WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, in theaters now.
In a film that had a lot of great moments designed specifically for longtime fans of the Avengers, perhaps the most notable reference for fans was when the army of heroes came together for the final battle against Thanos and his forces and Captain America shouted the iconic Avengers battle cry, "Avengers Assemble!"
It is interesting to see just when Captain America first shouted the line out and when, precisely, it became such an iconic catch phrase (it happened bizarrely quickly).
If you have been following the feature "From a Different Point of View" at CBR, you have likely learned that the early days of the Avengers was fairly disorganized when it came to their battles. The whole initial concept of the Avengers was that they were individual heroes (plus one duo in Ant-Man and the Wasp) who were suddenly forced to work together as team.
However, they still tended to act like solo heroes during their fights. Like in Avengers #5 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Paul Reinman), the Avengers show up at a dangerous scene and Iron Man announces that he's going to check it out by himself...
Later, in Avengers #9 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Dick Ayers), once more Iron Man can't wait for the rest of the team and just flies right into an obvious trap...
Part of this comes from the fact that the Avengers clearly didn't trust each other in the early issues. In a fight between the Avengers and Namor in Avengers #4 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and George Roussos), Captain America is thrown into the water at one point and when he doesn't come right back to the fight, his fellow heroes automatically assume that he is slacking off and they are sort of correct, as he has decided he wants to see how they work in battle without him...
Cap only gets involved when Rick Jones is in danger...
The other heroes didn't miss that Cap only got involved when Rick was in trouble...
In the next issue, Iron Man assumes that Giant-Man has just ditched him during a fight...
Part of the problem was also the fact that Thor was so powerful that he often would simply end the threat himself at the end (often with a power that we didn't know he had until he demonstrated it), like he did in Avengers #7 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Chic Stone)...
It is hard to work together as a team when one member is so much more powerful than the others.
It all came to a head in Avengers #10 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Dick Ayers), when the villainous Immortus has turned the Avengers against each other through deceit (tricking Captain America into believing that the Avengers had allowed Immortus to kidnap Rick Jones). The Masters of Evil then attack the Captain America-less Avengers and appear ready to defeat the heroes when Captain America shows up to reunite with his teammates and the combined team is able to overcome the villains. As a commemoration of the team being together again, Thor shouts "Avengers Assemble!"...
And so a catch phrase was born!
Or was it?
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Interestingly enough, it seems clear that when Stan Lee first used the phrase, it was not necessarily intended to be the new battle cry for the team. It was more of a specific usage that fit that particular moment in time (when the team had been torn apart and thus they were dramatically assembling back together).
Thus, when Captain America leads the team in a battle cry in Avengers #11 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Chic Stone), it is the decidedly less impressive "Avengers Away!"...
The following issue (by Lee, Heck and Ayers) sees Iron Man pulling his comrades together to exclaim "Avengers...Attack!"
It appears evident that Lee was getting a kick out of the alliteration involved in the phrases. After all, this was the man who coined the names Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Reed Richards and Matt Murdock, so of course the Avengers assemble, attack and...away.
Avengers #14 had fill-in scripters Paul Laiken and Larry Lieber (to go with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and Dick Ayers) and they came up with the most unusual battle cry of this era, with Thor shouting, "Fight, Avengers! To the death!!"
However, later in the issue, Laiken and Lieber also establish that "Avengers Assemble!" has, in fact, become the team's official battle cry...
It is then shouted by Giant-Man in Avengers #15 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Mike Esposito)...
It is clear that it is now an accepted part of the series by this point. The interesting thing that you might have noticed, though, is that we have not actually seen Captain America shout the phrase. Thor and Giant-Man have used it, but not the guy who is most associated with the battle cry.
That changed in the historic Avengers #16, which was also the (brief) return of original Avengers plotter and penciler, Jack Kirby, to the series (along with Stan Lee and inker Dick Ayers).
The iconic cover features Captain America shouting the phrase as we learn that the Avengers will be making a momentous roster change in this issue...
Captain America is actually missing for most of the issue (he and Rick Jones had traveled to South America in the previous issue, where he had finally avenged Bucky's death by killing Baron Zemo. Not on purpose, of course, but still, Zemo was killed in battle with Cap). While he is gone, the Avengers re-shape the roster, with Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man and Wasp stepping down and adding Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver to replace them. When Captain America arrives, they inform him that he is the only member left behind and that he will be the official team leader.
As Iron Man walks away from the press conference announcing the new team, he notes how much he will miss the phrase "Avengers Assemble"...
This is something that Lee and Kirby excelled at back in the early days of the Marvel Universe. They made new ideas seem like they were classic ones. For instance, when Zemo was introduced in Avengers #6, he also appeared in an issue of Sgt. Fury in the same month, giving him a feel of a villain who was well established despite only just now debuting.
Along those same lines, despite only showing up in Avengers #10, by the end of Avengers #16, the phrase "Avengers Assemble" is now so famous that even the general citizens of the Marvel Universe are familiar with it to the point where they look forward to Captain America shouting it, which was actually the first time that he ever used it in a comic book....
It has been an iconic part of the Avengers ever since, with Captain America being the hero most associated with the battle cry.