WEST COAST AVENGERS #46 (1989): 1st Great Lakes Avengers

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John Byrne introduces The Great Lakes Avengers:

Mr. Immortal (who can die every issue)…

…Flatman (who stretches) and Doorman (he creates doors, like Gateway or Portal)…

…Big Bertha…

…who is basically a female version of Blob…

and Dinah Soar (whose name is a play on talk show host Dinah Shore).

These misfits set up their own branch of Avengers, without getting permission,

I really like how the West Coast Avengers comic was terrible so John Byrne starts out by undoing Vision/Scarlet Witch stuff that took years to create—and he does so quickly and brutally, without apology—and then immediately puts out a story about a group of mostly new characters. He doesn’t bother to dig into all the questions about Wanda/Vision’s new relationships—or what it means that Bobbi Morse has returned (the two characters fight for about a page—that’s it—and Bobbi says that despite Hawkeye being a horse’s ass she still loves him).

The West Coast team is involved in this story only because Hawkeye gets offended that there’s an unauthorized franchise team.  And it ends with him telling them they can use the Avengers name if they take orders from Hawkeye.  Which makes sense because Clint was a complete a-hole to his wife, blaming Mockingbird for getting raped and then being mad at her for killing the rapist (who was Phantom Rider and an undead character anyway!), so now him being possessive about a franchise he doesn’t even own makes perfect sense.

Tigra appears as well, and is catching and eating mice.  Gross.  USAgent slaps her into stopping doing that.  Which is also kinda gross, but in a different way.

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