Avengers Mansion Official Tumblr

(Unreality) Official Tumblr of the Avengers Mansion Museum, located on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Ask us anything!

[avengersmansion-official]

Hello Tumblr!

We're the staff of the Avengers Mansion Museum and Archives, here to answer any burning questions you have about the Avengers or superheroes in general!

We work behind the scenes, supporting the Avengers in public outreach via the Avengers Mansion Foundation and its accompanying museum (open to the public, stop on by if you're in NYC!) - and also supporting the Earth's Mightiest Heroes themselves through meticulous updating of their internal records database.

(Excerpts from an officially licensed Marvel Avengers comic featuring Mr. Jarvis answering the type of queries we field on a regular basis.)

Mr. Jarvis and Ms. Van Dyne (better known as the winsome Wasp!) suggested we do some outreach via social media, and we thought it was a great idea! So ask away! We're (mostly) an open book around here.

(thanks to @dcdreamblog for giving me the idea for this)

[avengersmansion-official]

Was talking with an older customer at work, and they kept talking about "Cap's Kooky Quartet", without explaining what that meant. So, uh...what does it mean?

"Caps's Kooky Quartet" is a colloquial name for the second (well, third if we're splitting hairs" roster of the Avengers, formed after the majority of founding members left the team.

(action shot of the "Kooky Quartet" in action, L-R: Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, Captain America (Steve Rogers), Hawkeye (Clint Barton))

The Avengers, as you know, were founded by Hulk (Bruce Banner), Thor Odinson, Iron Man (Tony Stark), Ant-Man/Giant-Man (Henry Pym), and the Wasp (Janet van Dyne). The Hulk left the team almost immediately, and Captain America took his place, being considered a retroactive founder of the team.

But this initial roster wasn't long for this world as all of the Avengers, save Captain America freshly out of the ice, were extremely busy with affairs in their personal lives. Thor left for Asgard shortly after a confrontation with the Masters of Evil, and serious consideration was given to disbanding the team.

And then Hawkeye broke into the mansion and kidnapped their butler.

Because God love Clint Barton, but early on he had some very... misguided ideas of what it meant to be a hero. Like attacking Iron Man to get his attention, or this stunt, which he claimed was to atone for falling into the service of Russian spies (because he was whipped for the Black Widow, long story short.)

Around the same time, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, having left the Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants, see the Avengers' open call for new members from Switzerland and apply for membership.

The Avengers, hard up for members after the Sub-Mariner predictably declined their invitation, accepted them into their ranks, concurrent with Iron Man, Hank Pym, and the Wasp resigning. That left Steve Rogers alone with the three reformed villains, two of whom were teenagers.

The media, not knowing what to make of this, dubbed the new lineup "Cap's Kooky Quartet". An era of Avengers history that began with the team fighting a minotaur and interfering in Siancongese politics, but that soon developed into one of the most consequential in team history.

[avengersmansion-official]

Returning from Hiatus!

Sorry about the extended hiatus, we had our hands full over here with an all hands on deck situation regarding a certain Latverian whose name rhymes with "boom". Regular posts will resume soon!

(ooc: my ADHD perfectionism got to me and once I started missing days I panicked and was suddenly completely disinterested in the blog, sorry about that!)

[avengersmansion-official]

There's a rumor that Lockjaw can talk, but chooses not to. Is this true?

(photo of Lockjaw, pet dog of the Inhuman Royal Family and the goodest boy)

A lie can cross the world in the time it takes the truth to put on its shoes, and this is absolutely the case with the wild "Lockjaw can talk but chooses not to" rumor.

A rumor that was perpetuated by a very unlikely source - the Inhuman Royal Family themselves, as a prank on the Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm. Two members of the Royal Family, cousins of Black Bolt Karnak and Gorgon, told Grimm as much, embellishing that Lockjaw was in fact a normal Inhuman mutated into canine form via Terrigenesis.

