WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Avengers #46, by Jason Aaron, Javier Garron, David Curiel and VC's Cory Petit, on sale now.
While the Avengers have long kept the moniker of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, this claim has repeatedly come under fire more often than usual as of late. The latest iteration of the Marvel Universe's premier superhero team resulted in several rival superhero groups forming around the world, each with their own vendetta against the Avengers for various reasons. And as the Avengers enjoy a rare moment of respite from the recent reality-shaking events of Heroes Reborn, they are ambushed in what stands as a latest in a noticeable string of temporary defeats that has shaken the Marvel Universe to its core.
While assessing the new Phoenix and Starbrand back at their team headquarters, the security system for Avengers Mountain is compromised. Iron Man launches a diagnostic to see what went wrong, joined by Gorilla-Man, completely unaware that the simian figure has secretly been a mole for the Russian superhero team the Winter Guard all along and the one who personally infected the security system with a virus. As the Winter Guard strikes the vulnerable Avengers facility, Gorilla-Man beats down the shocked Tony Stark while the Russian heroes catch the rest of the Avengers off guard, besting them before making off with She-Hulk and taking the Jade Giantess back with them to the safety of Russia's Red Room.
The moment stands as another skirmish that the Avengers have been ill-prepared for, and poised to cost them big. Recently, Phil Coulson and the Squadron Supreme of America teamed up with Mephisto to completely rewrite reality into a world where the Avengers never existed. Though several of the heroes were able regain their memories of the world as it once was and rose up to defeat the Squadron Supreme, resulting in the restoration of reality, the cataclysmic event demonstrated just how little control the Avengers actually had in the face of such powerful threats and underscored how much the team had underestimated the Squadron Supreme in the first place.
The Avengers win-loss ratio still, of course, cements their place as the Earth's Mightiest Heroes, overcoming both the Squadron Supreme and other rival superhero team the Defenders of the Deep, with the latter assembled by an increasingly petulant Namor, but one lone former Avenger and future Marvel Cinematic Universe star revealed just how vulnerable the Avengers were recently: Moon Knight. Operating under orders from the Ancient Egyptian God of Vengeance Khonshu, Moon Knight beat each of the magically empowered Avengers individually and took their power for his own to place Khonshu in power before the deity was eventually overthrown.
The Avengers always come out on top in the end, saving the day through their combined might and heroic persistence, but it does seem like the team has consistently been laid low in the opening salvo from their enemies as of late. Having just snatched a hard-fought victory from the gaping jaws of defeat against the Squadron Supreme, the Avengers are betrayed by one of their own in their own headquarters to yet another rival superhero team, that leaves them humiliated and with a prominent teammate imprisoned on the other side of the planet. And with She-Hulk already enduring a surprise transformation while under the custody of the Winter Guard, the Avengers may be too late from restoring their teammate back to normal this time.