Marvel's recent team frenzy

[clevernamehere]

Last year... actually since Civil War... Marvel has gone team frenzy and I was wondering if anyone else noticed this. And it's not just "oh, we're spinning off Mighty Avengers from New Avengers (although that's one example), because some of these are new constructions, new characters and new teams. Others are just do-overs.

Just as a rundown of what I'm talking about:

Mighty Avengers... half New Avengers, half old Avengers, and Ares.

The Order... mostly new, except for Pepper

New Warriors... theoretically new, but then revealed to be old (however inserting a bunch of generic depowered mutants from Morrison's run, characters with a few panels each, and then giving them more face time depowered doesn't really say much for the original characters)

Renegades... or New Champions as it was with Herc and Angel

Gamma Corps

Warbound

Agents of Atlas... which was supposedly a good selling series, but you'd think we'd hear a bit more about them.

Initiative... many new characters, who seem to be getting side-lined for whatever characters the writer wants to deal with (ie, the latest story with Antman and Stature fighting, only to be beaten by Taskmaster.) And I know that theoretically we also have an initiative team in every state, so the Rangers would be a "new" team for instance, but lets be honest, most of those teams don't even count as footnotes.

Heroes for Hire... spinning out of Civil War, but finished off by World War Hulk... how many issues were NOT involved in a crossover?

Omega Flight

Operation Lightning Strike... which doesn't have its own book but the whole Sleepwalker/Machine Man/Arana team seems to overshadow Ms. Marvel in her own book sometimes.


So what other new/re-tooled teams came out around 2007? I know some of the teams I listed about are pushing 2006, so it's not a totally inflexible concept, but that collection of line-ups alone is something like 50 characters.

[jerkface]

I'd say that in the wake of Civil War Marvel has set the conditions for teams to be the way to go. You're right, they could start up 50 comics with all the initiative teams, although most of them would be balls. Iron Man and SHIELD don't seem to want anyone working alone. I'd say that Spider-Man and Wolverine are the exceptions but they're also on New Avengers (and X-Force for Wolverine).

I wonder if this is all part of the plan with Secret Invasion? Having everyone in groups makes the spies from the Skrull more effective. Perhaps the invasion and paranoia will see an end to the team-up frenzy.

We've already seen the X-Men start breaking apart, at least Cable and Deadpool will have their own, now seperate, series.

It wasn't on your list, so I'll mention Nextwave (I think it actually started in late 2006) but that's an awesome team book.

[jerkface]

I just read the first issue of "The Last Defenders." That is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that team frenzy is in full force.

[clevernamehere]

jerkface said:

I just read the first issue of "The Last Defenders." That is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that team frenzy is in full force.

I think it's hilarious that just this year alone we've seen:

In Avengers: The Initiative, we see just saw New Warriors Classic appear,

In Last Defenders we've already been shown the first line-up, the second line-up (Atlas, Junta and Paladin), and they seem to be indicating that Krang, Yandroth and Hellstrom will form the last Last Defenders team

In X-Force the claw-team of X-Men

In Young X-Men the newest version of the New Mutants (and the Brotherhood)

In Incredible Hercules, the God Squad (Herc's gods going to invade the Skrull god-realms

And of course, Clandestine is back and soon enough we're getting Captain Britain and M-13 as the latest version of the Excalibur dynamic (Captain Britain, Pete Wisdom have been in a couple version of Excalibur, Black Knight was a member of the mini-series Excalibur, it's based out of England... it's basically New New Excalibur.)

If you're not on a team, Marvel's going to throw you on one. I wonder if it would be easier to make a list of characters who are NOT on teams right now.