Great Lakes Avengers
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The Great Lakes Avengers are a comedic superhero group, fashioned after Marvel Comics’ Avengers. Created by John Byrne and Mike Machlan, they first appeared in The West Coast Avengers #46, July 1989.
The group consists of self-styled superheroes who possess bizarre powers, a lack of common sense and a naive insistence on being superheroes. The group idolizes the Avengers and, seeing as the team already had East and West Coast branches, dedicated itself to defending the Midwestern United States.
They have gone through several names, including Great Lakes X-Men, Great Lakes Defenders and Great Lakes Champions and The Lightningrods, but now they call themselves the Great Lakes Initiative.
The Great Lakes Avengers have appeared sporadically since their first appearance.
Characters
The members assembled in response to a newspaper ad written by Mr. Immortal after he decided that he would need help in his fight against crime.
- Mr. Immortal – Craig Hollis, the team leader, whose only power is the ability to come back from the dead. Apparently this is due to his destiny: he is intended to be the last living being in the Universe. Deathurge, an anthropomorphic embodiment of an abstract concept, has haunted him all his life, preparing him for his lonely fate by killing off all his friends and loved ones in an attempt to harden him. "Mr. I" is the only one who can see and communicate with Deathurge, causing some concern for his friends since they think he is arguing with himself.
- Dinah Soar – a reptilian alien with flight powers and a sonic attack in the form of a high-pitched shriek. Her name refers to Dinah Lance (Black Canary), who possesses similar vocal powers; Dyna-Soar, a U.S. aircraft prototype; and is a pun on both the word dinosaur and actress Dinah Shore's name. Only Mister Immortal was able to understand and communicate with her. She was killed by Maelstrom during a mission, greatly deepening Mr. Immortal's chronic depression.
- Big Bertha – model Ashley Crawford, who can transform into an incredibly fat (but also incredibly strong) version of herself. She must vomit before she can return to normal, spoofing the cliché that models often suffer from bulimia. Her staunch refusal to leave Milwaukee to take part in photo sessions in Rome or Paris is a source of constant puzzlement to her agent. However, Bertha wishes to maintain her role with her team, primarily because she is their financial backer.
- Flatman – Dr. Val Ventura, who possesses an incredibly flat body that can stretch and slip through narrow spaces. He recently publicly revealed that he is homosexual. He has a certain resemblance to Mr. Fantastic, a fact that is often exploited for comic effect.
- Doorman – DeMarr Davis, who can use his body as a portal allowing his teammates to pass through walls. It was revealed in the GLA: Misassembled series that he has a connection to the Darkforce dimension. He is also the most sardonic member of the team. He is currently an angel of death, similar to Deathurge.
- Leather Boy – Gene Lorrene, a leather fetishist and possible sadomasochist, misunderstood Mr. Immortal's personal ad for "costumed adventurers", and left the group soon afterwards. To quote Mr. Immortal: "The less said about it, the better." (Leather Boy was not a member of the team when it was originally introduced in WCA #46, but was retconned into the roster in the 2005 Misassembled miniseries.) He later returned briefly (clad in a leather variation of Doctor Doom's mystical armor), seeking revenge for being ignored during the team's recent recruiting drive, and murdered Monkey Joe. Big Bertha, however, caught and defeated him by sitting on him (though this excited him sexually). His true name, Gene Lorrene, echoes that of Jean Loring, wife of the DC Comics superhero The Atom, who played a central role in the miniseries Identity Crisis, which the Misassembled series satirizes.
- Hawkeye and Mockingbird – Clint Barton and Barbara "Bobbi" Morse, founding members of the West Coast Avengers who briefly also served as mentors to the GLA.
- Squirrel Girl – Doreen Green, a buck-toothed young girl with a long, bushy tail who has the abilities of a squirrel and can summon squirrels to help her. She had a wise-cracking pet squirrel called Monkey Joe, who was also a member until his untimely death. He has been replaced by Tippy-Toe, a female squirrel who has also become an official team member. Squirrel Girl joined the team during the Misassembled limited series. Despite her arguably silly powers, Squirrel Girl has single-handedly defeated Doctor Doom, Thanos, Terrax, MODOK and Deadpool.
