The Avengers

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About

The Avengers is a team of Marvel Comics superheroes created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, which originally consisted of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and Wasp. Throughout the course of the comic book series, many other superheroes have joined and left the team. In 2012, The Avengers saw a major resurgence in popularity following the release of a live-action film adaptation directed by Joss Whedon.

History

The Avengers made their debut in the comic The Avengers #1 published in September of 1963. The first volume of the series ran until September of 1996. Volume 2 was released in November of that year, culminating in November of 1997. The third volume was launched by writer Kurt Busiek and penciler George Perez in February of 1998, which ran until August of 2004. The fourth volume of the series debuted in July of 2010 and ended in January of 2013. The team has also been featured in several animated series, including The Avengers: United They Stand, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Marvel's Avengers Assemble, as well as the animated films Ultimate Avengers, Ultimate Avengers 2 and Next Avengers.

Live-Action Film Adaptation

On April 11th, 2012, the live-action film Marvel's The Avengers^[10] premiered, which features the superheroes Iron Man (played by Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (played by Chris Evans), Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson), The Hulk (played by Mark Ruffalo), Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner) and Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who battle against the villain Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) to save Earth.

The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, with many citing its accuracy to the comic book source material. The film set a box office record for the biggest opening weekend in North America and was the fastest film to gross $1 billion worldwide. With a worldwide total gross of over $1.46 billion, Marvel's The Avengers ranks as the third highest-grossing film of all time, following James Cameron's 2009 science fiction film Avatar and 1997 disaster film Titanic.^[1] A sequel to be written and directed by Whedon is scheduled for release on May 1st, 2015.^[2] The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes^[3] ranks the film with a 92% approval rating.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

The release date for the sequel of the the critically acclaimed and economically successful movie was announced to be May 1, 2015.^[4] In San Diego Comic Con 2013, at the end of the Marvel Studios panel in Hall H, the title for the film was unexpectedly announced by director Joss Whedon to be "Marvel's The Avengers: Age of Ultron".^[5] The sequel revolves around the Avengers and their fight against Ultron, a supercomputer brought to life by Tony Stark, who is determined to bring about human extinction.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron is generally positively received. Critics remark that it is more or less the same experience as the first movie, and if fans have yet to grow tired of it, they will enjoy the sequel. It currently holds a rating of 75% on Rotten Tomatoes^[35] and a score of 8.2/10 from 131,736 users on IMDB^[36].

Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War was officially unveiled during a Phase 3 announcement in October 2014.^[38] The original announcement stated the film to be a 2-part movie with release dates in 2018 & 2019. A year later it was decided the films were to be separate titles, but that the second one would pick up where the Infinity War left off. An unofficial trailer was shown to crowds at the 2017 D23 and Comic Con conventions, but was not uploaded to social media platforms and all cellphone footage was DCMA'd from YouTube and other video sharing sites. A concept poster (below) was also unveiled at Comic Con, which showed a variety of Avengers slated to be in the upcoming film.

Joss Whedon Twitter Backlash

On April 22nd, 2015, BuzzFeed^[31] published an article titled "There's a Wierd, Old-Timey Rape Joke in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which criticized a joke in the film delivered by the character Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) about a practice known as "Prima Nocta,"^[29] the right of kings to sleep with any woman on their wedding night. On May 1st, the feminist blog Feministing^[30] published an article condemning the joke. On Twitter, many users began tweeting insulting messages at Whedon, citing the Prima Nocta joke and the film's portrayal of the character Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johannson) as evidence of sexism.

On May 4th, Whedon deleted his Twitter account, leaving many to speculate that he removed the feed in response to the backlash. On the following day, comedian Patton Oswalt tweeted that there was "a 'Tea Party' equivalent of progressivism/liberalism" that "chased Joss Whedon off Twitter" (shown below). The tweet was subsequently deleted.

That same day, two posts about the Twitter controversy reached the front page of the /r/KotakuInAction^[33]^[34] subreddit. On May 6th, BuzzFeed News^[32] published an interview with Whedon, in which he dismissed claims that he left due to harassment as "horseshit."

“That is horseshit. Believe me, I have been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed, and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause. I saw a lot of people say, ‘Well, the social justice warriors destroyed one of their own!’ It’s like, Nope. That didn’t happen. I saw someone tweet it’s because Feminist Frequency pissed on Avengers 2, which for all I know they may have. But literally the second person to write me to ask if I was OK when I dropped out was [Feminist Frequency founder] Anita [Sarkeesian].”

Fandom

Following the release of the 2012 film, Marvel's The Avengers became frequently referenced in image macros and animated GIFs on various Internet humor sites, including Memebase^[6]^[7], 9gag^[8] and Tumblr.^[9] As of July 2013, a Facebook^[11] page titled "The Avengers" has accumulated upwards of 6.7 million likes and the @Avengers Twitter^[28] feed has garnered over 306,000 followers. There are approximately 29,700 fan fictions under 'Avengers' in Fanfiction.net, making it the movie series with the second largest amount of deviations, coming second only to Star Wars, which has roughly 33,800 fan fictions.^[37]

Several fan pages have been created for members of the superhero team, including one for Tony Stark with more than 210,000 likes^[12] and a page for Agent Phil Coulson with upwards of 2,000 likes.^[14] A Facebook page dedicated to villain Loki has upwards of 200,000 likes.^[13] A Facebook page titled "Avengers Fangirls Assemble" has garnered more than 1,800 fans. Avengers fan art can be found on Tumblr under the tag "avengers"^[15] and there are over 130,000 Avengers-related fanart on the art-sharing website DeviantArt.^[19]

Poster Parody

On November 25th, 2011, DeviantArtist^[18] Kevin Bolk uploaded an image titled "Avengers Booty Ass-emble," which parodied a promo poster (shown below, left) for the film with the male characters posed in sexually provocative positions (shown below, right). In the image description, Bolk revealed that he was inspired to create the drawing after noticing that all the men were posed in heroic stances while women were placed in "booty shot" poses in promotional art for the film.

On February 23rd, 2012, Redditor ProfObladee submitted the parody image to the /r/pics^[20] subreddit, where it gained upwards of 21,000 up votes and 1,000 comments prior to being archived. On May 10th, 2012, The Daily Dot^[21] published an interview with Bolk.

The Hawkeye Initiative

The Hawkeye Initiative is a digital art meme in which artists replace female superheroes shown in impossible body positions with the male the Avengers superhero Hawkeye (example shown below).

Science Bros

Science Bros refer to the slash pairing of the characters Bruce Banner (The Hulk) and Tony Stark (Iron Man) as portrayed by Hollywood actors Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. in Marvel's The Avengers.