Quicksilver, the ex-husband of Princess Crystal, was quick to dispute that notion when we asked him about it, stating: "it is an insipid notion and depriving Lockjaw of the beauty and majesty that he intrinsically possesses to suggest he is anything other than what he appears to be. The intent, I believe, behind my then-cousins' machinations was to scare me into keeping my daughter from undergoing Terrigenesis by showing me what she might become. And to get cheap laughs by pulling the wool over the eyes of a respected member of the superhero community. An unsuccessful attempt, clearly. Now, if you're done asking me inane questions, I have more important business to attend to."

As far as we can tell, Lockjaw is a normal, albeit genetically mutated, English bulldog. (And according to sources, a very good boy.)

[avengersmansion-official]

Exploding communion wafers?

I did bait you into asking about this, so fair's fair.

(Marvel Comics dramatization of NIghtcrawler's encounter with the Church of Humanity's Supreme Pontiff.)

So we're all agreed that anti-mutant bigotry is bad, right? Great.

So please understand when I say that some anti-mutant hate groups get really bizarre with their hatred.

Case in point: the Church of Humanity. Not to be confused with the Purifiers, the pre-eminent anti-mutant Christian cult group led by William Stryker, the Church of Humanity is an offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to hating mutants. The Church of Humanity was founded by a former nun expelled from the Roman Catholic Church after she was raped by a priest and then accused of infidelity by that same priest. She then swore revenge on the RCC and... I guess she was also a bigot so that became a fundamental tenet?

I dunno, cult groups are weird.

Some time ago, the X-Man Nightcrawler (real name: Kurt Wagner) was ordained as a Catholic priest. Wagner came to faith and was baptized into the Church as a youth, at some point while traveling with a Romani circus troupe in Europe, and took a leave of absence from the X-Men for a time to attend seminary and become ordained.

Or so he thought.

It's appropriate to note here that Wagner has blue skin so dark that he can reportedly disappear in shadows, solid yellow eyes with no visible pupils, a pointed tail, and three fingers on each hand. In short, he looks like a demon. And despite that, he's often considered by subject matter experts to be the moral center of the X-Men and one of their most upstanding members.

Remember that, it'll be important shortly.

As it turned out, Nightcrawler's ordainment was part of a plot by the Church of Humanity to get him elected Pope, and then reveal that the new Pope is a mutant with a demonic appearance, somehow painting mutantkind as the Antichrist?

Look, I never said the bigots' plans were good. (And never mind that - as we were all reminded not too long ago - Vatican politics among the cardinals are such that Wagner probably wouldn't have been elected Pope in the first place.)

But that wasn't the Church's entire plot - once Wagner was in place as the Pope, the Church was going to distribute special communion wafers rigged to explode to faithful Catholics the world over, thereby simulating the Rapture and destroying the Church.

Never mind that Catholics don't believe in the Rapture.

The Church of Humanity's leader took her own life following a battle with the X-Men, and they haven't been heard from since. All known members have been excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and many are serving prison time for acts of terrorism.

Long story short: bigots and people with vendettas come up with some insane ways to make their agendas known.

Oh, and the Church of Humanity also crucified several X-Men and associates on the front lawn of the Xavier Institute in the midst of this whole thing. Because again, bigots have never been anything but reasonable.

[avengersmansion-official]

What's the difference between the Serpent Squad and Serpent Society?

One has dental.

No, really.

Okay, actual context.

(Newspaper photo of the Serpent Society from a recent job, from L-R: Black Racer, Puff Adder, Viper, Princess Python, Boomslang, Cobra, Cottonmouth, Bushmaster, Asp, Coachwhip, Diamondback, Anaconda.)

The original organization known as the Serpent Squad was formed by a pair of criminal brothers: Captain America foe Jordan Dixon (ne Stryke), alias the Viper, and Leopold Stryke, aka the Eel, as well as Klaus Voorhees, alias the Cobra, a foe of Thor's. They had an amazing master plan to... ruin Captain America's reputation via false advertising.

Supervillains, I swear.

Anyway, Cap and the Falcon put them away and that was that.

At least, it was until the better-known Viper, the international, HYDRA-affiliated terrorist born Ophelia Sarkissian, killed Dixon and took over the Squad, adding Circus of Crime member (yes, that's a thing) Princess Python to their number.