- Grasshopper – Doug Taggert, a Roxxon agent with a mechanical suit vaguely similar to that of Iron Man, albeit with an insect motif. He died 5.8 seconds after joining the team--according to Monkey Joe, a new record for the shortest tenure with any superhero team.
- Deadpool (reserve) – Wade Wilson, the wisecracking mercenary, had occasional run-ins with the GLA team due to his offbeat books' tendency to attract similarly bizarre characters. In their most recent encounter, the Deadpool-GLI Summer Fun Spectacular, Deadpool helped them foil an AIM plot to put all the worlds' superheroes into a drunken stupor. As a result, they asked him to join and he agreed to become a reserve member. Ultimately, they had to throw him out of their headquarters due to his odious (and expensive) personal habits, so his present team status is unknown.
The story
The Great Lakes Avengers were encouraged by the Avenger Hawkeye as a joke to defend the Midwest and mistook his comments as a right to use the Avengers' name. The group found few supervillains to battle but has actually succeeded in helping other heroes on occasion. Still, the Avengers try to discourage them from endangering themselves (and from using their name!).
When the Avengers were believed dead after their battle with Onslaught, and the superhero group the Thunderbolts appeared to take their place, the GLA changed their name to Lightning Rods in their honor, only to be infuriated when they found out that the Thunderbolts were supervillains in disguise. Not realizing that The Thunderbolts soon afterwards had genuinely become heroes, the GLA attacked the Thunderbolts before the matter was cleared up.
GLA: Misassembled
The title of the GLA miniseries, GLA: Misassembled (2005), written by Dan Slott and pencilled by Paul Pelletier, provided a tongue-in-cheek reference to Avengers Disassembled. In a move which satirized the comic book deaths in that book, it was announced that a character would die in each GLA issue. Surely enough, Dinah Soar, Grasshopper, Monkey Joe, and Doorman were all killed, and Mr. Immortal dies many times in the course of the book. However, Doorman was resurrected almost immediately, and Mr. Immortal stays dead for only a few seconds, of course.
The book depicts Craig Hollis' (aka Mr. Immortal) childhood, in which he met Deathurge (also known as "D'urge"), the embodiment of death — who ended up becoming his childhood friend. Due to his tragic life, Hollis attempted suicide on multiple occasions, but did not die, despite his concentrated efforts. Realizing that he had superhuman powers, he became a costumed crime fighter. After a disastrous attempt at a career as a solo hero that saw him shot in the head, allowing a group that had just robbed a laundromat to escape, he realized that his power might not be suitable to operating alone, and assembled the Great Lakes Avengers through a want-ad in the local paper.
Flash-forward to the present, where the team is failing miserably. Given their loser status as a superhero team, team leader Mr. Immortal contemplates closing down the team, until learning of the death of Hawkeye and subsequent disbanding of the Avengers in the 2005 "Avengers Disassembled" storyline (Avengers #500-503). This spurs the team back into action and they confront Maelstrom, who is attempting to build a doomsday device.
When the GLA take on Maelstrom, Dinah Soar is killed, driving Mr. Immortal over the edge. With their team reduced to three, Flatman and Doorman go on a recruiting drive. After being turned down by everyone they meet — and being mocked on TV for the shame they endure during these emphatic refusals — they are finally joined by the Grasshopper (who is killed exactly 5.8 seconds after joining), Squirrel Girl (a mutant with squirrel powers — an obscure character created by Steve Ditko), and her partner Monkey Joe (a squirrel, not a monkey).
Given the difficulties in recruiting new members, Mr. Immortal tries to stab himself to death (which of course proves unsuccessful). Big Bertha contemplates quitting the GLA, but decides that saving people is too important to her. Intending to drive her out of the team, Doorman directs a constant stream of sarcastic jibes at Squirrel Girl. However, it is later revealed that Doorman actually likes Squirrel Girl, and wishes only to prevent her from sharing the fate of the other recent recruits.
