Avengers West Coast

When the West Coast of the United States needs defending, the Avengers create a second branch of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, kicking off another legendary team. While they may experience growing pains, they keep on fighting for another day.

Forthcoming Threats

When the majority of the Avengers are pulled away into the Beyonder’s Secret Wars, the team’s long-time member Vision appoints himself as Chairman. He proposes a second team to help fight an forthcoming battle and gets permission from the National Security Council to launch the team on the West Coast, based out of Los Angeles. He appoints Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, to lead this western expansion roster and he moves to California with his new bride, acrobatic super-spy Bobbi Morse, AKA Mockingbird, to build the new western team. 

Assisted by Bill Foster, AKA Goliath, the couple finds and purchases a lavish seaside estate in Palos Verdes previously owned by legendary silent film star Moira Brandon. When Hawkeye’s old foe William Cross, AKA Crossfire, attacks the newlyweds during their first visit to the property, the elderly Brandon helps subdue the criminal, prompting Hawkeye to award her honorary Avengers membership. 

Brandon’s former estate then undergoes extensive renovations and becomes the Avengers Compound, manned by Hawkeye, Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man, Greer Nelson, AKA Tigra, and two new recruits: Mockingbird and Jim Rhodes as Iron Man, replacing Tony Stark for a time. The vigilante Maximilian Coleridge, AKA Shroud, is also offered western Avengers membership but turns it down, not wanting to compromise his cover as a supposed criminal. With this new team fully formed, two Avengers rosters are active simultaneously, a western roster and an eastern roster.

Dynamic

The West Coast Avengers fall under the purview of the Avengers, and like their parent team, have their own elected chairs. Over the course of their existence, the team is led first and longest by Hawkeye. Other Avengers members such as Hank Pym, Janet Van Dyne, AKA the Wasp, Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, and Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch serve as chairs as well.

Early adventures established the West Coast team as slightly more irreverent than their East Coast counterparts, taking upon themselves the nickname 'Wackos'. This period saw the mental deterioration of Henry Pym, who was helping the team as a scientific adviser. Pym suffered a nervous breakdown and became suicidal.

When the U.S. forces their operative John Walker, AKA U.S.Agent, onto the WCA, they install him as the team’s supervisor, but co-chairs Pym and the Wasp eventually fire him for misconduct. At one point, Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, merges the western division with the eastern team, but they splinter again when they lose their government backing.

When Barton’s namesake, partner, and mentee Kate Bishop, AKA Hawkeye, takes up the mantle of creating a new iteration of the West Coast Avengers, Barton takes a backseat to leadership. Kate brings her experience as a Young Avenger and amateur private eye to the group. She recruits teenage heroes such as her fellow Young Avenger America Chavez, AKA America, who is the powerhouse of the team; Johnny Watts, AKA Fuse, who possesses absorbing abilities; mutant telepath Quentin Quire, AKA Kid Omega, and the off-the-wall Gwen Poole, AKA Gwenpool, who unofficially adopts Jeff the Land Shark when the team discovers him on one of their missions.

West Coast Contenders

The team faces a host of enemies across their history, some of which includes Crossfire, Douglas Birely, AKA Doctor Demonicus, the Dark Elf Malekith, Madame Masque and vampires. They’ve even battled their own internal enemies, such as the Scarlet Witch, when she goes insane and a giant-size Tigra being controlled by George Tarleton, AKA M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing). The team later faces off with giant land sharks.

Team-Ups

The Avengers are the WCA’s closest allies but the team branches out beyond their own parent team to other allies like Agatha Harkness and the Young Avengers.

Trials and Triumphs

The newly sober original Iron Man returned to action with the western roster, which also recruited members and associates such as devout Christian adventurer Bonita Juarez, AKA Firebird, Benjamin Grimm, AKA the Thing, who joined briefly during an estrangement from the Fantastic Four).

The team became stranded in the past, its members separated in various historic eras within the Marvel Universe. While most of the team was caught in ancient Egypt, Mockingbird was held captive in the Wild West by the evil Lincoln Slade, AKA Phantom Rider, who used amnesiac drugs to convince her that she was his lover. Parallel to this adventure was the salvation of Henry Pym, and his return to heroics. The shadowy vigilante Marc Spector, AKA Moon Knight, helped rescue the team, and he and Pym accepted invitations to join the team.

The adventure in time left repercussions for the team to deal with. Mockingbird and Hawkeye separated after he discovered she had allowed the Phantom Rider to fall to his death because of personal reasons, and the rift was exacerbated when she proved instrumental in a plot by several world governments to abduct and dismantle the Vision for his near takeover of the world. For a time, Mockingbird formed her own splinter group of dissident Avengers alongside Tigra and Moon Knight, though this trio soon broke up. Hawkeye held the remnants of his western roster together.

After the international conspiracy of government intelligence agencies known as Vigilance abducted the android Vision and wiped his mind, the Vision was reassembled. But his personality was largely a blank, emotionless state. Wonder Man, who as the Vision's "twin" also harbored feelings for the Scarlet Witch, refused to serve as a template for his brother's thoughts again. The original android Human Torch was also revived, leading to doubts as to what the Vision actually was.

The U.S. government then forced its operative U.S.Agent onto the western Avengers roster as a supervisor, prompting Hawkeye to resign the western chairmanship in protest. Hawkeye rejoined Mockingbird to mentor the unauthorized Great Lakes Avengers.

