And talking about things in comics that piss me off - today I found out that Daredevil is joining the New Avengers. So much for being an Avenger meaning something. Excluding the X-Men characters, the only major Marvel heroes who do not have Avenger membership now are the Silver Surfer, Nick Fury (although it's recently been revealed that he led some 1950s Avengers group, and he hangs around so much he may as well be a member), the Human Torch, Ghost Rider, and the Punisher (who is not really a hero anyway). Sorry, despite his movie success I don't count Blade as a major Marvel hero. Luke Cage, Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Spider-Woman, Nova ... they're all Avengers now... essentially if you've appeared in more than forty Marvel comics and haven't been given membership you should feel miffed (if you were something other than paper and ink, that is).
To some extent, this is an inevitability of the serial nature of the comics running up against the static nature of the Marvel Universe. The major characters at Marvel now are essentially the same major characters as there were in the 1960s. Take away the X-Men characters, and there haven't been any major Marvel characters introduced in 30 years. Things can change, only in the past five years have some of the characters introduced in the 1970s, including Cage, Spider-Woman and Ms Marvel, become cornerstones of the Marvel U. But Marvel seem to has missed their chance for generational change, and it seems that all we might get now are the shuffling around of the same basic pieces. Perhaps this is why one should stop reading comics at 20. I'll stop now before I depress myself...
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