Comic books require a lot of time and planning in order to get them out on time while still maintaining a certain level of quality. For a superhero team up like Avengers, you’d think that Marvel would’ve meticulously plotted out every move before pulling the trigger. You only get one shot at it and you definitely don’t want to screw it up.
Well, that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.
As it turns out, the reason Avengers #1 existed in the first place was because of a looming deadline, not wanting to lose money, a drunk comic book author and some last minute panic.
The tea was spilled by Marvel’s senior vice president of publishing, Tom Brevoort, in 2011 on Formspring during a fan Q&A session. Apparently the comic book giant’s strategy back in the 60s was to essentially rip-off what was working and flood the market. The big thing at the time was Spider-Man so Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett got to work on a new Spider-Man “inspired” comic called Daredevil.
However, Everett was juggling his comic book duties, a day job and a drinking problem, which caused Daredevil #1 to fall well behind schedule. While delaying things is pretty normal these days, Brevoort said that printing time was paid for well ahead of time back in those days regardless of whether a book was ready or not so Marvel had to get something out so their money wouldn’t go down the sink.
So now Marvel had a looming deadline, no comic book and a mountain of last minute panic. Luckily, Lee had a brainwave and thought “why not bring all our heroes together in a big team up like what DC did with Justice League of America?”
It fit in with the company’s “rip off what works” modus operandi at the time and didn’t require any prep time since all the heroes and villains were already established, so it made logical sense given the pickle Marvel were in at the time.
From there, Lee and Jack Kirby quickly cobbled together the first issue of Avengers just in time to meet the printing deadline and the rest is history. As for Daredevil, that also did come out eventually… six months later.
So there you have it, Avengers wasn’t born out of some grand plan Marvel had had in the works for years but rather out of not wanting to lose money and blinding panic. And hey, it’s more than paid off since then given how prevalent the Avengers are in the pop culture space these days.
Maybe that’s the secret to creating a masterpiece: leave everything up until the last minute and hope your brain churns out some gold from the bits and pieces you have lying around.