Cap beat them. Again. But that didn't stop them.

Because everyone's favorite criminal oil company, Roxxon, put together a team that became embroiled in what is now known as the "Serpent Crown Affair." This team consisted of four new members: Blanche Sitznski (Anaconda), Tanya Sealey (Black Mamba), Roland Burroughs (Death Adder), and most crucially, a man named Seth Voelker (Sidewinder).

(photo of Seth Voelker as Sidewinder from a recent confrontation with the Avengers)

Seth Voelker is one of the few supervillains who has earned our respect because of his sheer business acumen. After his mission for Roxxon, Voelker decided to look higher in scope. To quote one Miles O'Brien:

(screencap of Miles O'Brien from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with the subtitle "He was more than a hero. He was a union man.")

Sidewinder formed an organization that was the first of its kind: a union for supervillains. Specifically, snake-themed supervillains. He recruited a dozen of his fellows and assembled them together, introducing his concept: mutual aid for herpetological horrors.

Not only would all Serpent Society members get a guaranteed minimum payout from any job they pulled as well as a generous benefits package, Sidewinder would personally liberate them from jail using his teleportation cloak.

Their first major job led to them killing George Tarleton, the Advanced Idea Mechanics leader known as MODOK, which drew both the attention of the rest of the underworld and of Captain America. This would be both a major factor in their success and in Voelker's undoing.

Because this attention attracted Captain America and his allies - including one of their own number, Rachel Leighton (Diamondback), who had begun to fall in love with Cap. And it also caught the Viper's eye. Sarkissian infiltrated the Society with a handful of her own loyalists, persuaded others to her side, and deposed Sidewinder as the group's leader.

And then, she poisoned Washington DC's water supply in order to turn the president and everyone else there into snake-people. Subtlety, thy name is not Ophelia Sarkissian.

Anyway, Captain America took her down, and Klaus Voorhees, now King Cobra, replaced her as Society leader. Some time later, the original Viper returned and rebranded the organization as "Serpent Solutions", which opposed Sam Wilson as Captain America, and as of late opposed the Avengers Emergency Response Squad with more than twenty snake-themed villains now part of their ranks.

Where they keep finding them, I'll never know.

[krinsbez]

...

How many snake-themed villains are there, anyways?

[avengersmansion-official]

Clearly plenty enough to make a whole team of them. I don't know where they keep finding them.

[avengersmansion-official]

You might not be the best person to ask this but this has always bothered me

Why are vampires called Homines Nocturnae?

I understand it with mutants and Atlanteans, homo super and homo mermanus as they are human subspecies capable of interbreeding similar to the extinct homo Neanderthalensis

But vampires shouldn’t technically be classified as a species?

Now to preface this, I am not trying to deny the personhood of vampires, there are many vampires who choose not to feed on unwilling humans or who even help humans, if I recall jubilee was a vampire for a while

But vampirism as far as I’m aware is a viral infection/curse that can affect a multitude of diffirent species, mutants humans and Atlanteans can be infected, as well as cows and even falcon’s pet falcon redwing,

and people with regenerative healing capabilities like wolverine or even spider-man can fight off said infection,

So scientifically speaking “vampires” aren’t a species.

Okay, so evolutionary biology isn't really our field but we'll take a stab at this. So, vampires.

(artist's rendition of Dracula and various other vampires and superhero encounters with vampires; we don't have any photos of them for obvious reasons)

So everything you've said is exactly right - mutants (popularly Homo sapiens superior, properly H. sapiens mutatis) and Atlanteans (H. sapiens mermanus) are both subspecies of human who are capable of producing viable offspring with baseline humans.

And those two are also the only human-adjacent species on Earth that there haven't been fights over the taxonomy of. (And even with mutants it's heavily debated, given that the term Homo superior was an invention of Magneto and is ideologically charged.) Even from just a surface-level look at the literature, I can tell there's a LOT of debate between scientists over the nomenclature, to the point that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has sort of thrown up their hands and said "you all figure this out among yourselves, don't bother me until you've sorted it out."

