If I Was In Charge Of Marvel's Avengers ...

Marvel's 'The Avengers' is to be relaunched (again) this year, and editor Tom Brevoort has said that the team will have an active roster of "about 18" members. But really, why stop there? Given that there are three Avengers titles at the moment, why not just throw in every cool Avenger out there?

If I were in charge of the Avengers, I'd pick, first, all the Avengers that appeared in the movie. Then I'd add in all the East Coast and West Coast Avengers that were around when I first started reading about the team back in the late '80s-early '90s (like pop musicians, comic writers tend to try and recapture the era they grew up with). I'm not adding in any characters that are supposedly currently dead though, so sorry Janet Van Dyne. Then I'd add in the "Bendis Crew" (Cage, Iron Fist, Spider Woman, Ms Marvel, Spider-Man), since they seem to up the cool quotient of the team. I'd then add in the other big guns that have been Avengers (Hulk, Namor, Doctor Strange), except Wolverine, who should be an X-Man only, and Daredevil, who I don't think works in the group. Indeed, I'm not having any X-Men on my team - they have their own set of titles. Finally I'd add a few other characters I like, with the only new member being Sabra, who I've always thought would work well in the Avengers. This gives a line-up that looks like this:

Seriously, I reckon you could sell shelfloads of graphic novels with that team. Pretty much anyone who is anyone (and not an X-Man) in the Marvel Universe is there; you could get about 15-20 spinoff titles from this. Alas, now I'm nearing 33 my chance of being the Avengers' writer, like my chance of being a rock god, seeems to have passed me by. But at least now my greatest Avengers line-up ever doesn't just exist in my head. :) (Well, actually it still does.)

P.S. It won't come as any great surprise to know that I re-watched the movie today.