The Thunderbolts And The Avengers Almost Never Got Along In The Comics... But Is That Something That's Going To Change In 'Doomsday'?

The Thunderbolts and the Avengers Almost Never Got Along in the Comics… But Is That Something That’s Going to Change in ‘Doomsday’?

DRRA May 10, 2025

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Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Thunderbolts*’

The cat is now fully out of the bag, with Marvel deciding to fully change the name of its latest superteam, Thunderbolts, into the far more apt The New Avengers. That decision now opens up a lot more questions for the MCU characters vis-a-vis the comic books from which they got those names. This might be especially worth studying for how this might lead into next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, because now, there are theoretically two conflicting Avengers teams trying to fight crime under that name.

It’s not uncommon for there to be multiple Avengers teams in the comics, just like the X-Men, and in fact, the Avengers were frequently in conflict with various teams using the moniker of “Thunderbolts.” The MCU’s current “New Avengers” are about as different from the teams in those comics as Thunderbolts was from most of the comics using that title. Will the MCU continue to borrow elements from the comics moving forward, or is this another sign that everything will be quite different?

Who Were the New Avengers in the Comics?

Image via Marvel Studios.

Marvel Comics has been publishing comics under the name The Avengers since 1963, originally a way for the great Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to pull together some of Marvel’s superheroes to fight against a greater evil. For many years, Marvel Studios built on that concept, in the lead up to 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers, focusing on early Avengers like Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, and Captain America. Ant-Man and the Wasp were part of that original team, although they wouldn’t be introduced into the movies until after both Black Widow and Hawkeye, part of the Avengers’ first big line-up change in the comics.

In 2004, The New Avengers was a very specific move by prolific comics writer Brian Michael Bendis to create a new roster that would include two of the company’s most popular characters, Spider-Man and Wolverine. Neither of them had ever been part of an Avengers line-up before that, despite Spider-Man predating most other Marvel characters. Bendis’ New Avengers came out of the Scarlet Witch going slightly insane, similar to what happened in the MCU leading up to 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but in the comics, it forced the Avengers to disband. One thing that Bendis’ New Avengers had in common with Thunderbolts is that the Sentry was an early member.

Bendis’ Avengers also included many of the characters previously written by Bendis, including Daredevil, Jessica Jones — a Bendis co-creation from his comic Alias — and Luke Cage. Oddly, these last three characters appeared in the earlier Netflix series from Marvel before joining forces there as The Defenders. Other New Avengers like Echo and Ronin have shown up in other corners of the MCU, but in the comics, Ronin was secretly Hawkeye, who would later abandon the Avengers to lead a team of Thunderbolts himself. The New Avengers remained a presence in the comics for over a decade, while taking part in major crossovers, including Civil War. At the time, it may have been confusing to fans of the MCU to pick up Avengers comics and see a different line-up from the movies. Eventually, Marvel caught up, and the MCU Avengers line-up started including more of the New Avengers heroes.

Blended image showing the Thunderbolts with comic book Sentry in the backfround

The MCU’s ‘Thunderbolts*’ Didn’t Give Us the Real Thunderbolts

The original Thunderbolts were longtime Avengers foes.

Two Avengers Teams May Be Better Than One

The cover image from Avengers by Jonathan Hickman: The Complete Collection Volume 1 — Image via Marvel Comics.

In the comics, there was never any direct conflict between the original Avengers and any form of New Avengers. Under writer Jonathan Hickman, Marvel started publishing The New Avengers as a companion to the regular Avengers comics with two different teams, mostly off on their own adventures, but often linking up to face a larger adversary. By that point, having two teams in the comics was more of a way to split up the dozens of heroes calling themselves “Avengers.” Hickman’s run also leaned heavily on time travel and the Multiverse, an unavoidable variable within the fourth and fifth phases of the MCU.

Many storylines and plot devices introduced during Bendis and Hickman’s The New Avengers run have shown up in the movies already, and not just Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man taking part in Captain America: Civil War, and Jeremy Renner briefly taking on the role of Ronin in Avengers: Endgame. Thanos’ “Horsemen” from Avengers: Infinity War were also introduced during Hickman’s run, while Bendis introduced the concept of “The Illuminati,” a group of Marvel’s most powerful and intelligent beings, which was co-opted for Doctor Strange into the Multiverse of Madness. Amidst all that, there was also the short-lived Dark Avengers, which included former members of Thunderbolts from the comics, but these essentially were super-villains assembled by President Norman Osborn when he wanted his own government Avengers team. Surely, that idea was what inspired having Julia Louis-Dreyfus‘ Valentina announce her own “New Avengers” at the end of Thunderbolts.

It’s probably way too early to speculate on what filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo may have planned for next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, other than there being a lot of MCU heroes taking on Robert Downey Jr.‘s Doctor Doom. In theory, these so-called New Avengers and some semblance of the former Avengers could just meet up and get along swimmingly, so that they can immediately join forces against Doom. Going by standard comic book storytelling, it’s more likely there will be a conflict between the two different Avengers teams, and those differences may have to be resolved early in next year’s movie. Either way, Dr. Doom will surely be taking advantage of any confusion and conflict that comes from having two Avengers teams, just like Thanos benefited from the chaos created in the MCU by the events of Captain America: Civil War.