10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About The Avengers
9. They've Never Been Close To Being Cancelled
There is no doubting, that these days, the Avengers are a merchandising juggernaut. With comics, movies, and all sorts of collectibles available to Joe Public, it seems that you can slap a giant 'A' on anything and it will sell by the truckload.
So when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to form a group to rival DC's own Justice League, they surely must've known from the outset that it was going to be a success, but even that isn't entirely accurate.
During the 1950s Marvel's distributor went belly up, which forced them to seek pastures new to get their books on the shelves each month. This would see them sign a deal with Independent News which wouldn't have been a problem, except they were part of the same company as DC. Yup, they were sleeping with the enemy.
This deal would see them reduced to only being allowed to put out eight comics a month, which would mean that they'd have to choose carefully what they wanted in their arsenal. They had a choice to make. Avengers and X-Men or Gunsmoke Western and Love Romances.
Fortunately, neither of the latter two titles had sold particularly well, so the axe fell on them instead. Just think, if romance and westerns had sold better, Earth's Mightiest Heroes could've been a blip in Marvel's history.