The GLA investigates the Maelstrom case while enduring a constant barrage of public abuse. They find out where Maelstrom is hiding and deploy their seemingly useless powers to tackle him. Doorman finds out that he may be connected to the extremely powerful Darkforce; Mr. Immortal learns that he is a homo supreme (the ultimate omega of mankind's evolution); and Flatman finally confirms that he is gay (earning an honest compliment from Doorman for his sincerity). The GLA defeat Maelstrom and save the world. However, there is not a single mention of this achievement on TV news. Instead, the team receives a cease and desist order from the Maria Stark Foundation (the organization that funds the Avengers) asking them to no longer use the name "Avengers".
Realizing they are all mutants, the team decides to re-name themselves the GLX-Men. The book's final page depicts them springing into action, each sporting the familiar black-and-gold X-Men colors, save Big Bertha, who has stretched a skimpy Emma Frost costume over her obese frame. (However, when the team later ascertains that Leather Boy had designed the X-inspired outfits, they ditch them.)
GLX-Mas
This Christmas Special collects several short stories:
- Squirrel Girl, summoned by Dum Dum Dugan to stop MODOK, Terrax, and Thanos, disposes of each threat with surprising ease. She finds out that she apparently has the ability to take on any supervillain, and is asked by Dugan to join S.H.I.E.L.D. However, Doreen declines, stating she is happy in the GLX.
- Grasshopper II (Neil Shelton) is enjoying his first jumps in his new secret identity, until he tries the Maximum Jump function. This sends him into outer space, and Neil suffocates. He is picked up by Doorman in his new role as an Angel of Death.
- Doorman visits his estranged father, who taunts him for having achieved nothing in life. The reader then learns that DeMarr's visit had an unpleasant reason: his father had actually died setting up Christmas lights, falling from a ladder. When DeMarr escorts him into the afterlife, his father finally expresses his approval, assuming that the position of Angel of Death must pay handsomely.
- Deathurge (trapped in squirrel form) makes a bargain with Oblivion: he will be returned to his original state if he can kill Tippy-Toe before Christmas Eve. Despite his use of an arsenal of devious and lethal traps, he fails. When Tippy-Toe offers him a nut, Deathurge gives up his plans, and falls for her ... only to fall prey to one of Tippy-Toe's own booby-traps.
- The GLX see a shooting star and think it is an omen. Doorman recognizes it as Neil Shelton burning up in re-entry, but says nothing because he does not want to spoil the atmosphere.
Civil War and The Initiative
During the Marvel crossover event Civil War, it is revealed (in Cable & Deadpool #30) that the GLA (now the Great Lakes Champions) have complied with the Superhuman Registration Act. (They were actually waiting in line to register the day the act was announced.)
The team, now renamed the Great Lakes Initiative and the official 50 States Initiative-sponsored team for Wisconsin, are next seen in the Deadpool/GLI Summer Fun Spectacular one-shot, written by Dan Slott and Fabian Nicieza. Deadpool/GLI collected a series of short stories set in the post-Civil War Marvel universe:
- The GLI and Deadpool team up to defeat an A.I.M. plot to use the Greek god Dionysus, who had fallen from Olympus in a drunken stupor, to power an "inebriation ray" that would induce the effects of drunkenness on all superheroes; Deadpool is immune to the ray due to the unique combination of cancer and a healing factor, while A.I.M. technicians simply forgot about the GLI when programming the ray. After this, the GLI take Deadpool on as a reserve member and show him their new, government-funded secret headquarters.
- An interlude where Squirrel Girl breaks into Thunderbolts Mountain to see her longtime crush, Robbie Baldwin, now known as Penance, and tries to persuade him to revert from his current self-destructive tendencies and return him to his previous identity of Speedball.
- Deadpool and Big Bertha go on a date, with Bertha hoping to persuade Deadpool to stop living at GLI Headquarters and running up excessive bills on their government expense account.
- An interlude where Squirrel Girl, having determined that she can only "save" Speedball from his descent into self-loathing through the use of time travel, travels to Latveria to borrow Doctor Doom's time machine.
- Flatman attempts to forcibly eject Deadpool from GLI Headquarters due to his odious personal habits and rampant waste of government funds that have the team greatly exceeding their approved budget.
- Squirrel Girl, meaning to travel back prior to before the start of the events of Civil War #1, instead travels to the year 2099, where she encounters an alternate version of Speedball, and while content to stay with him, is persuaded by Mr. Immortal (who was, of course, still alive) to return to the present to carry out one task that only she could accomplish--kicking Deadpool out of GLI Headquarters.
