Culture

Earth's Mightiest Spin-Offs: What the Avengers Did Outside of Comics

In between saving the world and fighting bad guys, the Avengers have managed to squeeze in plenty of video games, TV appearances and movies in the last 50 years. Here are the best (and worst).
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Details of von Pragenau's 1982 Shuttle stack redesign. The drawing includes callouts, not all of which are defined here. 12 = modified ET; 15 = SRB linking thrust structure; 16 = Orbiter; 19 = redesigned ET liquid hydrogen tank; 20 = redesigned ET liquid oxygen tank; 25, 26 = SRBs; 31, 32 = SRB slide rails; 34, 35 = SRB slide rail attachment fixtures. Image: U.S. Patent Office
The Marvel Super Heroes
With a sobriquet like Earth's Mightiest Heroes, you can't expect the Avengers to be confined to a single medium. Sure, they were created for comics, but any superhero team that includes a billionaire, a genius, and a freaking god is probably going to outgrow the constraints of static panels at some point. Last year's Marvel's The Avengers may have been the squad's most high-profile foray into other media, but it was far from the first. Here are some of Cap, Tony, and the gang's attempts over the past 50 years to storm the mainstream -- along with a sober assessment of just how successful they were. Above:

The Marvel Super Heroes

What Was It? Although it wasn't officially labeled an Avengers spin-off, the team made numerous appearances in this mid-1960s cartoon based on the earliest Marvel Comics, especially in the Captain America and Incredible Hulk episodes. Was It Any Good? That's a difficult question to answer. With the extremely limited animation -- most of which is based on drawings lifted directly from the original comics -- and flat voice acting, the answer should be no, but there's a strangely charming campiness to these cartoons that makes you want to watch them all the time.