How Many ‘Avengers’ Are There?

As we saw last month, big things are coming for the Avengers brand after the events of Siege. First was the Avengers title which was quickly followed up with the Secret Avengers marketing blitz. In addition to the upcoming Avengers Academy, it now looks like New Avengers will be relaunching as well. So far, Marvel has only announced three members of this team.

First up comes Spider-Man. Always reluctant to be a part of a larger team as he has seen what it has done to his personal life in the past and the sheer volume of his own personal rogue’s gallery, Spidey has been one of the most entertaining pieces of the current New Avengers lineup. With the upcoming film reboot, it isn’t much surprise that Marvel would like to try to get everyone’s favorite wall crawler as much exposure as possible.

The next member was a little more of a surprise though as Luke Cage’s mug showed up in the second New Avengers marketing piece. It looks like Luke will be pulling double duty as both a New Avenger and the leader of the upcoming Thunderbolts team. Though the premise of the Thunderbolts has been former villains looking for redemption, there is a real stretch to believe Luke would be a part of that team.

The combination of Ghost who has tried to kill Tony Stark, Crossbones who shot Steve Rogers and Moonstone who has tried to kill any Avengers she could, it seems very unrealistic to believe Luke Cage would actually opt to lead this band of misfits. The further combination of the Juggernaut and Man-Thing to the mix just adds further conclusion.

Hopefully Luke will be able to get out of there quick before all the time Bendis has spent building him up turns out to be for naught.

This morning, Marvel announced a third member to the lineup with the addition of Wolverine. It is starting to make sense why this team’s lineup has been the last to be announced as it so far hasn’t changed from the current New Avengers title. The dynamic of these non-original team members is already set up and, let’s face it, works great already. Seeing Wolverine continue his triple duty as a member of the X-Men, X-Force and an Avengers squad hasn’t run the character dry after years of doing it already and if it continues the macho big brother, geeky little brother relationship that Logan shares with Spider-Man then we are all for it.

We will be following this story closely as more information on the Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers , Avengers Academy and whatever other Avengers team Marvel can come up with becomes available.