5 Underrated Avengers Teams That Deserve More Love

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Across time and space, numerous underappreciated Avengers offshoots work tirelessly to fight the forces of evil and protect the innocent.

5) Great Lakes Avengers

Out of all the heroes in the Marvel Universe, the heroes who comprise the Great Lakes Avengers are easily some of the strangest. They aren’t the strongest or brightest heroes, but they try their best to help people in any way that they can. This list of D-List heroes includes the unkillable Mr. Immortal; the 2-D stretchy hero Flatman; the humongous Big Bertha; the portal-generating Doorman; and the reptilian flyer Dinah Soar. With their bizarre powers and appearances, the Great Lakes Avengers have always been a more comedic and lighthearted team of heroes. While they may not be the most popular heroes, this team of misfits and underdogs remains the Midwest’s primary defenders against powerful villains like Maelstrom, Graviton, and Fin Fang Foom.

4) Avengers 1959

Before Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and the rest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes assembled in 1963, Nick Fury created his own Avengers in 1959. The head of S.H.I.E.L.D. created this covert group to hunt down Nazi supervillains. Alongside his old war buddy Dum Dum Dugan, Fury recruited several heroes and even some villains. The members included the investigative vigilante Blonde Phantom; the former spy Dominic Fortune; the ever-living monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone; the Atlantean princess Namorita; the Nazi hunter Silver Sable; the skilled Kraven the Hunter; and the bloodthirsty mutant Sabretooth. Together, they thwarted numerous Nazi villains from establishing a new Reich, including an imposter Red Skull and Count Von Blitzkrieg. Although the team broke up after several missions, their covert work ensured that countless lives were saved and saw many Nazis pay for their crimes.

3) Avengers Unity Division

A significant critique of Marvel Comics is that the Avengers and X-Men constantly fight each other. The Avengers Unity Division sought to rectify this conundrum. After the events of Avengers VS X-Men, Captain America wanted to show the world that humans and mutants could work together peacefully by forming a team composed of Avengers and X-Men. The original lineup included Thor, Wasp, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, Wolverine, Rogue, Havok, and Sunfire. The heroes fought villains like the Red Skull and Kang the Conqueror. Over time, the roster has changed to include heroes like Deadpool, Spider-Man, and Cable, among others. The Avengers Unity Division stands as a symbol of peaceful coexistence between humanity and mutantkind and as a welcome break from the usual status quo of Avengers and X-Men hostility.

2) Multiversal Avengers

When Avenger Prime, a Loki variant from Earth-18201, landed in the strange dimension known as the God Quarry, he sought to repent for his lifetime of villainy by creating a team of Avengers to fight the demon Mephisto and the Multiversal Masters of Evil, who were out to destroy the multiverse. Avenger Prime recruited many powerful and strange alternate versions of recognizable heroes, such as a Tony Stark who became Ant-Man, a T’Challa with cosmic powers called “Star Panther,” a Thor who mastered the Iron Fist, a Phoenix Force-wielding Wolverine, and many more. The Multiversal Avengers also have entire armies of Captain Americas and Captain Marvels to help in their fight to safeguard the multiverse, making them the largest and perhaps most powerful Avengers team ever to exist.

1) Avengers 1,000,000 B.C.

Marvel’s Age of Heroes began long ago during the Stone Age when the very first superheroes assembled to battle villains like Celestials and the Multiversal Masters of Evil. The Avengers 1,000,000 B.C. is an incredibly interesting concept, as each member is the originator of some of the oldest mantles in the Marvel Universe. The team consists of a young Odin, a mutant named “Fire Hair” who’s the host of the Phoenix Force; a Mammoth-riding Ghost Rider; a caveman Moon Knight and Avatar of Khonshu; the demigod Sorcerer Supreme Agamotto; the Black Panther of the Panther Tribe; the first Iron Fist; and a hulking caveman who wields the cosmic Starbrand. These superpowered individuals laid the foundations for countless generations of heroes and ensured humanity’s long and prosperous future.

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