Ten Things About the Avengers

I am completely stealing this list of interesting notes from this site because (1) it is really interesting and I don't want to have to keep up with bookmarking this page and (2) no one reads this blog anyway. Here is a link to the author's new book.

So here it goes:

1. The Hulk is green not because of gamma irradiation or because his skin is essentially bruising when he rapidly transforms from Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk; rather it was due to printing limitations at the time. The Hulk was originally gray, but that color of ink proved too expensive to use on a regular basis, so Marvel opted for the far cheaper alternative of green.

2. The Avengers Mansion is the Avengers' base of operations in the comics, a beautiful estate once owned by Tony Stark's parents, nestled in the heart of Manhattan. A real estate company called Movoto ran the numbers and estimated that an unfurnished Avengers Mansion based on the reported location would cost you $113.2 million.

3. Odin's Ravens are more than just a non sequitur exclaimed by Ron Burgundy; they're an enduring part of both Norse mythology and the Thor canon. Odin famously had two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, which he used to send information back and forth between Asgard and Midgard (Earth). When Thor extracts Loki from the Quinjet toward the beginning of Avengers, two ravens can be seen flying overhead, which is a nice little Easter egg for mythological-inclined viewers.

4. The Wasp is one of the founding members of the Avengers in the comics, but she is nowhere to be seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Joss Whedon revealed in a Q&A at the Directors Guild of America that his original draft for "The Avengers" heavily featured the shrinking superhero, but he wound up having to cut her. The rumor on the street is that we may see her in flashback form in Ant-Man, but only time will tell.

5. Stan Lee isn't the only member of Marvel's creative team to appear in cameo roles. In Thor, writer J. Michael Straczynski can be seen as the first man trying to lift Thor's hammer Mjölnir, and legendary Thor writer Walt Simonson appears in the banquet scene at the end, sitting between Volstagg and Lady Sif. Likewise, in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," writer Ed Brubaker can been seen as a S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist.

6. Iron Man's armor has been worn by many people over the years, including Jim "Rhodey" Rhodes, Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, and Bethany Cabe. However, the most unexpected person to ever wear the iconic armor was Peter Parker's Aunt May, who appeared as the Invincible Golden Oldie in 1982's What If? #34. To be fair, she has been a herald of Galactus too, so it's not that ridiculous if you think about it.

7. The shawarma scene's origin can be traced back to Nicholas Brendon's audition for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After an excellent audition for the role of Xander, Brendon said, "Does anybody feel like shawarma? I feel like some shawarma!" Whedon recalled, "I was like, 'This guy speaks to me!' And that's when I knew there wasn't any other Xander." Clearly, the actor wasn't the only thing that had a lasting impact on Whedon.

8. Captain America may be called the "First Avenger" in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he was not a founding member of the team in the comics. Cap was still in deep freeze when the Avengers originally formed, and he didn't join the group until issue #4.

9. Star Wars actually wound up saving Marvel Comics from financial ruin in the late 1970s. In order to promote their then-unknown sci-fi story, the Star Wars team gave Marvel Comics the rights to a six-issue comic adaptation of the movie for essentially the price of free. Since two of the issues had to come out before the film premiered, there are many scenes and characters in the comics that do not appear in the final film. Case in point, Jabba the Hutt is a weird, jaundiced, bipedal walrus man rather than the slimy slug we all love to hate.

10. Agent Coulson's Captain America playing cards aren't just a clever piece of emotional manipulation to be used at Nick Fury's Machiavellian whims; they also contain an Easter egg. One of the cards features Captain America mid-punch, an homage to the famous cover of 1940's Captain America #1, which featured Cap throwing a haymaker into the face of Adolf Hitler himself. No wonder Coulson likes him so much.