As you said, vampires are considered Homines nocturnae, Latin for "night humans" but that's extremely questionable as a classification because, as you said, vampires aren't properly a subspecies in the way we understand them. Sort of.

See, all vampires are descendants of the original vampire, Varnae, but not by blood. Rather, each vampire is the inheritor of Varnae's curse, spread via the injection of an enzyme contained in vampire saliva into a victim's bloodstream, usually from a bite on the side of the neck. This enzyme transforms the victim's body over the course of three days, transforming them into a walking corpse with superhuman abilities and an insatiable urge to feed on the blood of others (thereby spreading the curse further).

All that to say, yeah vampires shouldn't really have their own taxonomical classification in the way humans do. Even though they are fundamentally biologically different from humans, a. they're basically corpses with souls still attached (if you believe in such a thing) and not not human, and b. they're creatures of magic, not science, and don't really fit into any scientific classification we can assign them.

Not that it stops some from trying. Because there are some scientists out there who absolutely would love to have the credit for discovering vampires as a "new species" like it's some rare frog in Central America and rushed to get them a proper Latin name to do so. And, like the Inhumans' nonsense Latin name (Inhomo supremis), it stuck.

At least the names for the Eternals (Homo immortus) and Deviants (Homo descendus) make sense, given they're properly separate species from humans (and there's a fair amount of argument over whether Deviants can even be considered a single species given their extremely variable genetic expression).

[krinsbez]

...

How THE FUCK did the Inhumans, who routinely breed with us H. sapiens sapiens and produce fertile offspring, get labeled as a separate friggin GENUS?

[avengersmansion-official]

The good old J. Jonah Jameson special, that's how.

[avengersmansion-official]

You might not be the best person to ask this but this has always bothered me

Why are vampires called Homines Nocturnae?

I understand it with mutants and Atlanteans, homo super and homo mermanus as they are human subspecies capable of interbreeding similar to the extinct homo Neanderthalensis

But vampires shouldn’t technically be classified as a species?

Now to preface this, I am not trying to deny the personhood of vampires, there are many vampires who choose not to feed on unwilling humans or who even help humans, if I recall jubilee was a vampire for a while

But vampirism as far as I’m aware is a viral infection/curse that can affect a multitude of diffirent species, mutants humans and Atlanteans can be infected, as well as cows and even falcon’s pet falcon redwing,

and people with regenerative healing capabilities like wolverine or even spider-man can fight off said infection,

So scientifically speaking “vampires” aren’t a species.

Okay, so evolutionary biology isn't really our field but we'll take a stab at this. So, vampires.

(artist's rendition of Dracula and various other vampires and superhero encounters with vampires; we don't have any photos of them for obvious reasons)

So everything you've said is exactly right - mutants (popularly Homo sapiens superior, properly H. sapiens mutatis) and Atlanteans (H. sapiens mermanus) are both subspecies of human who are capable of producing viable offspring with baseline humans.

And those two are also the only human-adjacent species on Earth that there haven't been fights over the taxonomy of. (And even with mutants it's heavily debated, given that the term Homo superior was an invention of Magneto and is ideologically charged.) Even from just a surface-level look at the literature, I can tell there's a LOT of debate between scientists over the nomenclature, to the point that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has sort of thrown up their hands and said "you all figure this out among yourselves, don't bother me until you've sorted it out."

As you said, vampires are considered Homines nocturnae, Latin for "night humans" but that's extremely questionable as a classification because, as you said, vampires aren't properly a subspecies in the way we understand them. Sort of.

See, all vampires are descendants of the original vampire, Varnae, but not by blood. Rather, each vampire is the inheritor of Varnae's curse, spread via the injection of an enzyme contained in vampire saliva into a victim's bloodstream, usually from a bite on the side of the neck. This enzyme transforms the victim's body over the course of three days, transforming them into a walking corpse with superhuman abilities and an insatiable urge to feed on the blood of others (thereby spreading the curse further).

All that to say, yeah vampires shouldn't really have their own taxonomical classification in the way humans do. Even though they are fundamentally biologically different from humans, a. they're basically corpses with souls still attached (if you believe in such a thing) and not not human, and b. they're creatures of magic, not science, and don't really fit into any scientific classification we can assign them.

