Marvel boss says there's only room for one X-Men member in Avengers

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Marvel’s Avengers have often been touted as Marvel’s all-star team, bringing together the greatest heroes from across the company’s pantheon of characters into an elite fighting unit. But as former Avengers editor-in-chief Tom Brevoort (now in charge of the X-Men titles) has revealed, there’s only room for one X-Man at the Avengers table.

This logic was revealed when a fan asked if Phoenix could join the Avengers or another non-X-Men team given his power, popularity, and lack of presence outside of the X-Men’s comic book world. In his response, Brevoort—who is also Marvel’s editor-in-chief—revealed his reasoning.

“I think it could be interesting depending on the circumstances, Iron. But since we’re already doing it with Storm, I don’t think it makes sense to double-dip at the same time,” Brevoort wrote in his Substack newsletter.

In August’s Avengers #17, the team will recruit Storm (a temporary member before) to become a key member of the team. This comes as the new X-Men relaunch “From the Ashes” does not include Storm on any of its three main teams, while also relaunching her solo series.

In retrospect, the last time an X-Men character joined the Avengers was in 2012, when Cannonball and Sunspot joined the Jonathan Hickman-era Avengers team. The most notable X-Men recruitment drive for the Avengers came in 2005, when Wolverine joined the team — a period that lasted several years.

For those thinking of Scarlet Witch (who debuted in the X-Men books), she is internally classified at Marvel as an Avengers character. Just like Mystique and Rogue, for example, are X-Men characters despite their debuts in Avengers-related books.

Outside of the core Avengers team, during Brevoort’s tenure as Avengers editor, the company launched a hybrid X-Men/Avengers team dubbed the “Uncanny Avengers.” In a previous newsletter, he explained that while it was a hybrid team, it was internally considered an Avengers book rather than an X-Men book.

“So far, Cian, I’ve edited every issue of Uncanny Avengers that we’ve published, with the exception of, I think, one annual. So it’s always been a book that’s lived on the Avengers side despite its obvious ties to the world of X,” Brevoort writes. “And if we were to do another iteration, I would expect that to be the case again. Why? Because that’s how I’ve built it. But it’s always been done with the cooperation of the X-Office.”

X-Men editor-in-chief Jordan D. White revealed that the Avengers or X-Men editor-in-chief has a say in whether a character can be “loaned” to another editor, citing Namor as an example. Namor was introduced as part of Hickman’s X-Men books but, according to White, was later removed from the X-Men books due to plans for the character in the Avengers book.

Long story short, this means that Marvel believes there is generally only one “chair” at the Avengers table for the X-Men at a time, and right now, it’s for Storm – not Phoenix, not Wolverine, not Doop (OK, I added that last one). As they say, plans change – but for now, this is the plan.

Stay up to date with Popverse’s Marvel coverage, including: Disney CEO Bob Iger promises Deadpool & Wolverine will be the biggest MCU movie “in a long time,” how Marvel Studios is now working “much more closely” to sell Marvel comics, how Marvel Comics’ boss said he was lost in 2023 (and how he’s finding himself again), Marvel Comics’ plans to fix its pricing woes, the supersized Children of the Atom: Marvel’s X-Men can’t evolve beyond their ’90s commercial peak, and the biggest lingering questions from Marvel Studios’ movies and TV shows.