Hank Pym, Hank Pym, Hank Pym. None of the Avengers treat him with respect, the Skrulls aren't convinced he's worth replacing with an infiltrator, and his replacements keep on getting their suggestions shot down just because they're coming from Hank Pym.
• Call-Back: The panel where Elektra examines the dead Super-Skrull is a mirror of the shot where her eventual replacement's disguise is revealed.
• Came Back Wrong: Averted. When Tony Stark wakes up in the hospital, and is told that Ultron had temporarily turned him into a woman, the first thing he does is to raise the sheet and check below. They tell him that everything's fine.
• Cassandra Truth: One of the Skrulls replacing Hank Pym, having access to Pym's intellect and memories, realizes that their secret invasion isn't going to work. He tries to tell this to his superiors, but they refuse to listen, and have him killed and replaced for his trouble.
• Civvie Spandex: Wonder Man's initial outfit is just plain-clothes, until Wasp insists he wear an actual outfit.
• Composite Character: When discussing the line-up of the Avengers team, Tony Stark agreed that they needed "a Thor" (that is, a mighty god), and "a Wolverine" (that is, an Ax-Crazy Token Evil Teammate). They chose Ares, who is both things.
• Continuity Nod: While looking through a database on Symbiotes, Iron Man notices Wolverine's had an encounter with one.
• Crazy-Prepared: Nick Fury, who spent years gathering information on individuals with super-powers that only he knew about. It comes in handy with an impending Skrull invasion.
  • He also warns Maria Hill to be this as well.
• Defiant to the End: Yo-Yo Rodriguez, thinking she's about to be killed by Viper, tells her she's fat. Turns out it's just Nick Fury testing her.
• Did Not Think This Through: Really, Ultron, what did you expect would happen when you killed Lindy Lee?
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Nick Fury outright tortures his Caterpillars to get them combat ready. Quake mentions he did the same to her.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Khn'r, the imitator of Mar-Vell, manages to take out a lot of the Skrull fleet before falling to Earth. The fight takes up all of issue 19.
• Gender Bender:
  • Ultron "hacks" Tony Stark's body via the Extremis in his system and uses it as his own body... and turns it into a female body in the process. The body of the Wasp, to be precise. In other words, the subsequent fight involves a female superhero (the Wasp) having to fight a naked woman that looks exactly like her and is simultaneously a male human turned into a female cyborg and a male robot in a female body.
  • Hank Pym's first replacement is a female Skrull.
• Get Back to the Future: When Iron Man, Doom and the Sentry are sent back in time a few years, Stark notes that he and Doom can't recreate the time machine they built when they were sent back to the Arthurian era as their armour designs have changed since then. However, he realises that the mass-memory-wipe the Sentry subjected the world to means that he can infiltrate the Baxter Building and steal the FF's time machine, as nobody will remember anything he did now in a manner that would change the future.
• Heart Symbol: For Ares, when the Black Widow takes the Helm
• Hypocrite: Citri Noll, the Skrull that abducts Hank Pym, lambasts him as arrogant for believing the Skrulls will lose their next invasion attempt. This despite the Skrulls being arrogant enough to think that this time they'll definitely conquer Earth. Which they don't.
• Jerkass Gods: Ares is a loud-mouthed, obnoxious sexist ass. He is also Awesome.
• Kill and Replace: Has been happening for some time with Hank Pym's Skrull replacements, who as part of their disguse assume his low self-esteem and become (rightly, as it turns out) convinced the invasion will fail. So their superiors kill them.
• Kill It with Fire: How Elektra deals with the first Super-Skrull that comes after her, after already having run her through with a sword.
• Legacy Character: Some of Nick Fury's Caterpillars, like Sebastian Druid, are the children of other Marvel characters. Others, like Daisy Johnson, are the children of super-villains.
• Mildly Military: S.H.I.E.L.D. is an intelligence / law-enforcement agency run by a man with little to no experience with either, save the time he was the American Secretary of Defense.
• The Mole: Jarvis and Spider-Woman.
• Monochrome Casting: Every member of the team is Caucasian. Except the Skrull Queen, but she's disguised herself as a white woman.
• More Dakka: Black Widow's role on the team.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The new Avengers team defeats Ultron, sure, but it manages to download itself into space, where it will eventually meet the Phalanx, and take over the Kree Empire.
• No One Could Survive That!: Carol takes a nuke to the face because of Ultron. She lives, thanks to her energy absorbing powers.
• Nuke 'em: Ultron's plan B is to kill everything on Earth with nukes.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Once again for Hank Pym. Even the freaking Skrulls, who are planning to kill off all of Earth's heroes and take over the planet, give his Skrull imitators short-shrift for replacing a "wife-beater".
• Only in It for the Money:
  • How Iron Man convinces Ares to join the team.
