5 Marvel Super-teams More Bizarre than Guardians of the Galaxy
How can you get stranger than a team that has a talking raccoon with a gun and a walking tree powerhouse, taking orders from a Russian space-dog? Marvel certainly tries its hardest. While Guardians of the Galaxy gets its own feature film this August, I doubt that any of the below contenders will be receiving more than a cameo appearance in any future media.
Pet Avengers
Art by Ig Guara
Yes, that is Bo Obama giving a group of animals life advice. Topping the scales in sheer adorability is this team made up of the animal side-kicks of some of Marvel’s most popular heroes. OK, maybe popular is a stretch.
Led by a frog who happened to gain the power of Thor at one time, codenamed the groan-worthy ‘Throg’, and the Inhuman teleporter Lockjaw, these guys are the Marvel version of the Super-pets in the DC Universe, using their superpowers for the greatest of good: protecting the Infinity Gems from the spectre of death himself, Thanos. Joining Throg and Lockjaw in their quest is New Warrior’s Speedball pet cat ‘Hairball’, also possessing kinetic powers, the sabretooth tiger sidekick of Ka-zar: Zabu, Falcon’s right-hand bird Redwing, the X-Men’s dragon mascot Lockheed, and Ms. Lion the normal canine sidekick to Spider-man’s Aunt May.
Skrull Kill Krew
Art by Mark Brooks and Christina Strain
On the far other side of the adorability spectrum are the savagely 90s superhero team The Skrull Kill Krew. Skrulls are the Marvel universe’s Cylons, a group of shapeshifting aliens who can perfectly replicate humans. Or animals. And what happens when you’ve been a cow for so long that you forget that you ever had shape-shifting powers? That’s right, McSkrull-patties. For a group of unfortunate souls in the Marvel universe, their shapeshifting powers were foisted upon them after accidentally ingesting Skrull burgers, with an added curse of developing a thirst for the slaughter of their former kin. So you have superpowers and an uncontrollable need to slaughter alien invaders, what do you do? Form a biker gang and go after those Skrulls of course!
For a while during the Secret Invasion cross-over storyline in the Marvel universe, Skrulls were revealed to have played the long con – abducting and replacing some of Marvel’s best known heroes and villains. Which of course provided the very handy ‘No, our favourite hero didn’t die, he was just abducted to the Skrull home-world and the imposter died in his place!’ deus-ex-machina. Which is my favourite absurd resurrection device next to X-Necrosha’s ‘everybody is zombies now, just deal with it’, and the Heroes Reborn ‘That bratty Fantastic Four kid just re-made reality when he was bored’. The Secret Invasion led to the return of the Skrull Kill Krew, whose powers meant they were the only ones who could detect the new Skrulls posing as superheroes. With one catch: they had to eat the body of the humanoid Skrulls to detect the new breed.
Daydreamers
Art by Martin Egeland
Back to adorableness. Daydreamers was a misfit crew of mutant children, robots, and aliens banded together by circumstance to travel the dimensions. One day the Fantastic Four’s child prodigy Franklin Richards was playing with his mutant friends Leech and Artie when they met the refugee female alien Tana-Nile. Shortly after she was followed by the introduction of Howard the Duck and the Man-thing, who was now the Nexus of all realities. Using the Man-thing as their ride, this group traveled between dimensions, pursued by a horrible evil presence.
Oh, I forgot to mention that this was at a time that Franklin Richards had accidentally killed his entire family and most of his friends, and in fact the entire adventure was created subconsciously by him in order for him to face his demons and come to terms with the fact that his loved ones weren’t coming back and it was all his fault.
Bummer.
Great Lakes Avengers
Art by John Byrne
So, let me lay out the story for you. At one time, there was a spin-off group of Avengers called the West-coast Avengers, consisting of some of the most awesome B-list superheroes in Avengers history, including Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, Tigra, Hawkeye, and Mockingbird among others. At one point Mockingbird is abducted and raped by the supervillain Phantom Rider, and lets him die after he falls off a cliff. So, logically, her husband Hawkeye decides that was an inappropriate decision, serves her with divorce papers and leaves the team. Yes, 1980s Marvel marriages were pretty awful, this was the same decade that Hank Pym beat up the Wasp, Cyclops abandoned his wife and son to die in Alaska to chase after his ex-girlfriend, and Ms. Marvel was raped by her own son.
The 80s, amirite?
Anyways. Following on his decision to leave the Wackos in California, Hawkeye moves to the midwest where he finds a group of misfit mutant adventures trying their best to make good and decides to mentor them. Likely the only way he could feel like a big-shot at the time as a minor member of a B-list superhero team was to become the leader of a D-list superhero team.
The team consisted of Big Bertha, a fashion model who could increase her mass exponentially at will, Flat-man, a Mister Fantastic rip-off, Dinah Saur, a dinosaur-like sexy humanoid who they don’t even try to give a backstory to, Doorman who actually is a fairly cool teleporter with limited abilities, and Mr. Immortal their leader who is usually half-insane as a result of being killed hundreds of times over the course of his life. They are later joined by the most bad-ass superheroine in Marvel comics: Squirrel Girl, who after a few issues of course leaves the team to join the Avengers, because there’s no reason the Great-Lakes Avengers can handle someone that awesome being on the team.
X-Babies
Art by Skottie Young
Ah yes, X-Babies, first created as a commentary on the prevalence of marketing techniques infiltrating popular culture, the X-Babies were at first de-aged X-Men designed by the evil overlord Mojo to be adorable, money-making reality show cast members. After the X-Men successfully returned to their actual ages, Mojo decided to skip the hassle and get right to the clones, with each progression of X-Baby clones becoming more successful and adorable than the last. Of course, like most members of Mojoworld, these clones were forced into an endless cycle of media scrutinity where any drop in their popularity ratings led to their immediate deaths.
Finally saved by the former disco star and X-Man Dazzler, they were adopted and cared for by Dazzler and her husband Longshot in a rebel camp on Mojoworld.
At least until Dazzler became sick of them and came back to Earth to continue her singing career, leaving the poor X-Babies to fend for themselves against Mojo.
Mother of the year, she ain’t.
That’s my picks for the best of the weirdest Marvel super-teams! Did I miss your favourites? Leave a note in the comments!
