Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The All Avengers Thread

I got to thinking (which is always dangerous), that what really bothers me the most about "Avengers Disassembled" is not that the team was destroyed from within, but that said destruction was the work of a female Avenger, the Scarlet Witch...and one of the longest-standing, most upstanding (give or take the odd misanthropic comment) female Avengers at that. ?Now, you may respond, "But she had turned evil before, when she was with the West Coast Avengers," or "But she was Magneto's daughter," or "But Doctor Doom was manipulating her the whole time." ?To which I reply:

- She was turned evil in a random, ham-fisted way, courtesy of writer/artist John Byrne, who had previously turned girl-next-door mutant Jean Grey into a planet-killer, and turned milky-wholesome matron Susan Storm-Richards into a super-dominatrix. (UPDATE: I was in my misguided "Byrne Is Evil" phase at the time I wrote this essay.)

- She was never supposed to be Magneto's daughter. ?That was a retcon of her original parentage, which held that she was the daughter of two Golden Age heroes. ?And in a delicious bit of poetic justice, that regrettable retcon was itself retconned in the several years ago, so that she is officially no longer Magneto's daughter, or even a mutant! (UPDATE: I neither know nor care what Wanda's status is in 2020.)

- The Doctor Doom thing was also an after-the-fact retcon. ?Although Marvel's Powers That Be would probably deny it today, she was quite clearly acting of her own free will when she destroyed her own team, and it was originally meant to stay that way as canon.

And while the notion of the Avengers finding out that one of their most powerful members was a potential loose cannon all along has a lot of creative potential (more on that shortly), the Avengers come off -- perhaps on purpose, perhaps not, depending on what writer Brian Bendis's true intent was -- as a bunch of nasty, callous, petty, self-absorbed backstabbers who couldn't possibly have helped the Scarlet Witch under any circumstances. ?Worse yet, Bendis commits one of the biggest sins a writer can perpetrate -- telling rather than showing. ?The Scarlet Witch's entire motivation and backstory are crammed into a blatant chunk of expository info-dump, resulting in the intended shock revelation coming off as terribly anti-climactic.

But just like there are no bad characters, only bad writers (although depending on my mood, I might classify Tigra and Psylocke as hopeless characters), there are no bad plots, either, only...et cetera. ?"Avengers Disassembled" could have been superlative IMHO, but if, and only if, the team's destruction from within had been perpetrated by a male Avenger.

Note that I did not say "any male Avenger" but "*a* male Avenger." ?To whom am I referring? ?Let's run down the list of possibilities:

- Iron Man? ?No, he took out his self-loathing out on himself by pouring too much booze down his gullet. ?Besides, turning Tony into a villain is fraught with peril (Exhibit A: "The Crossing.")

- Hank Pym? ?No, he took out his self-loathing on his wife, the jerk. ?And before you raise an objection, consider that the hints and signs had been there all along since the Roy Thomas Avengers era (some might even argue the Stan Lee Avengers era.)

- Captain America? ?Don't make me laugh. ?That's almost as ridiculous as the idea of Steve being a Nazi. ?(Oh, hang on a minute...no, that was wiped out just as quickly as Marvel initially flaunted it.)

- Hawkeye? ?Well, he's been so unrecognizable since the first time that Bendis wrote him that he might as well be a villain now as far as I'm concerned (did I mention that I also hate Jeremy Renner's portrayal of him?) ?But Hawkeye turning evil and destroying his team from within lacks a certain grandeur that the Avengers final battle must have.

- Wonder Man? ?Nah, an ion-powered Evil Pseudo-Superman would be too much like the overrated Nefaria Trilogy. ?No reason to be redundant.

- Vision? ?Um...it's already sort of been done. ?Roger Stern's near-perfectly-written Vision story arc had the once-stalwart synthizoid nearly conquering the world via computer. ?Again, no reason to be redundant.

Nope, if any male Avenger should have Disassembled the Avengers, it's that certain founding member with the hunky build, the great hair, and the trusty hammer, that card-carrying member of the mythological Gods: THOR!

First of all, it has a perfect circularity to it: just as Loki accidentally created the Avengers, so his half-brother Thor un-creates the Avengers.

Second of all, an evil berserker Thor would effin' kick ass! ?A God gone bad, taking out his frustrations on us mere mortals? ?I'd be the first in line to buy that.

Third of all, even though Marvel's Thor has traditionally been painted with broad strokes as an impossibly noble sort, the characters in the actual Norse myths are a mean, savage bunch. ?For continuity buffs, we could say that Thor had been bottling it all up for centuries as the mortals' plane evolved into a so-called civilization with a corrupt underside. ?Thor eventually gets so frustrated that HE turns out to the one who triggers Ragnarok. ?Plausible? ?Check! ?Seamless? ?Check!

Fourth of all, instead of attacking passive-aggressively with random reality distortions while hiding in plain sight, like the Scarlet Witch did, Thor would mount a battle-lusting frontal assault that the right kind of artist could turn into a vast panorama of balletic violence with a cast of thousands. ?Plus, plenty of mythological intrigue as the denizens of the world's pantheons are forced to choose sides. ?Are you with Thor or against him? ?It's worth it just to see how Thor's sometime friend Hercules might react (if and when Herc is written right, of course.)

And finally, this scenario has exactly the sort of larger-than-life grandeur befitting the Avengers. ?Also, as a founding Avenger who has rarely been absent from the team for any extended period of time, he has near-inconceivable six-degrees-of-separation value, which would provide a plausible reason for everyone who was ever an Avenger to assemble for what could very well be the last time.