Not that it stops some from trying. Because there are some scientists out there who absolutely would love to have the credit for discovering vampires as a "new species" like it's some rare frog in Central America and rushed to get them a proper Latin name to do so. And, like the Inhumans' nonsense Latin name (Inhomo supremis), it stuck.

At least the names for the Eternals (Homo immortus) and Deviants (Homo descendus) make sense, given they're properly separate species from humans (and there's a fair amount of argument over whether Deviants can even be considered a single species given their extremely variable genetic expression).

[avengersmansion-official]

What's the difference between the Serpent Squad and Serpent Society?

One has dental.

No, really.

Okay, actual context.

(Newspaper photo of the Serpent Society from a recent job, from L-R: Black Racer, Puff Adder, Viper, Princess Python, Boomslang, Cobra, Cottonmouth, Bushmaster, Asp, Coachwhip, Diamondback, Anaconda.)

The original organization known as the Serpent Squad was formed by a pair of criminal brothers: Captain America foe Jordan Dixon (ne Stryke), alias the Viper, and Leopold Stryke, aka the Eel, as well as Klaus Voorhees, alias the Cobra, a foe of Thor's. They had an amazing master plan to... ruin Captain America's reputation via false advertising.

Supervillains, I swear.

Anyway, Cap and the Falcon put them away and that was that.

At least, it was until the better-known Viper, the international, HYDRA-affiliated terrorist born Ophelia Sarkissian, killed Dixon and took over the Squad, adding Circus of Crime member (yes, that's a thing) Princess Python to their number.

Cap beat them. Again. But that didn't stop them.

Because everyone's favorite criminal oil company, Roxxon, put together a team that became embroiled in what is now known as the "Serpent Crown Affair." This team consisted of four new members: Blanche Sitznski (Anaconda), Tanya Sealey (Black Mamba), Roland Burroughs (Death Adder), and most crucially, a man named Seth Voelker (Sidewinder).

(photo of Seth Voelker as Sidewinder from a recent confrontation with the Avengers)

Seth Voelker is one of the few supervillains who has earned our respect because of his sheer business acumen. After his mission for Roxxon, Voelker decided to look higher in scope. To quote one Miles O'Brien:

(screencap of Miles O'Brien from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with the subtitle "He was more than a hero. He was a union man.")

Sidewinder formed an organization that was the first of its kind: a union for supervillains. Specifically, snake-themed supervillains. He recruited a dozen of his fellows and assembled them together, introducing his concept: mutual aid for herpetological horrors.

Not only would all Serpent Society members get a guaranteed minimum payout from any job they pulled as well as a generous benefits package, Sidewinder would personally liberate them from jail using his teleportation cloak.

Their first major job led to them killing George Tarleton, the Advanced Idea Mechanics leader known as MODOK, which drew both the attention of the rest of the underworld and of Captain America. This would be both a major factor in their success and in Voelker's undoing.

Because this attention attracted Captain America and his allies - including one of their own number, Rachel Leighton (Diamondback), who had begun to fall in love with Cap. And it also caught the Viper's eye. Sarkissian infiltrated the Society with a handful of her own loyalists, persuaded others to her side, and deposed Sidewinder as the group's leader.

And then, she poisoned Washington DC's water supply in order to turn the president and everyone else there into snake-people. Subtlety, thy name is not Ophelia Sarkissian.

Anyway, Captain America took her down, and Klaus Voorhees, now King Cobra, replaced her as Society leader. Some time later, the original Viper returned and rebranded the organization as "Serpent Solutions", which opposed Sam Wilson as Captain America, and as of late opposed the Avengers Emergency Response Squad with more than twenty snake-themed villains now part of their ranks.

Where they keep finding them, I'll never know.

[avengersmansion-official]

Do you have any info on the teen brigade?

Ah, the Teen Brigade. We certainly do have information on them, the only question is "which one"?

