Lou Ferrigno will smash as Hulk whether he is animated or live-action, but Thor can only stop by for an episode or two. Spider-Man stars in a 600-episode arc about some stupid stone tablet, and Captain America maybe gets to guest star in three.
So, through the 90s, kids that did not have easy access to comic book shops had one impression of The Avengers: they are the heroes that can’t support their own shows. Tigra! The only Avenger to appear in 2019’s seminal musical film, Cats!
Why did it disappear so quickly? Likely because they based the whole thing on West Coast Avengers, a team that dropped Captain America for friggin’ Tigra. However, the basic concept was there, even if you had to wait until five years later to see the sequel series, Avengers: United They Stand, which lasted a whole thirteen weeks before fading into nothing. Were they collectively referred to as “The Avengers”? Nope! They were Force Works, which did exist in the comics of the era, but certainly not with Hawkguy. Tony Stark was clearly the lead in Iron Man, but he was joined by a number of other Marvel luminaries, like Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Nick Fury. This cleared the way for its “partner” television show (gotta have that “Marvel Action Hour” for syndication), Iron Man.
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While never as popular as Batman, Spider-Man, or The X-Men, Marvel had a moderate hit with an animated Fantastic Four series in 1994. Or, in the case of the number one reason some children of the 80s and 90s recognize any Avengers, Iron Man & his Amazing Friends. This made for a franchise that was generally good, but also often something closer to Captain America and his Amazing Friends. Dropping a literal god for a dude that can shoot arrows? Sure! Bald “Celestial Madonna” because Magneto’s daughter is on vacation this week? Why not! But, unfortunately, this led to The Avengers not being as “established” as its rival teams (you know, other gangs where you could always count on spotting a Wolverine). Why? Well, in the absence of a clear Superman or Wonder Woman, you really could slot anybody into the team. The Avengers were appealing because they seemed to have a lot more latitude than other “superhero rosters”. The Avengers comics were always there (well, “always” as in “since Stan Lee decided to slap a bunch of his most lucrative properties together”), and they were always at least moderately popular. The Avengers were consistently forgettable. And has there ever been a videogame console that didn’t host a Batman or Superman game of some kind? I’m not going to bother to do any research on this matter (the internet is all the way over there!), but it certainly feels like there was an Atari Jaguar Batman title! Point is that well before Disney decided to create its shared universe, superheroes were popular in all sorts of mediums. And Batman was able to get there because his previous projects, like the Burton films and the amazing animated series, were also grand successes. Spider-Man leaps immediately to mind, but this was also the era when DC Comics’ Batman came into his own grim popularity. And speaking of films, X-Men paved the way for other superheroes that were… also not known as Avengers.
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The “culmination” of this massive popularity was the 2000 movie that defined superhero films/Hugh Jackman for a decade. This may have just been a result of the comics being fun and plentiful, but it is more likely that the X-Men were popular because they had a hit Saturday morning cartoon (that, if memory serves, had upwards of seven episodes across seven years), multiple tie-in videogames, and more action figures than you could ever hawk at a garage sale. Ever heard of The X-Men? They were the bomb-diggity, and it is hard to convey to modern readers just how many children at the time were putting forks between their fingers and pretending to be Wolverine. To be clear, this is not to say that pre-Disney Marvel Comics didn’t have one hell of a superhero team on its hands.
Here’s a statement only 90’s kids will understand: The Avengers are the cheapest, most low-rent superheroes available.
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