  • How J.T. James is convinced to join Fury's outfit.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Doctor Doom throws a very uncharacteristic temper tantrum while he holds most of the team captive. Ms. Marvel gets the worst of it, as he calls her (among other, more vicious things) "a fat piece of furniture [he] may need for trade".
• Parental Neglect: Ares isn't exactly the world's greatest dad, and he even admits it. Of course, his dad Zeus was worse.
• Properly Paranoid: After learning about the Skrull infiltration, Tony Stark checks all the people around with his armor: Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, the Wasp, Spider-Woman, Black Widow, Jarvis, Ares, the Sentry... he's dead sure that someone among them is a Skrull, capable of eluding detection, just as the armor confirms everyone's identity. The Skrulls were Spider-Woman and Jarvis.
• Sex with the Ex: Wasp thinks Hank is looking for this when he isn't. He's not even Hank, he's a Skrull.
• Shooting Superman: In a flashback, some of the Void's goons try to shoot the Sentry. The Void mocks them for it.
• Shout-Out:
  • Iron Man convinces Doctor Doom not to kill him and the Sentry by using Planet of the Apes as an example of what could happen if they stay. Doom reluctantly agrees.
  • While in disguise, Nick Fury disguises himself as Nick Fury. That is, Ultimate Nick Fury.
• Skewed Priorities: As the world's weather goes nuts and giant monsters are rampaging around New York, Wasp complains about her hair, and the fact that they're destroying her favorite stores, and when Ultron begins its plans to kill all life on Earth, she complains about the damage her reputation is going to suffer.
• Suicide Attack: Some Skrulls, in a flashback, have a plan that seems to consist entirely of flying a spaceship straight at the Baxter Building in broad daylight. The Sentry foils this plan.
• Take That!: Wonder Man is introduced trying to get a part somewhere on TV, but the only things on offer are trashy reality TV shows. Ms. Marvel chimes in with her opinion that "TV sucks anyway".
• Taking You with Me: Doctor Doom threatens to do this, but Iron Man shoots the idea down.
  Doctor Doom: It's amazing to me that you think I wouldn't kill myself if I knew it would take you with me.
  Iron Man: You wouldn't. You love yourself too much.
  Doctor Doom: Well observed.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Skrull that tries to fool Nick Fury, and doesn't bother taking even the most basic precautions to make sure she's not found out.
• Training from Hell: Black Widow's idea of training recruits is to beat them into the ground. Then she hits them some more. Iron Man thinks it's her means of venting anger at being Reassigned to Antarctica.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: The Black Widow's reaction when she realizes that, in the absence of Tony Stark and Maria Hill, she is in change of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hellicarrier.
• Unstoppable Rage: The Sentry, in regards to Ultron when it kills Lindy Lee (briefly).
• What the Hell, Hero?: Hank Pym has this to say to Tony after Secret Invasion (2008), and Janet's death.
• Wicked Cultured: Doctor Doom, as shown when he and Iron Man are debating whether they should interact with the Reed Richards of the past.
  Iron Man: I'd hate to be wrong and we get back home and the apes have taken over because of something we said or did here.
  Doctor Doom: I don't disagree.
  Iron Man: [thinking] Doctor Doom has seen "Planet of the Apes"? That is hard to picture.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Wonder Man spends most of his time on the team getting sent flying.
  • Ares had no role on the team except to get pummeled by whomever they were fighting until another character could step in.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: How Paigon, the Skrull that replaced Elektra, got control of the Hand.

Issue #21 - #36

Tropes used by the second team (2009-2010) include

• And the Adventure Continues: By the time of the last adventure, the team has disbanded. Still, they all met by their own means at Asgard during the Siege, and Pym led them into the battle for one last time...
• Call-Back
  • The first lineup is a reference to the The Avengers (Lee & Kirby). Iron Man, Hulk and Pym, are included. Iron Man and Hulk only stick around for their first fight, because the former was on the run from Norman Osborn at the time and the latter just wanted to be alone, mirroring how the Hulk left the team early on. Pym does not become a giant for fights anymore, but Stature fills that role. The Wasp is dead, but we have Jocasta, a robot with her mind. Captain America is dead, but we have his Guy Gardner version. Thor has his own problems, but we have another god, Hercules. And even a teenage sidekick, Amadeus Cho. And Jarvis, who shall never be absent from the Avengers. And the team was united by Loki. Iron Man even notes the similarities when he gets Hercules and U.S. Agent to help him with Chthon:
  A supersoldier. A god. These are all the Avengers I need.
  • A Chinese super hero group met the exiled Inhuman king, order him to surrender... and he kills them all in a single stroke. The USAgent declares that he "Alpha Flight'd" them. Alpha Flight was defeated in a similar way by Xorn, a few years before in New Avengers. As a bonus, John was in the Omega Flight before joining the Avengers.