Because, as with many names in this world, the Teen Brigade is now a legacy. Albeit, a legacy with a very tenuous connection to the original, but a legacy nonetheless and an interesting one.

(Panel from Marvel's Avengers #1, depicting a dramatization of Rick Jones's Teen Brigade meeting the original Avengers.)

The Teen Brigade has a storied history as a behind-the-scenes group of teenagers aiding heroic figures that stretches back to the time of the First World War. Started as a grassroots organization by teenaged admirers of the Phantom Eagle who were too young to enlist and fight in the Great War but wanted to assist, the original Teen Brigade gathered intel to aid the Eagle and his team, Freedom's Five, using early shortwave radio to communicate with one another at points across America.

This Teen Brigade was followed by other, successor groups as members aged into adulthood and new members joined. The Brigade operated as a whisper network of young amateur radio enthusiasts through the 20th century, but suffered a steep decline with the advent of other forms of communication - specifically, the Internet.

By the time of the modern age of heroes, Rick Jones was one of only a handful of members of the Brigade remaining - and yet, his Brigade will probably be remembered as the most impactful in history, as it was his distress signal that caused the formation of the Avengers. Jones's Brigade would aid the Avengers on several early missions before, too, fading into obscurity.

Enter the "new" Teen Brigade.

(Photo of Ms. America Chavez from Chavez's Instagram, I'd post what Chavez actually looked like during her time with the Teen Brigade but I don't want her to hurt me.)

Another incarnation of the Teen Brigade made a splash recently, this one led by the mysterious young man known as Ultimate Nullifier (yes, just like the dangerous weapon that the Fantastic Four used against Galactus. no, we don't know why, this man is a complete enigma). Nullifier was joined by his then-girlfriend Ms. America Chavez (yes, she's a very out-and-proud lesbian, no, we haven't asked her about this because it seems to be a sore spot), as well as depowered mutants Barnell Bohusk and Angel Salvadore, and the In-Betweener. A cosmic entity representing the balance between order and chaos.

Again, no clue there.

They aided the Defenders of the time from the shadows, fighting against the group known as the Young Masters, who would later come into conflict with the students at the Avengers Academy in the employ of Jeremy Briggs. And at this point I'm just writing filler because this is just about all we know about this Teen Brigade.

Presumably some iteration of the Teen Brigade is still around, doing what they've always done, but nothing has caused them to come out of the shadows just yet.

[dappercat123]

I don’t think the most recent iteration wants the federal government knowing too much about them

[avengersmansion-official]

Knowing Ms. Chavez's opinions on such things, I wouldn't be surprised.

[avengersmansion-official]

Is the Doctor Nemesis who works with the X-Men the same one who fought the Invaders?

Oh gosh, that guy. Talk about weird, even by X-Men standards. James Bradley is one of those guys that we're lucky to have on our side (ostensibly), because if he wasn't.... shudder.

(photo of James Bradley, alias Doctor Nemesis, taken at a Krakoan state function)

James Bradley was born sometime in the early 20th century, and his fate was intertwined with that of the X-Men from birth, it seemed. Delivered by his future self (more timey-wimey nonsense, as if the X-Men didn't already have enough of that going on...), Bradley was the child of the inventor of the first Sentinel robot prototype, Nicola Bradley.

In adolescence - as they do - Bradley's mutant powers emerged, granting him an enhanced intellect that enabled him to become a highly skilled polymath, talented across a range of sciences comparable to the range studied by Reed Richards in modern times.

In the 1930s, Bradley met and began to work with Dr. Phineas T. Horton, creator of the original Human Torch. Bradley made his own android, Volton, but his partnership with Horton was not to last. After warning Bradley not to publicize his work for fear of the flammable nature of the Torch, Horton went ahead and did so himself. Feeling betrayed, Bradley left Horton.

Operating as a doctor at Mercy Hospital in New York, Bradley then took the nom de guerre that he's best known by: Doctor Nemesis, becoming a vigilante who fought mobsters and fifth columnists in New York. His heroic career culminating in stopping a criminal known as the Surgeon from spreading the Black Plague around New York using trained rats. The Surgeon turned out to be none other than his hospital superintendent.