For a time, the western team was merged with the eastern roster by Captain America. He convinced most of the team’s past and present members (including new recruits Firebird and cosmic hero Wendell Vaughn, AKA Quasar) to be on call at either or both bases as needed, and the group continued to recruit more new members such as the android Human Torch. During this time, Scarlet Witch went criminally insane after her and Vision’s magically conceived twin sons were seemingly destroyed in a confrontation with Mephisto and Martin Preston, AKA Master Pandemonium. Under the evil influences such as her father Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto and Immortus, Wanda attacked her teammates repeatedly until Agatha Harkness helped restore her sanity and Wanda rejoined the team.

Losing its U.S. government backing altogether, the Avengers reincorporated under a new UN charter with one active roster and one “reserve substitute” roster assigned to each coastal base, including new western reservist Machine Man and two new eastern reservists: super-strong youth Elvin Haliday, AKA Rage (who was forced off the team when they discovered he was still a minor) and reformed super-criminal Flint Marko, AKA Sandman (who quit due to a misunderstanding).

The new western roster, initially co-chaired by Dr. Pym and the Wasp, fired U.S.Agent for misconduct since the group was no longer governmentally obligated to keep him on the team; but the Agent quickly rejoined alongside new recruits Julia Carpenter, AKA  Spider-Woman, and the Living Lightning after the trio aided the Avengers against Dr. Demonicus and his Pacific Overlords. Iron Man replaced the departing Pym and Wasp as western chair. Carpenter became a fixture of the western roster, balancing heroics with her parental duties as mother of young Rachel Carpenter. Living Lightning soon opted for reserve status to concentrate on his college education.

Both coastal rosters and various reservists teamed up to intervene in the interstellar Kree-Shi’ar war (a mission sometimes referred to as Operation: Galactic Storm); but while they protected Earth and saved the Shi’ar empress Lilandra Neramani from assassination, they failed to prevent the Kree’s Supreme Intelligence from killing much of its own empire’s population with a Nega-Bomb in a supremely ruthless gambit meant to jumpstart the Kree’s long-stagnant genetic evolution. Hawkeye resumed his Goliath identity temporarily, during which time he and Mockingbird managed to reconcile. Wonder Man soon left the team.

Tony Stark then faked his own death while dealing with health problems, estranging Iron Man from the Avengers after he returned from his seeming demise. Hawkeye took over as western leader again, adding alien-armored teen Christopher Powell, AKA Darkhawk, to the team’s reserves while War Machine (ex-Iron Man Jim Rhodes) replaced Stark on the roster; but Hawkeye decided that the leadership and his newly rebuilt marriage to Mockingbird were in conflict, so he stepped down as chair and was replaced by Scarlet Witch. 

On the Witch’s watch, Mockingbird was killed by the demon Mephisto during a supernatural clash with Satannish, Jason Roland, AKA Hangman, and their new Lethal Legion. With Hawkeye departing to mourn his wife’s death and several other members leaving for various reasons, the western roster was left short-handed at a time when Avengers Compound was heavily damaged due to recent battles. 

Convening a summit of the eastern and western rosters, Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, and Captain America led a motion to shut down the struggling western roster due to an ever-changing membership, in-fighting among the members and attacks on the Compound. It had also proven too costly to maintain a separate branch of Avengers. Over the objections of its few remaining members, the motion passed and the deciding vote was cast by Stark, who had returned just long enough to participate in the meeting. The team was to be folded back into the East Coast branch, however, several members of the West Coast team, including Iron Man, were unhappy with this decision, and resigned from the Avengers entirely. Stark recruited several ex-western Avengers to join him in forming a rival western super-team, Force Works.

When Kate Bishop, AKA Hawkeye, moved to California to start a new life as a private investigator, giant land sharks attacked Santa Monica and she realized she needed help to keep the West Coast safe. With her namesake’s help, Barton, she recruited a team that included America, Fuse, Kid Omega, Gwenpool. Early on, Gwenpool unofficially adopts Jeff the Land Shark, who becomes a kind of team mascot and helps out from time to time. Funding the team, however, required them all to move in together with a film crew who would follow them around. Their first test as a team came in the form of a supersized and angry Tigra. The team helped get her mind back but Kate had been turned into a giant humanoid Hawk by the same culprit who gigantified Tigra, B.R.O.D.O.K. Turned out, B.R.O.D.O.K. was actually M.O.D.O.K. with a brand new body and led Advanced Image Mechanics, where he turned women who rejected his advances into monsters. The team worked together to defeat him, revealing his true visage, and restored everyone to their normal size, but not before Kate launched M.O.D.O.K. into outer space.

The team was soon captured and tormented by Super Villain Giulietta Nefaria, AKA Whitney Frost, AKA Madame Masque and her new West Coast Masters of Evil, but escaped thanks to Kate’s ex, Noh-Varr, AKA Marvel Boy. Noh-Varr clued them in on a possible Skrull base in L.A., leading the team to infiltrate it, posing as new recruits for their cult. Though their plan backfired when they encountered vampires, including Bishop’s mother, Eleanor. The vampires were particularly interested in America and attempted to drain her. As Bishop and the team fought off the vampires, Fuse’s sister Ramone, who had bonded to inherited Vibranium that covered her body in armor, used her newfound abilities to expel Vibranium and stab all the vampires, holding them in place. America came to and opened up a portal, sending the vampires to another dimension. The team officially welcomed Ramone to the team and soon received new fully functioning headquarters in Venice Beach.

During the War of the Realms when Malekith and his forces invaded Earth, The West Coast Avengers split up. Bishop helped protect Thor Odinson, AKA Thor’s infant sister, Laussa, alongside the Babysitters Club, while the remaining team fought Frost Giants in San Francisco and later in New York, allying with the Superior Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four.