Champions
Strange as it might seem now, the first two Avenges line-ups didn’t make much sense. The first was just a collection of Marvel’s most popular heroes, and the second was a batch of also-rans who just got recruited into the big leagues. But by 1975, the Avengers were solidified as Marvel’s flagship team, so the company tried to put together another grab back of characters. Enter, the Champions, who debuted in 1975’s The Champions #1, by Jenny Blake Isabella and Don Heck.
The original line-up was led by Hercules, who gathered together the most obvious group of LA-based heroes to fight Pluto, god of the underworld. Obviously, you need Ghost Rider, a supernatural character. But then Herc also grabs the super spy Black Widow, and former X-Men Angel and Iceman. Somehow, the team won and managed to hold a series for three more years, only to fall into obscurity, until a new, young set of Champions—led by Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan and Miles Morales—formed in the 2010s.
Defenders
Like the Champions, the Defenders were a grab bag team. Unlike the Champions, that inconsistency was a feature, not a bug. The group who started in 1971’s Marvel Feature #1, by Roy Thomas and Ross Andru, consisted of Doctor Strange, Hulk, and Namor, three guys who had nothing in common and didn’t want to be around each other. Yet, they recognized that their powers actually worked well together, and thus a “non-team” was born.
The non-team concept never made much sense, but it did allow the Defenders to keep taking on more and more unlikely members. Characters rotated in and out, welcoming Silver Surfer and Doctor Strange’s partner Clea, and eventually being led by Nighthawk of all people. The rotating cast makes for some fun deep dives, but it also makes it hard for the book to hold an audience, forever resigning the Defenders to the c-tier of superhero teams.
Alpha Flight
In the movies, the Avengers are presented as an international team, under the guidance the shadowy faces from around the world who run SHIELD. In the comics, the Avengers tend to work for the American government, despite counting non-Americans such as Black Panther and Thor as members. Thus, various other countries have their own super-teams in the Marvel Universe, including Russia’s Winter Guard and Canada’s Alpha Flight.
But Alpha Flight is more than a collection of the mightiest heroes of the Great White North. They’re inextricably tied to Department H, the government agency that participated in the Weapon X program that turned Logan into the killing machine known as Wolverine. Thus, Alpha Flight not only often has something sinister about it, but the team often intersects with mutants, having first appeared in 1979’s Uncanny X-Men #179, by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Yet, despite the sometimes nefarious nature of their bosses, Alpha Flight often makes for thrilling stories, thanks to its unusual line-up, which includes the jovial Puck, the gamma-irradiated Sasquatch, and the arrogant mutant Northstar.