Dejected and feeling unappreciated, he became easy prey for the Nazis, who offered him a new lease at life. He began calling himself "Doctor Death", and organized a league of other dejected, Nazi-sympathizer superheroes called Battle Axis. This group is the one that fought the Invaders - although it was Volton, Bradley's own creation, that struck the final blow against him.

Left for dead, Bradley went into hiding, following Nazi war criminals to Argentina where he'd spend the next several decades hunting them down and modifying his body to ensure his longevity via a series of chemical cocktails and surgical implants.

These modifications allowed him to survive the Decimation unscathed, and get recruited by the X-Men, joining their "X-Club" of scientists in San Francisco. He's been loosely affiliated with the X-Men and mutant causes ever since.

And like I said before, thank goodness. As intelligent as some criminal masterminds - guys like Graviton, Thunderball, and the Wizard - are, Doctor Nemesis is at another level, closer to Doctor Doom than any of the above. And trust me, after what we've just been through, we don't need another Doom.

[krinsbez]

...

That is a very strange career path.

[avengersmansion-official]

Can't argue with you there.

[avengersmansion-official]

Do you have any info on the teen brigade?

Ah, the Teen Brigade. We certainly do have information on them, the only question is "which one"?

Because, as with many names in this world, the Teen Brigade is now a legacy. Albeit, a legacy with a very tenuous connection to the original, but a legacy nonetheless and an interesting one.

(Panel from Marvel's Avengers #1, depicting a dramatization of Rick Jones's Teen Brigade meeting the original Avengers.)

The Teen Brigade has a storied history as a behind-the-scenes group of teenagers aiding heroic figures that stretches back to the time of the First World War. Started as a grassroots organization by teenaged admirers of the Phantom Eagle who were too young to enlist and fight in the Great War but wanted to assist, the original Teen Brigade gathered intel to aid the Eagle and his team, Freedom's Five, using early shortwave radio to communicate with one another at points across America.

This Teen Brigade was followed by other, successor groups as members aged into adulthood and new members joined. The Brigade operated as a whisper network of young amateur radio enthusiasts through the 20th century, but suffered a steep decline with the advent of other forms of communication - specifically, the Internet.

By the time of the modern age of heroes, Rick Jones was one of only a handful of members of the Brigade remaining - and yet, his Brigade will probably be remembered as the most impactful in history, as it was his distress signal that caused the formation of the Avengers. Jones's Brigade would aid the Avengers on several early missions before, too, fading into obscurity.

Enter the "new" Teen Brigade.

(Photo of Ms. America Chavez from Chavez's Instagram, I'd post what Chavez actually looked like during her time with the Teen Brigade but I don't want her to hurt me.)

Another incarnation of the Teen Brigade made a splash recently, this one led by the mysterious young man known as Ultimate Nullifier (yes, just like the dangerous weapon that the Fantastic Four used against Galactus. no, we don't know why, this man is a complete enigma). Nullifier was joined by his then-girlfriend Ms. America Chavez (yes, she's a very out-and-proud lesbian, no, we haven't asked her about this because it seems to be a sore spot), as well as depowered mutants Barnell Bohusk and Angel Salvadore, and the In-Betweener. A cosmic entity representing the balance between order and chaos.

Again, no clue there.

They aided the Defenders of the time from the shadows, fighting against the group known as the Young Masters, who would later come into conflict with the students at the Avengers Academy in the employ of Jeremy Briggs. And at this point I'm just writing filler because this is just about all we know about this Teen Brigade.

Presumably some iteration of the Teen Brigade is still around, doing what they've always done, but nothing has caused them to come out of the shadows just yet.

[krinsbez]

Huh, had not known it had that kinda pedigree.

Also, baffled as to how a cosmic entity qualifies as a teen.

[avengersmansion-official]

Your guess is as good as mine. I could ask America, but again, sore spot.

[avengersmansion-official]

Is the Doctor Nemesis who works with the X-Men the same one who fought the Invaders?

Oh gosh, that guy. Talk about weird, even by X-Men standards. James Bradley is one of those guys that we're lucky to have on our side (ostensibly), because if he wasn't.... shudder.

