The opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect any organizational stance.
Over the past fifteen years, the Avengers have become household names. Iron Man, Captain America and even villains like Loki and Thanos have solidified themselves in the cultural zeitgeist thanks to immense box office success.
But for every jade giant or talking tree that appears on the silver screen, there are hundreds of other characters left behind in the dusty pages of forgotten comic books — virtually none of whom are from the Midwest.
That was until 1989, when John Byrne created the Great Lakes Avengers. A ragtag team of new heroes with strange names and even stranger powers, they started their career in Milwaukee and appropriated the Avengers name in hopes of being the next big superhero team.
Despite this promising start helmed by one of the industry’s most influential writer-artists, the GLA have only averaged a single appearance per year since.
With depictions of the Midwest so rare in Marvel Comics, how well do the GLA actually represent the region? I sat down and read every appearance of the GLA to find out.
Well-Intentioned Oddballs (1989-1990)
John Byrne is one of the most prolific comic creators of the ‘70s and ‘80s. He is responsible for the most iconic stories of the X-Men and single-handedly redefined Superman into the version we know today.
Byrne is no stranger to creating a regional superhero team, as he previously created Alpha Flight. Drawing from his Canadian youth, the team represents a diverse swath of the country’s culture. But the same cannot be said for his take on a Midwestern team.
Other than placing them in Milwaukee and featuring the city’s Germania Building, their first appearance in “West Coast Avengers #46” has little to offer in terms of representation. Byrne wrote their leader with an accent that reads more easily as Southern, and while Alpha Flight’s costumes and abilities are love letters to Canada, the GLA have generic superhero garb, goofy names and ridiculous powers.
The team consists of Mr. Immortal, who is unable to die; Doorman, who turns his body into portals; Dinah Soar, a flying humanoid dinosaur; Flatman, a two-dimensional knockoff of Mr. Fantastic; and Big Bertha, a fashion model who can inflate her body size and bankrolls the team.
“This is an absurd portrayal of the Midwest,” Valentino Zullo, assistant professor of English at Ursuline College and associate editor for the Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, said. “Thanks, John Byrne, for thinking of us this way.”
Byrne only wrote the team for three issues and was never able to flesh out their backstories, but in a 2022 forum post, a fan asked about his ideas. The answer was standard superhero fare and had no grounding in the region.
“I think it rather recreates that sense that there’s a generic quality to the Midwest — that these heroes could be from anywhere,” Zullo said, “Is that iconic? Yeah, in the sense that that’s how we’re seen so often, right? As sort of just the everyman or the generic person.”
While Byrne wrote them as goofy underdogs, he still maintained their heroism and ability to successfully save the day. But different creators started to deviate from Byrne’s characterization, dialing up their dysfunction and how much the coastal Avengers teams dismiss them.
Humiliated Opportunists (1997-1999)
After a seven-year hiatus, the GLA (now called The Lightning Rods) are completely divorced from the region. In “Deadpool #10,” they have a new secret headquarters in San Francisco, and in “Thunderbolts,” they chase down the titular team through the Colorado Rockies.
The one Midwestern reference of this era comes in “Thunderbolts #25,” where extreme weather wreaks havoc across the planet. The GLA are briefly seen saving civilians in Medina, Ohio — a surprising call out, as the town doesn’t even crack the top 50 most populous cities in the state.
Writers would mimic this setup in the future (“Avengers: The Initiative #19,” “Fantastic Four #43”). Whenever there is a montage showing the planet’s heroes dealing with an alien invasion, there is a good chance the GLA will appear, proving that the threat is even affecting the Midwest.
Tragic Clowns (2005-2011)
The team’s first headlining title came in 2005 and was written by Dan Slott. It placed the team back in Milwaukee, working out of a dilapidated factory. The series is a dark comedy through-and-through with all the shocking adult humor that was commonplace at the time.
The members of the GLA were given graphic and ridiculous backstories (very different from what Byrne imagined), but, in my opinion, it makes the reader more attached to them than ever before.
“Flatman and Bertha and Mr. Immortal are laughable creatures … they’re basically just there to be humiliated over and over,” José Alaniz, professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Washington, said. “There’s a kind of poignancy in that and how they never give up.”
Alaniz has written extensively on representations of disability in comics and details in a 2014 essay how the series uses the aesthetics of the freak show while simultaneously elevating the characters’ humanity.
“The traditional mockery of the fat lady is rechanneled into parodying superhero tropes: if in the old days Clark Kent changed into his Superman costume in phone booths, Crawford demolishes one as she transforms into Bertha,” he wrote.
The era contains plenty of off-hand references to the team living in Wisconsin and having access to the world’s best dairy, but the only substantial Midwestern commentary comes in issue #2 of the miniseries.