  • Dan Slott's run begins exactly like Kurt Busiek and George Pérez's run: with a vision of the statues of the founding members of the Avengers. Of course, the statues were standing in all their glory back then, and now they're a ruin (as the mansion was abandoned), but it's the same statue.
• Devolution Device: The Xerogen Crystals, which turn human beings into Alpha-Primitives (savage subhumans, servants of the Inhumans).
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Loki, the God of mischief and lies, does not like very much to be defeated by a puny human. But Pym is not a mere human, he's the Scientist Supreme.
• Fighting a Shadow: Stature's first reaction is to attack the Scarlet Witch, the woman who murdered her father. It's useless, as it's just an astral projection.
• Forceful Kiss: Ronin realizes that the Scarlet Witch is an impostor by stealing a kiss from her, her lips aren't the same. He's lucky that, at least, Loki was a woman at that point.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: An interesting twist. Quicksilver is attacked by the jerkass U.S. Agent, who has been turned into a savage subhuman. He tells him something that gets to him through the devolution process: that, if they don't attack the giant man, "the reds will win!".
• Karmic Jackpot: Henry Pym creates flesh arms and legs for Jocasta, so she can feel things like humans do. Jocasta gets very angry with Pym later, and gives him a megaton punch, with her flesh arms. If she still had mechanical arms, she would have broken his head.
• Legacy Character Henry Pym with his new identity, the Wasp.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: The Scarlet Witch is not really the Scarlet Witch. Henry Pym is Earth's scientist supreme, and couldn't be fooled for long. Ronin also discovered it. How? Let's keep that a secret. He points out that if Mockingbird ever finds out that detail, she would stuff her combat staffs into his parts where the sun does not shine.
• Manly Man: The Colective Man, with the strength of all the Chinese people combined, breaks U.S. Agent's shield with a single punch. That's the strength of a united nation, so different to the US, where everyone minds his own business! The U.S. Agent strikes back: in America a single man, the right man, can make the difference! One of the women present asks them to stop fighting, or she'll drown under so much testosterone.
• Missed the Call: Captain America (Bucky) couldn't be used for the team because he was killed during the initial crisis. So, the role is given to the closest thing available: U.S. Agent.
• Mundane Utility: The Avengers use the infinite mansion and their portals to fight evil anywhere on Earth. Jarvis uses it to buy the most refined food from each country.
• Not So Stoic: The Vision is pure logic, he sees a "wave" turn people into stone, and is simply intrigued by the phenomenon. It takes much more than that to get an emotional response or a Big "NO!" from him. Something like the return of the Scarlet Witch, perhaps? Yep. That'll do it.
• One-Steve Limit: There are three groups around claiming to be the Avengers: this group, the New Avengers and the Dark Avengers. Pym point out to the press that, according to the internal statutes of the Avengers, the "real" Avengers are his group, as he's the only founding member in any of them.
• Portal Network: The new Avengers mansion, located in another dimension, has Portal doors to anywhere on Earth.
• Refusal of the Call: Hulk and Iron Man were summoned onto the team, but left once Mordred was defeated.
• Refused by the Call: Loki never intended Stature to join the group (she considers her a Tag Along Kid for the Vision), much less Quicksilver (who invited himself). Both have very strong feelings towards the Scarlet Witch: Quicksilver wants to recover his sister, and Stature wants to kill the murderer of her father.
• Speak of the Devil: The Inhuman king who must not be named... not even in flashbacks.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Do not tell the Scientist Supreme that he can't do anything against magic. Magic is simply science that has not been mastered yet... and he has no problem into mastering an unknown science for the first time. He can even capture Loki, using science.
• Superhero Sobriquets: Henry Pym was appointed "Scientist Supreme" by Eternity; just as Dr. Strange is the "Sorcerer Supreme".
• Teen Genius: Amadeus Cho.
• This Is Reality: Played for laughs when Hank snaps at Stature blundering into things by saying "this is not a John Hughes movie where the kids know everything and the adults are all idiots." Stature just asks who John Hughes is.
• Un-person: The Unspoken, former king of Attilan. He has been completely erased from Inhuman history, and his very name is strictly forbidden. Even when it's said, it's covered up by a black box.
• Unreliable Narrator: Loki. What else needs to be said? It's Loki.
• Words Do Not Make The Magic: Inverted. Words do make the magic, and the powerful Mordred is defeated simply by disrupting his ability to talk. No magic words = no enchantments. Just by losing that ability, a global threat is reduced to a helpless school bully. Similarly, once Amadeus Cho tunes up the Ant-Man helmet to disrupt other people's ability to talk, Pym manages to futz up Chthon's spellcasting by making him, in Quicksilver's body, babble nonsense instead of reciting enchantments.

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