Team name
Originally carrying the Avengers banner, the team has co-opted other names in the past. This is a running joke, as each name tends to be transitory.
- Lightning Rods — first alternate name, a take on the Thunderbolts.
- S.W.O.R.D. — briefly suggested as a counterpart to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the pages of the Thunderbolts comic. This is also the name of an actual subdivision of S.H.I.E.L.D. that monitors extraterrestrial intelligence, but without the GLA's involvement.
- Great Lakes X-Men — Taken at the end of the Misassembled limited series, when the group realized that they were all mutants.
- Great Lakes Defenders and Great Lakes Champions — Names considered in Dan Slott's Thing #8 (2006), during the first Superheroes' Poker Tournament. After Marvel Girl psychically rebuffs Mr. Immortal's use of the GLX-Men name, he suggests the Great Lakes Defenders, only to be promptly silenced by Doctor Strange. At the end of the issue the team comes upon the name Great Lakes Champions after Flatman wins the Tournament, and the team starts singing "We Are the Champions". Although this elicits a strong protest from Hercules, (a member of the defunct Champions of Los Angeles), the She-Hulk calms him down and Luke Cage remarks: "Let 'em have it. Not like anybody's using it." In their following appearance in Cable & Deadpool #30, the team operates under the Champions moniker.
- Following the Civil War, the team operates as the Great Lakes Initiative in Wisconsin. (As part of the "50 State Initiative" a government-regulated team of superheroes is established in each state; a team already called the Champions is headquartered in California.)
Membership?
The question of whether the GLA count as "actual" Avengers is a complex one. The Maria Stark Foundation has issued cease and desist orders concerning the use of the Avengers name, leading them to several name changes. However, they have been trained by Avengers Hawkeye and Mockingbird (which implied permission to use the name), fought alongside the East and West Coast branches on several occasions, possessed a limited-access Avengers computer, and when the Scarlet Witch summoned all Avengers in the final issue of JLA/Avengers, the GLA showed up.
Equipment
When first formed, the team depended on Big Bertha's modeling income to provide all funding, especially the headquarters and Bertha's private jet. The GLA also had the aforementioned Avengers computer, as well as the Quin-Jetta, an ordinary Volkswagen Jetta with the GLA logo on its sides. The Quin-Jetta was lost during the battle with Maelstrom.
In Deadpool/GLA Summer Fun Spectacular, Mr. Immortal is shown showing off the new 'state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, fully-loaded, duly-funded incredibly cool secret Initiative headquarters'. A few pages later the hangar is shown, featuring Squirrel Girl's Squirrel-A-Gig and Big Bertha's Bumper Buggy. Four other vehicles are visible: a green minivan, a single-seat jet with its wings folded, a purple copter-like craft, and a hovering blue and red craft. Doorman in the panel mentions Flatman's Flatamaran; the blue and red craft looks flat, but its color scheme is more akin to Mr. Immortal's costume.
References in other comics
- In New Warriors (Vol. 3) #5 the Mad Thinker's Intellectual Robots lay a trap for the Warriors and state that in order to subjugate humanity they must eliminate "super-humanity," starting with the least powerful super teams. They would then move up to the Great Lakes Avengers. Understandably, this made the team very angry.
- In Marvel Knights Fantastic Four #30, the Fantastic Four travel to the Savage Land to destroy a killer satellite. When the team learns that they are, essentially, serving as garbage men, Ben Grimm's response is, "No disrespect to the, uh, Great Lakes Avengers or whatever, but don't they usually handle stuff like this?"
Bibliography
- West Coast Avengers (2nd series) #46, 48-49, 55, 60, 64, 69
- Avengers (1st series) #309, 313
- Avengers Annual #19
- Deadpool #10-11, 61
- Thunderbolts #15-17, 25
- JLA/Avengers #4
- G.L.A.: Misassembled (ISBN 0-7851-1621-4)
- GLX-Mas Special
- I Heart Marvel: Masked Intentions
- The Thing #8
- Cable & Deadpool #30
- Deadpool/GLI Summer Fun Spectacular
External links
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