West Coast Represent

California heroes, we're forgettable. Last minute victories, we got them on lock. Solo books so dull we'll skip your pull list. Ooh oh ooh oh oh ooh! So if Marvel is really renumbering The Earth's Mightiest Heroes again with some Jason Aaron goodness, why can't we have some fun pitching a companion series called...

For this issue of "Raffi's Roster" I'm taking an Avengers team commonly met with laughs and confusion and making it the slice-of-life/superhero action romp it was always meant to be! With old members, new members, and some faces from different places! Let's pitch ourselves a West Coast Avengers series!

The Roster

The main Avengers usually consist of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk (or at least variations on those four), but our WC Avengers are rocking a different fantastic foursome. Hawkeye is the one who suggests they form a new team, mainly because he's lonely as hell. After killing Bruce Banner in "Civil War II" Clint Barton isn't the most-liked hero in the community. Since he founded the original team, he thinks bringing it back may help him recover his hero stripes. And yes, he's wearing his goddamn purple costume again. Because only Luke Cage can rock a T-shirt and sunglasses. His ex-wife Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird is the diet Black Widow of the team, and needless to say things are awkward between them. A running thing in the series would be their hesitation with each other, their grudges with each other, and the uncertainty on whether they should try again. Wonder Man hasn't been superhero-ing recently, he's a former actor and recent PR manager so he isn't on the team to punch people. It takes some dangerous situations to get him to use his energy-based powers again. Tigra has been a actress, a cop, a model, and is currently a single mom and a widower. Her son Matthew is about five years old and shares her furry exterior. She and Wonder Man seem to have "something" going on, but it's not fully explained until later in the series. However, she is grateful to raise her son around her good friends. Also she could rip your head off. Don't forget. Falcon is the de-facto leader of the WCA by the request of Hawkeye. Falcon led the last Avengers roster as Captain America and that time as Cap gave Falcon a real chance to-wait for it-spread his wings. Mantis would crash on Earth after escaping the alien villains of our first arc and go through a type of genetic metamorphosis leaving her looking like her movie counterpart. Why? I like that version. She is a mother like Tigra, but was separated from her child so being around Matt would give Mantis some strong feels. Finally, there is the new Whizzer. I wrote a thing on him recently. Basically Robert Coleman was a 30-something year old, overweight superhero fanboy living in his mom's basement. The night he finally went out was the night some aliens sprayed him with Terrigen Mist resulting in him gaining his Inhuman power of super-speed. Inspired by the Golden Age hero, Rob dubs himself Whizzer and is invited onto the team after he helps defeat the aliens. A dream come true.

The Plan

Similar to my "Heroes For Hire" team-pitch, a lot of this is The Avengers being involved in the community. They would be based out of California, they'd help police battle organized crime, clean up the streets, talk to civilians. Remind people that The Avengers are people too. You know, since the real Avengers are busy saving the world. The book would also heavily feature drama and real life situations. Like, will Clint and Bobbi hook up again? Are Simon (Wonder Man) and Greer (Tigra) hooking up as friends or dating or what? And how is Falcon reacting to people's opinions on whether or not him being Cap was a good thing or a bad thing? Mantis could be bitter with Tigra because Tigra isn't giving Matt enough attention, leading to both characters learning from their mistakes. Spider-Man could call Bobbi and make things harder for Clint (Peter and Bobbi banged). Whizzer is full of confidence issues and gets his hero fantasies crushed when he fails to save someone's life. He wants to quit and hide, but his new friends help him move on from it. Whizzer could be really into Mantis, but it's awkward because she can sense his emotions. Simon tries handling PR, but people are so critical of this "team of C-Listers" and Mantis and Whizzer can't handle the paparazzi. And most of these characters are human so they can get into comas or break an arm or get shot. It's all just the ballade of superheroes who didn't get their due and deserve some time to evolve and become better. If The Avengers are Earth's Mightiest Heroes, The West Coast Avengers are Earth's Mightiest Roommates.

The Threat

The first arc would be about these five Kree soldiers chasing Mantis to Earth. They're chemicals triggered her metamorphosis and their Terrigen Mist gave Whizzer his powers. They are led by Yorrick The Survivor, a mutated Kree who saved these five other mutant Kree from death and experimentation. Basically, if a Kree alien is imperfect they are hunted and killed, so Yorrick and his team are trying to piss off everybody in the galaxy hoping someone will destroy The Kree. So the WCA assemble to battle "The Survivors". The Survivors are beaten (miraculously) and taken by Captain Marvel who is glad to see Hawkeye "doing his job again". Following this the team sets up shop at an old Avengers Compound, but quickly learn they are being targeted by somebody. This somebody digs up a secret military program called "Project Rhodes" which summons three War Machine drones to attack the team. This somebody hires Taskmaster, reprograms The Super-Adaptiod, and gives Black Knight's cursed sword The Ebony Blade to some serial killer. With all these events being sprung the US government sends US Agent to spy on the WCA, making him more of a problem than an ally. We eventually learn all these occurrences were caused by an old woman named Betty Dean, Namor The Sub-Mariner's love interest from the 50's. She's old and has retirement money to waste, so when she saw Hawkeye-the man who killed one of his own-was drumming up a team of celebrities and aliens and "shield-swipers" she used her money and resources to ruin their lives. She's arrested and the WCA can't decide if they feel relieved or sympathetic for the bored, angry old woman.

The Point

To have fun? Can that be The Point? See, my problem with Avengers comics now is that they're so focused on saving the Earth and raising the stakes and having events and changing up the team, they leave no room for character stuff. Like, in Mark Waid's Avengers he hinted that Sam Wilson and Jane Foster might be interested in each other and it went nowhere because he didn't have time. Back when Bendis was writing New Avengers he had this whole arc about some SHIELD division enslaving cavemen in the Savage Land and it went nowhere. If a writer is trying to tell a story, a story involving your A-List superhero team, it's best not to bog that story down with events or renumbers or team shake-ups. Let the writer write and then you can mess up their flow. I have a feeling Jason Aaron's Avengers is going to suffer the same problems, so all I want is another Avengers book that focuses on character interactions and development. A book where a complete story can be told and it can influence the next story and so on. I want an Avengers comic that feels like a comic and not just a trailer for the next big thing. And a title like this-under Nick Spencer as writer and Stacey Lee on art-can be a book about people and not sales.

Thanks for reading.