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New Avengers by Brian Bendis Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Updated Jan 30, 2026! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting New Avengers (2005) by Brian Bendis comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Collecting Avengers: A Definitive Guide. Last updated January 2026 with titles scheduled for release through May 2026.

Collecting New Avengers by Brian Bendis (2005 – 2010)

NAvgV01 - 0001 The Avengers no longer existed in the wake of Brian Bendis’s shocking Avengers Disassembled, but a breakout from The Raft super-villain prison brings together a team of unlikely allies – classic Avengers Captain America and Iron Man, but also long-time solo heroes like Spider-Man! As they cooperate to wrangle the villains and dig deeper into the mystery of their breakout, they quickly realize they are a team of new Avengers.

This title offered an ever-changing cast of heroes who gathered only to be splintered again and again by events like Civil War and Secret Invasion. Altogether, the series descends into one of Marvel’s darkest periods before it resolves back to a unified set of Avengers teams at the end of Seige.

Along the way, scribe Brian Michael Bendis makes some unlikely changes to the Avengers franchise – Wolverine and Spider-Man join the team, and Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Spider-Woman, and Dr. Strange all become fixtures. In fact, after Civil War splinters the team and discards Iron Man and Ms. Marvel there are hardly any “classic” Avengers on the team, save for a disguised Hawkeye!

With the launch of this series, Marvel began the practice of releasing an initial “Premiere Hardcover” of each run before offering a trade paperbacks, meaning that there are always two editions of the same book with the same issues collected. Then, later, Marvel issued “Deluxe Hardcovers”to collect multiple editions of the original hardcovers (which quickly fall out of print). Finally, some single issues are also featured elsewhere as a part of event tie-ins or creation collections.

For a full reading order of this period of Avengers, see Avengers Reading Order: The Bendis Years.

There are several options for collecting this run of New Avengers:

Mighty Avengers and Ultimates – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Mighty Avengers & Ultimates comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated October 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

Looking for The Ultimates from Marvel’s Ultimate Universe? Head to the Guide to Marvel Ultimate Universe.

Mighty Avengers by Cho The original Mighty Avengers series emerges directly from the end of the Civil War event, which caused a schism in the Avengers. It featured an official, government-sanction team of Avengers sponsored by Iron Man and lead by Ms. Marvel. It’s also written in an intentionally nostalgic style to contrast with New Avengers, with narration and thought bubbles.

The title was dropped from the Marvel lineup for the Heroic Age in 2010 in favor of the pair of flagships, Avengers and New Avengers. However, it returned in 2014 during the Infinity event as a new, street-level team of brawlers. It was also a markedly diverse team focused on a number of black heroes.

The senior core of the team – Spectrum and Blue Marvel – carried over to Ultimates in All-New Marvel Now, as did its commitment to increased representation for Marvel’s heroes of color with the additions of Black Panther and Ms. America Chavez to the cast (as well as Captain Marvel).
[Read more…] about Mighty Avengers and Ultimates – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Collecting The Avengers Vol. 2 (1996-1997) & Vol. 3 (1998-2004) as graphic novels

Updated Sep 29 2025! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Avengers comic books from 1996 to 2004 – including Heroes Reborn and Avengers by Busiek & Pérez – via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated September 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2026.

Avengers: Reborn and Disassembled

This run continues from Avengers (1963) – see Guide to Avengers (1963 – 1996) for collection details.

In 1996, The Avengers were presumed dead at the hands of Onslaught in the Marvel Universe, but they were just hidden – trapped in a pocket dimension without realizing they had been removed from their own reality. This was an attempt by Marvel to revitalize some of their most-established (but not especially popular) properties by handing them to the creators who left them for Image Comics.

The experiment was short-lived, but Marvel took advantage of the heroes return to restart The Avengers third volume in 1998 with a bang – they brought in Kurt Busiek and classic DC artist George Perez.

The series remains popular to this day, as does the following run by Geoff John. However, Marvel hasn’t shown any recollection love to the two Chuck Austen stories that followed prior to Brian Bendis thoroughly disassembling the franchise to launch New Avengers. [Read more…] about Collecting The Avengers Vol. 2 (1996-1997) & Vol. 3 (1998-2004) as graphic novels

Avengers West Coast – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated June 28, 2026! The Avengers West Coast & Force Works definitive collecting guide and reading order for comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback format. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated June 2026 with titles scheduled for release through January 2027.

