It’s been a big decade for the Avengers. After nailing their first big movie back in 2012, they’ve gone from becoming the third most important team in the Marvel Universe after the X-Men and Fantastic Four, to essentially becoming a household name. But that’s how they’ve fared in films. How have they done in comics?
Well, if we can take out the fact that they can’t seem to stop fighting one another...pretty well, actually. The 2010s have had some of the best Avengers stories from some of the most talented scribes and incredible artists in comics. And just before the year ends, we should take a look. Avengers Assemble...the best comics of the decade!
10 SIEGE
Bendis' unique approach to the Avengers roster had both it's fans and detractors over the years. But as the MCU got in full swing, it became cool to see the original Avengers together again, and the long-time scribe for the team gave us just that.
With Norman Osborn finally cracking and launching an all-out assault on Asgard, we got to say goodbye to the 2000s era of Marvel in style. The heroes were forced to put their differences aside and come together to take down Osborn and the evils he'd unleashed once and for all, ushering in a new Heroic Age in one of the most solid, explosive Avengers events ever.
9 SECRET AVENGERS VOL. 1: SECRET HISTORIES
Secret Avengers shows us what happens when you take SHIELD off the board and make the primary intelligence agency one controlled by Steve Rogers, with key agents being both new guys and Avengers staples like War Machine, Black Widow, and Nova.
The opening volume wastes absolutely no time either, plunging our heroes right into a conspiracy featuring secret societies, ancient evils on Mars, and more. Though plunged into a world of morally gray people, they still manage to show us how heroes can be heroes no matter where they are.
8 AVENGERS VOL. 1: AVENGERS WORLD
“It was a spark that started the fire—a legend that grew in the telling. The great idea was expansion. And it started with two men. One was life. And one was death.” With these words, we rushed headlong into the era of Hickman’s Avengers. “
Avengers World took things back to the very core of the Avengers—when the team is confronted with a threat that’s too much for them, a back-up plan made by Tony and Steve results in an even larger team being formed, one perfectly equipped to deal not only with this threat but with all the ones to come. Though things in-universe would eventually go badly (for everyone), this opening volume is about as close to a classic Avengers comic as possible, a welcome return to normalcy after all the changes in the franchise during the previous decade.
7 TIME RUNS OUT
Eventually, it had to all go wrong. Hickman’s New Avengers presented the team with an impossible problem, one that required them to either destroy lives or see everything they know destroyed instead.
The Illuminati kept this problem secret for as long as it could, but the lead in to the finale of Hickman’s run, Secret War, saw time finally run out. Eight months into the future, we’re thrown into a world where each member of the Avengers has taken sides, racing against the inexorable end of all things. Do they save themselves...or their souls?
6 YOUNG AVENGERS
Allan Heinberg's rendition of a team of Avengers that were far younger and far more hormonal made for one of the best Avengers comics of the 2000s. So it's no surprise to see their revival in 2013 would do the same for the 2010s. Cool, sexy, and wonderfully queer, this book was everything a team book following a group of teenagers needed to be for the decade.
It gave us multiple adventures featuring some of the most popular new characters from the 2000s, while also further developing everyone's favorite anti-war Kid Loki. The real flaw in this book was that there wasn't more of it.
5 AVENGER: NO SURRENDER
No Surrender is something of a good-bye to the post-Hickman, pre-Jason Aaron era of the Avengers, a weird “in-between” era filled with unconventional teams and new members galore. But “No Surrender” brushes that all to the side, as the Earth finds itself stolen and turned into a battlefield by an old foe, with only a handful of members across each time of Avengers available to save the planet from being destroyed.
The stakes are as high as can be, but it never feels like things are happening to push the next big thing—it just feels like the team has been asked to handle the impossible because that’s what the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes do.
4 INFINITY
If people weren't already clued in on what the scale of Hickman's Avengers was going to be, Infinity was the comic that cemented it. An epic story on the scale of Kree-Skrull War or Operation: Galactic Storm, Infinity saw the Avengers forced up against a threat on two fronts.
First, against Thanos, his powerful generals the Black Order, and his massive army. Second, a powerful ancient race known as the Builders that seemed to have it out against the entire universe. The great triumph before the greater tragedy at the end of Hickman's run, Infinity showed us what it was to be in Avengers World.
3 NEW AVENGERS: EVERYTHING IS NEW
Al Ewing takes some of the most unlikely characters possible and creates a literal team of “new” Avengers in the aftermath of the Secret War.
This book combines elements of Hickman’s expanded Avengers team, with newer Avengers Sunspot and Cannonball working alongside classic heroes like Hawkeye and youthful teens like Wiccan and Hulkling, and pit them against beings from older incarnations of the universe itself. Big heroes, big villains, and big ideas abound, with Avengers Idea Mechanics.
2 THE ULTIMATES
Al Ewing’s version of the Ultimates was the superhero book of the future. Featuring a diverse team absurdly powerful heroes, the Ultimates had both classic and new heroes and threw the biggest threats possible at them.
It felt like the kind of comic that was “too big” for a single ongoing, as Ewing gave us everything from Galactus the Lifebringer to Eternity in chains. He even gave us a legitimate in-universe explanation for the sliding timescale. Every arc presented this team with a new, impossible challenge and they managed to solve it without it resulting in a major “event” comic...and mostly without the group fighting one another rather than the issue at hand.
1 AVENGERS: NO ROAD HOME
When all of the Greek gods of Mount Olympus find themselves wiped out by the Queen of Night, Nyx, it falls to the Avengers to get justice...and to save Nyx from bringing an eternal night to the rest of the world.
What makes this book work isn’t just that it finally gives us a “classic” Avengers story featuring a line-up of all-time classic roster members like Monica Rambeau, Hawkeye, Hercules, Scarlet Witch, and the Vision. It’s also just a beautiful celebration of all things superheroes. The last issue of this book alone is enough to place it at the top of this list, as it reminds us that superheroes aren’t about rules; they’re about flying.