While Marvel Comics’ Avengers couldn’t be more different from DC’s Suicide Squad in basically every way imaginable, that wasn’t always the case as one early Avengers line-up was actually Marvel’s own version of Task Force X in one key way.
The Avengers are a collection of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes within the Marvel Universe. The team was formed by Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Thor, and the Hulk while battling the villainous Loki. Since then, the Avengers never hesitated to put their lives on the line for the greater good and consistently represented the gold standard for superheroism. The Suicide Squad, however, is the exact opposite of the Avengers as that team is comprised of nothing but villains (minus a character like Rick Flag who acts as their handler) who are forced into doing missions that aren’t always heroic under the threat of death via a bomb in their heads. Basically, the Suicide Squad are forced into being ‘heroes’ against their will whereas the Avengers throw themselves into perilous situations because they feel a responsibility to do so.
In Avengers #16 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Dick Ayers, the founding members are considering taking an indefinite leave of absence after battling their latest Avengers-level threat. The original team–consisting of Iron Man, Giant-Man, the Wasp, and Thor–longed for some vacation time, but they needed to find some replacement heroes before leaving the team they formed. So, the founding members held tryouts and ended up recruiting Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver, leaving the new heroes to be led by Captain America who had been with the team for some time and had proven himself a worthy hero to lead the Avengers. Little did the founding Avengers know, they were basically leaving Captain America to lead a version of the Suicide Squad.
At this point in Marvel Comics history, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver were all villains before joining the Avengers. Hawkeye was a master thief who used his archery skills to pull off seemingly impossible heists and Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were formerly in Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and battled the X-Men on numerous occasions. While the three former villains wanted to turn their lives around, they still had an air of villainy about them in that they were disagreeable, disrespectful, and each one schemed against Captain America to become the new leader of the squad. In this line-up, Captain America basically held the same position in the Avengers as Rick Flag held in the Suicide Squad. Cap was the Avengers’ handler and kept the team of villains in-line while carrying out world-saving missions.
The main, and virtually only difference between this early Avengers team and the Suicide Squad is the Avengers’ former villains wanted to be on the squad whereas Task Force X was forced into carrying out dangerous missions under the threat of death. Other than that, the two teams were basically the same from the fact that both consisted of established villains to the fact that each of them had a truly heroic handler who was fully committed to the mission at hand. While the Avengers would grow into a team of pure heroes void of any villainous presence, one of its earliest teams proved to be Marvel’s own Suicide Squad.
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