The Avengers had the best kind of problem in the early 80s, whether your perspective was from within comic book continuity or behind the scenes: there were just too many darn Avengers!

The Avengers had gradually shifted its focus from Marvel’s major heroes who anchored their own books (like Iron Man and Captain America) to a roster of characters that needed a team book to thrive. That meant plenty of fan favorite characters would be left out during any given run.

The best solution was to follow a trend set by Spider-Man and just recently by Chris Claremont’s X-Men: launch a second Avengers book!

West Coast Avengers launched with Hawkeye as a central focus. He was chief amongst those team-based, fan-favorite characters, hot off of his own limited series. Hawkeye was initially joined by his wife, Mockingbird, Tigra, and West Coast natives Wonder Man and Rhodey Rhodes as Iron Man.

From a story perspective, the central conceit of the book was that America was a big country, and the NYC-based team couldn’t always be responsive to threats across the nation. In practice, it allowed writers like Steve Engelhart, John Byrne, and Roy Thomas to tell big stories that still focused on character history and personalities. Byrne, in particular, used it to dig deeply into the story of Scarlet Witch.

As comics became more entrenched in extreme, violent themes, the relative staid Avengers team was disassembled in favor of an Iron Man lead Force Works. (The in-continuity reason was the team’s standoff with the UN Security Council over happenings in Genosha in the “Blood Ties” crossover in the penultimate issue of the series.)

Despite a flashy launch with a pop-up cover, Force Works never caught fire like the similarly themed X-Force, and was cancelled as part of the line-wide removal of Avengers in 1996 as they headed off to the Heroes Reborn pocket universe in the wake of Onslaught.

Marvel Hardcover & Trade Paperback Review, October 2011 Edition

November 15, 2011 by krisis

I’m here with my weekly peek at Marvel’s collected editions, packing recent and classic comic storylines into handy hardcovers and trade paperbacks.

Since I’m still at a bit of a lag, this week we’re taking a lot at all of October – and there were a slew of great collections that month! Read on for capsule reviews of the X-Men books out in October, plus the skinny on all of Marvel’s other new collected editions from last month.

If you’re looking for more X-Men books, head over to my Definitive Guide to Collecting X-Men Graphic Novels. Or, some X-background, read my Intro to X-Men (on a budget). Trying to decide where to jump in? Check out Where to Start Reading X-Men.

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Marvel X-Men Collection of the Month:
Daken: Dark Wolverine – Big Break Hardcover
Collects issues #10-14 and 9.1

Note: This is not the cover of the collection, though the issue does appear inside of it.

CK Says: Buy it! This isn’t the first time I’ve featured Daken as my top pick, and it won’t be the last. There’s something about the dastardly, amoral, bisexual, pheromone-exuding, tattooed, illegitimate son of Wolverine that I find delightfully subversive when written well, and a year into his solo outing Rob Williams has him down pat.

This collection finds Daken trying to take control of LA the only way he knows how – putting the screws to the existing bad-guys a la Joker in Dark Knight, and sleeping his way into secrets of the scene with a young up-and-coming actor.

The twist? Daken samples the street drug du jour and is both terrified and thrilled to find it shuts off his healing factor! The result are some bloodier-than-usual fights as Daken enjoys handicapping himself while tripping out in Ralph Steadman-esque illustrations. (PS: The interiors are not quite so froggy as the front cover.) Available for pre-order as a TPB.

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Marvel Non-X Collection of the Month:
Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman Vol. 4 TPB
Collects Fantastic Four #583-588

CK Says: Buy it. Writer Jonathan Hickman has re-made a Fantastic Four fan out of me with his operatic two-year run leading up to the issues in this collection. He divides comics’ first family with a war on multiple fronts against traditional foes like Galactus, Namor, and Annihilus as well as by their hard feelings at home, but this story is anything but old school.

Though the big build-up was for the death of a team-member, what’s really worth witnessing here is the rebirth of the FF franchise as one of Marvel’s hottest titles. Interior artist Steve Epting draws such stately, beautiful characters you’ll swear you’re reading Superman.

You may want to pick up Volumes 1, 2, and 3 as well – you can score the entire four-volume run for under $50! Also available in hardcover.

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What X-title do I hate with such a passion that I have to abstain from giving it a rating at all? Keep reading to find out, plus get capsule reviews of books from X-Men: Legacy, X-Factor, and X-23 and summaries of the rest of the Marvel Universe. [Read more…] about Marvel Hardcover & Trade Paperback Review, October 2011 Edition