As an addendum, I feel I have to add that making the Avenger responsible for the team's self-destruction an actual God renders the whole gender issue moot. ?If there is a moral to this scenario, it's that Gods, now matter how they identify, should not step down from their lofty citadels to mingle with mortals, as it could have disastrous consequences for all concerned.

(UPDATE: I didn't read the 2019 War of the Realms event, but from spoilers I've seen, it makes me wonder if Jason Aaron might have read the original version of this essay.)

That was a good read, thanks Fickles.

I recall Thor being asked to apologise for his attitude to reporters (sorry, I think it was the Busiek/ Perez run), and him going off in a mega huff over it. It was a tiny intrusion of reality into their lives. If it had been in place from the start, Thor would have stropped off along with the Hulk after #1.

I've not read any Thor comics, so I've no idea how they've addressed having a god from a pantheon that actually exists and how that impacts the cultures that they were the gods over.

I like the idea that it's Thor who disassembles the Avengers. It would make a cracking story for someone to play with (hint )

I picked up Disassembled at the time. After the reaction to the visceral violence had settled down, I just watched with mild horror (and not in a good way).

There was an element of Ellis setting up his Authority team about it. The writer has a new team to put in place. He knows the main plot point to get there. But with the mind firmly on the things to come, and the setups needed for it, there's a casual disregard for anything else.

With the regular, desperate chop and change with characters as writers appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, it's unfair on the characters. Writer A arrives and goes down the tired old trope of picking out characters for abuse (sorry character growth). Writer A lasts all of 6 months on the book, leaving Writer B with a broken character saddled with the luggage of Writer A's ham fisted smashing of whatever few things made them stand out.

Off the top of my head, I'd have a story start with someone realising that they'd *all* been brainwashed, had their family killed, betrayed the team and had little in the way of depth to their lives. That would lead to the growing suspicion that something, over the decades, was behind all of this. It would be a clearing the air for them all. Pick out the best bits of them and move on into a new set up with some mandates that Jean doesn't have to die, Wanda doesn't have to be evil, Hank doesn't always involve himself in domestic abuse and Susan doesn't have a thing for S&M gear. It's sad seeing reboots/ versions pick out the same points each time. Mind you, when DC tried this with Crisis, it was five minutes after Byrne's Supes relaunch that we had another Supergirl and Titano. In the end, there was nothing that couldn't have been done with the Pre Crisis Superman.

Thor actually did do that in What If v.1 issue 3, which is one of the best Avengers stories of all time, alternate timeline or not.

And having said *that,* I'd still recommend reading Walter Simonson's writer/artist run on Thor. He dealt with the Asgard/Earth dichotomy better than most creators.

An interesting perspective that provides a lot of food for thought. Thanks for chiming in, Stile.

What bothers me, rather than disturbs me, about Wanda being the Disassembler is that it almost always seems to be a woman who loses control of the great power being wielded. I'm not saying it should always be a man instead, I'm saying there should be an equal ratio.

I agree that Wanda's breakdown could have made for a compelling story if executed right, but Bendis (and Loeb and Millar, who appear to have ghosted portions of the story) really messed up on the follow-through.

I haven't read the scene you describe at the end of your post, and now I'm curious about it. What's the exact series title and issue number?

- Hawkeye? ?Well, he's been so unrecognizable since the first time that Bendis wrote him that he might as well be a villain now as far as I'm concerned (did I mention that I also hate Jeremy Renner's portrayal of him?) ?But Hawkeye turning evil and destroying his team from within lacks a certain grandeur that the Avengers final battle must have.

It's hard for me to imagine Thor being the instigator behind an alternate Disassembled. Marvel's Thor is synonomous with selfless nobility. He's also an immortal and has seen so much trauma and upheaval over (apparent) millennia, that it's hard to see him manifest PTSD or whatever mental issues that might suddenly set a mortal hero off.

For Thor to work in the role for me, I think it would have to be Jason Aaron's "King" Thor from the far-off future. This version of Thor has truly lost everything, from what little I've seen of him. Maybe if he somehow felt stopping the Avengers at a certain point in their history would help him avoid such a lonely fate, then it would work for me?

Otherwise, a contemporary Thor going 'round the bend would be a hard sell for me. Maybe with years of groundwork before it actually happened? Very unlikely in the event-driven landscape of the modern Big Two.

Which brings me to Stile's point about Quicksliver, Scarlet Witch, and "Captain AmeriKKKa" -- Stile, if you want to consider Secret Empire canon, I'm not going to try to change your mind. But I hope you'll appreciate that even *without* my considering it canon, it has nonetheless PERMANENTLY damaged my view of Steve Rogers. IRREVERSIBLY. Even the recent Captain America: The End by Erik Larsen, which was a splendid reaffirmation of all that was best about the Pre-SE Steve, would have resonated a lot more had it been published *before* Secret Empire. Sorry, Steve fans, but these days, all I keep thinking about is how much I'd love to see the DCU's Uncle Sam beat the ____ out of Captain America.

On a more positive note, Stile, I'm grateful you took the time to find that 2012 Avengers story and post the relevant pages. That sequence is something of a lost gem, and I agree that Frank Cho did an excellent job on the art.

Thor turning against the team in a long-simmering fit of godly pique, could be interesting. At some climactic point, perhaps after striking Captain America down, Mjolnir could drop from his hand and sort of provide a heads-up to how far he's fallen...

Completely agree on the No More Mutants. Other than the giant scorecard of them they couldn't do without.