The X-Men and the Avengers are Marvel’s two greatest teams. The Avengers have been on that level since day one, but it took years before the X-Men reached the top of the card. Since then, it’s arguable that the X-Men have taken the top spot from the Avengers, even with the Avengers’ part in the dominance of the MCU. The X-Men have starred in amazing stories over the years, at the very least creating superhero stories with more depth than the Avengers. The X-Men have had multiple eras, whereas even at their most different roster-wise, the Avengers are always the same basic team. The Avengers vs. X-Men have been big business for a long time, and Marvel fans all have on opinion on which team is better. However, it’s unequivocally the X-Men.
The main difference between the X-Men and the Avengers is the complexity of the X-Men and this is why the X-Men will always be better than the Avengers. This doesn’t mean that the Avengers aren’t a great team that have some amazing stories under their belt; the Avengers have often been the engine that drives the Marvel Universe. However, if you compare the type of stories that Avengers comics tell, they have nothing on the X-Men. The X-Men have developed into the greatest tea in the Marvel Universe, and I can prove it.
There’s an old idea that the Avengers are the varsity football team of the Marvel Universe, and the X-Men are the weird arty goth kids. There’s honestly a lot of truth to this idea. Avengers stories are at their best when they’re in the “big game”, battling against the most difficult foes. The Avengers don’t really work as well when it comes to storytelling with any more depth than that. There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of stories at all — Avengers stories are often the ultimate superhero stories. However, look at the one time they tried to put the Avengers in more serious X-Men type of story — Rick Remender’s Uncanny Avengers — and the Avengers come off much worse than the X-Men. They’re the stodgy status quo, and their view of the world leaves a lot to be desired. It’s not so much that the Avengers don’t care about the problems of mutants, it’s more that they’re busy fighting cosmic gods and world-shaking foes. They can’t just drop everything to fight for mutants unless it’s a world-endangering event. That’s the Avengers’ wheelhouse and they’re amazing at it. However, the X-Men work better in both types of stories.
You can put the X-Men into the same kinds of stories you put the Avengers in — they’re a powerful enough team that they can face off against all-powerful forces of destruction, and have had to save the world from foes like Magneto, Apocalypse, the Adversary, and many, many others. However, the X-Men can also work in deeper stories, ones that talk about the problems of modern society. The best example of this is “God Loves, Man Kills”. This story sees the X-Men and Magneto team up against Reverend Stryker and the Purifiers. It doesn’t have world-ending stakes, but it deals with a problem that we have in the real world: the place of religion in bigotry.
This is a story that only the X-Men can tell because it’s the entire point of the X-Men. The X-Men aren’t a traditional superhero team, they’re a group that exists to fight against bigotry and hatred. This little difference between them and the Avengers are what allows the X-Men to tell completely different kinds of stories. The X-Men can star in any kind of story that you can have the Avengers in, but the Avengers can’t be in any kind of story that the X-Men star in. You can have the Avengers fight against bigotry, but it’s not what the team is built for. This is what made the X-Men better than the Avengers.
The best example of why the X-Men are better than the Avengers is Carol Danvers. Avengers #200 is the most terrible Avengers story of them all, revolving around Carol falling in love with her rapist and the Avengers being cool with it. Do you know who wasn’t cool with this? Former Ms. Marvel writer and then-current Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont. Claremont wrote Avengers Annual #10, which undid the worst parts of Avengers #200, then brought Carol over to Uncanny X-Men, and made her a much better character. In fact, Carol Danvers wouldn’t be where she is today, as Captain Marvel and a multi-time leader of the Avengers without the X-Men. The X-Men are place where characters can thrive, because not every story has to be about the big fights; they can be about the people in the comic.
I love the Avengers. I think every Marvel fan does. They’re the place we go to see all of our favorite Marvel heroes fighting evil together. However, the X-Men are just better. There’s things about X-Men stories that you don’t get from Avengers stories. Maybe it’s because X-Men books are the only home to so many characters, whereas the Avengers usually have members with their own books, so that more important character moments happen in the X-Men. The Chris Claremont run of Uncanny X-Men changed the way comics were written forever, and that’s not really something you can say about the Avengers, since they are basically just the Marvel Justice League. They’re a copy of something else, but the X-Men are an original.
Do you like the Avengers more than the X-Men? Sound off in the comments below.
The debate over whether Marvel’s Avengers or the X-Men are better has long raged, but there’s only ever been one answer. Read More