Bertha (shrunk down to her alter ego, Ashley Crawford) is frustrated by the lack of high-paying gigs despite being the best model in the state. Her agent says, “You’re too big a fish for this pond. Get yourself to Paris, Milan, or pick a coast if you have to. But you’re dying here.”
She considers cutting her ties to the region and admits that the GLA is holding back her career and draining what money she makes. However, in the end, she knows that her teammates care about who she is on the inside rather than her appearance and she doubles down on her commitment to the group.
Scenes like these, where a character considers leaving home to pursue big city dreams, tap into a common Midwestern experience.
“Let’s not forget that the whole superhero genre really begins with the striving and the real urge of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster to get the hell out of Cleveland,” Alaniz said about the creators of Superman.
And Bertha is not the only character on the team that contemplates such a decision.
Later in this era, the GLA became complacent — content to let Squirrel Girl do the heavy lifting and untroubled by being looked down upon and cast aside. In “Age of Heroes #3,” Squirrel Girl decides to leave the team and return to NYC, believing that it will allow the team to grow.
She says to her squirrel sidekick, “The GLA have what it takes to be a really great team … but they’ll never get that chance, as long as we’re here hoggin’ the spotlight.”
Potential Progressives (2016-2017)
After taking a five-year break, the GLA got that chance in their first ongoing series written by Detroit native Zac Gorman. Marvel saw success with pairing a web comic writer with a goofball character in Ryan North’s “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” and sought to replicate the formula with Gorman.
He moved the team to Detroit and filled the run with problems he saw in his community like gentrification and urban renewal — embodied by Nain Rogue, a new villain inspired by the city’s folklore.
“That seemed to me like the honest thing to do,” Gorman said, “I didn’t want any world-conquering villains.”
Additionally, he rounded off the edges of their crude characterizations. Bertha is now a plus-sized model, ditching the bulimia trope from Slott’s run, and Flatman’s love life gets a full backstory in lieu of being a running gag. He also introduced Good Boy, a young girl who transforms into a fursona-inspired werewolf.
Gorman said he wanted to push the envelope of progressive social commentary even further, but received notes to tone it down, despite Marvel centering diversity at the time.
The run sees the team living out of an abandoned factory again, but Zullo said that the landscapes of the comic look far more authentic than the generic backgrounds of past appearances. Those details are the work of Will Robson, who, despite being from the United Kingdom, replicated the look of the Midwest without the need for guidance from Gorman.
While a highlight of the 2005 series was Bertha contemplating leaving the region, Gorman, who has roots firmly planted in Michigan, purposefully excluded similar conversations.
“I know it’s a real thing and some people grow up and that’s what they want to do, but I hate it,” Gorman said. “It’s the most grating trope. So that’s the last thing I would ever put in my book.”
Despite the run championing the region like never before, it did not sell well, and Gorman found out during the scripting of the seventh issue that it would be the series’ last. He ended the run with Deadpool (an Avenger at the time) barging in and callously revoking their right to use the Avengers name.
Gorman has not written for Marvel since, but reflected positively on his brief time with the publisher. He said it was a childhood dream to write a series for the company, and he was happy to sneak in small references for his hometown friends he grew up reading comics with. He said if the opportunity ever arose, he would absolutely write for the team again.
Regressive Cameos (2022-2026)
Since the 2016 series, the team has been reduced to shallow cameos, once again treating the characters and region as a joke.
In a 2022 web comic, “Midwest — Not Mid-Best,” the team faces Spider-Man foe Rhino in “middle of Nowhere, Indiana.” In the issue, Rhino retorts, “They sure don’t know how to make superheroes in the Midwest.”
At the very least, it acknowledged the region.
By contrast, Mr. Immortal and Doorman’s live-action cameos on Disney+ — which could have been their big break into the mainstream — completely ignored their team history and Midwestern background.
After reading every appearance of the Great Lakes Avengers, across decades of writers, reinventions and eras of the industry, I can firmly say that they are not a good representation of the Midwest.
For most of the team’s lifespan, they have reflected the coastal “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” in which the Great Lakes are a laughable counterpart to the coasts and the dairy industry is the only thing people know about Wisconsin.
But there is still hope.
“Even if the Great Lakes Avengers are not the best representation,” Zullo said, “So many comics creators are from here, have told the stories of our region and continue to tell the stories of our region.”
Brian Michael Bendis, Saladin Ahmed and Brian K. Vaughn are well known for their superhero work, but have also created comics that tell more grounded tales set in the region. Writers like Harvey Pekar and Derf Backderf have used the medium to deliver autobiographical stories and societal critiques specific to the Midwest.
So if you’re looking for stories of the Midwest in comics, stay away from superheroes. Because until another writer comes along who treats the region with dignity, the Great Lakes Avengers will likely remain Marvel’s greatest punchline and missed opportunity.
