Marvel’s Avengers have frequently been positioned as Marvel’s all-star team, pulling the greatest heroes from across the company’s pantheon of characters into one elite fighting unit. But as revealed by former Avengers editor Tom Brevoort (now in charge of the X-Men titles), there’s only room enough for one X-Man at the Avengers table.
This logic was revealed when a fan asked about the possibility of Phoenix joining the Avengers or another non-X-Men team given her power, popularity, and well – lack of really a presence outside the X-Men corner of comics. In his response, Brevoort – who is also Marvel’s executive editor – revealed his reasoning why.
“I think that could be interesting depending on the circumstances, Iron. But as we’re doing that already with Storm, I don’t think it makes sense to double-dip at the same time,” writes Brevoort on his Substack newsletter.
In August’s Avengers #17, the team will recruit Storm (a brief member previously) to become a core member of the team. This comes as the new X-Men relaunch ‘From the Ashes’ doesn’t include Storm in any of its three major teams, while relaunching her solo series.
Looking back, the last time an X-Men character joined the Avengers was in 2012 when Cannonball and Sunspot joined the Jonathan Hickman-era Avengers team. The most notable X-Men recruitment drive for the Avengers was in 2005 when Wolverine joined the team – a stint that lasted several years.
For those that are thinking about Scarlet Witch (who debuted in the X-Men books), she is classified internally at Marvel as an Avengers character. Just as Mystique and Rogue, for example, are X-Men characters despite debuting in Avengers-related books.
Outside the main Avengers team, during Brevoort’s time as Avengers editor the company launched a hybrid X-men/Avengers team dubbed ‘Uncanny Avengers.’ In an earlier newsletter, he explained that while it was a hybrid team, it was seen internally as more of an Avengers book than an X-Men book.
“Up until the present time, Cian, I have edited every issue of Uncanny Avengers that we’ve published, with the exception of, I think, one Annual. So it’s always been a book that’s lived on the Avengers side of the street despite its obvious connections to the world of X,” writes Brevoort. “And were we to do another iteration, I would expect that to be the case again. Why? Because that’s the way I built it. But it’s always been done with the cooperation of the X-Office.”
Then X-Men group editor Jordan D. White has revealed that the group editor of the Avengers or X-Men has say in if a character can be ‘loaned out’ to another group editor’s book, bringing up an example of Namor. Namor was introduced to be a part of Hickman’s X-Men books but, according to White, was later removed from play by the X-Men books due to plans for the character in the Avengers book.
Long story short, this means that Marvel’s feelings are that there’s generally only one ‘chair’ at the Avengers table for the X-Men at a time, and for the time being, it’s for Storm – not Phoenix, not Wolverine, and not Doop (OK, I threw that last one in there). As they say, plans could change – but right now this is the plan.
Keep up to date on Popverse’s Marvel coverage, with these highlights: Disney CEO Bob Iger is promising Deadpool & Wolverine will be MCU’s biggest movie “in a long time”, how Marvel Studios is now working “much more closely” to sell Marvel comics, how Marvel Comics’ boss said it was lost in 2023 (and how its finding itself again), Inside Marvel Comics’ plans to fix its pricing issues, Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel’s X-Men can’t evolve past their ’90s commercial peak, and the biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios’ movies & TV shows.
Marvel’s Avengers have frequently been positioned as Marvel’s all-star team, pulling the greatest heroes from across th… Read More