(photo of James Bradley, alias Doctor Nemesis, taken at a Krakoan state function)

James Bradley was born sometime in the early 20th century, and his fate was intertwined with that of the X-Men from birth, it seemed. Delivered by his future self (more timey-wimey nonsense, as if the X-Men didn't already have enough of that going on...), Bradley was the child of the inventor of the first Sentinel robot prototype, Nicola Bradley.

In adolescence - as they do - Bradley's mutant powers emerged, granting him an enhanced intellect that enabled him to become a highly skilled polymath, talented across a range of sciences comparable to the range studied by Reed Richards in modern times.

In the 1930s, Bradley met and began to work with Dr. Phineas T. Horton, creator of the original Human Torch. Bradley made his own android, Volton, but his partnership with Horton was not to last. After warning Bradley not to publicize his work for fear of the flammable nature of the Torch, Horton went ahead and did so himself. Feeling betrayed, Bradley left Horton.

Operating as a doctor at Mercy Hospital in New York, Bradley then took the nom de guerre that he's best known by: Doctor Nemesis, becoming a vigilante who fought mobsters and fifth columnists in New York. His heroic career culminating in stopping a criminal known as the Surgeon from spreading the Black Plague around New York using trained rats. The Surgeon turned out to be none other than his hospital superintendent.

Dejected and feeling unappreciated, he became easy prey for the Nazis, who offered him a new lease at life. He began calling himself "Doctor Death", and organized a league of other dejected, Nazi-sympathizer superheroes called Battle Axis. This group is the one that fought the Invaders - although it was Volton, Bradley's own creation, that struck the final blow against him.

Left for dead, Bradley went into hiding, following Nazi war criminals to Argentina where he'd spend the next several decades hunting them down and modifying his body to ensure his longevity via a series of chemical cocktails and surgical implants.

These modifications allowed him to survive the Decimation unscathed, and get recruited by the X-Men, joining their "X-Club" of scientists in San Francisco. He's been loosely affiliated with the X-Men and mutant causes ever since.

And like I said before, thank goodness. As intelligent as some criminal masterminds - guys like Graviton, Thunderball, and the Wizard - are, Doctor Nemesis is at another level, closer to Doctor Doom than any of the above. And trust me, after what we've just been through, we don't need another Doom.

[nadertigerkay]

I guess when you start inviting guys like Apocalypse and Shaw to the X-Men it's starts to become a slippery slope from there.

[avengersmansion-official]

I mean, if you want to start down that road, Magneto was a bona fide terrorist for the first several years of his public career.

[avengersmansion-official]

Well here I am again wanting to know the context behind this dramatizaion:

Moon Knight was sane then huh?

Well, saner, at least. Mr. Knight, as he prefers to be known, tends to keep things rather close to the vest, so there's really not much public information to go off of regarding him. And given our policy here of respecting secret identities, we're not going to go digging.

However, according to psychiatric analysis conducted by Avengers staff counselor, Terrance Ward, and corroborated by accounts from Leonard Samson, here's what we know:

Mr. Knight appears to currently suffer from a severe form of dissociative identity disorder. While the number of alters he possesses is unknown, there at least appears to be a severe disconnect between Mr. Knight and whoever he is beneath the mask. Mr. Knight himself claims to be sane, and that any seeming symptoms of mental illness are a result of Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon, taking up residence in his brain.

Opinions on whether this "Khonshu" is truly the Egyptian deity (who does exist, the Netjeru are as real as Thor or Hercules) or a figment of Mr. Knight's imagination are mixed. Our magic experts seem to lean to the former opinion, but Mr. Knight won't submit himself for an examination of any sort, so we don't have a conclusive answer.

What we can tell is that whatever symptoms Mr. Knight exhibited were far less in his early career. Still present, likely, especially if "Khonshu" was inhabiting him at the time, but not to the degree that has been exhibited in more recent years.

To the point of that specific Marvel panel - while we like to refrain from secret identity speculation on this blog (we really don't want to encourage the Matt Murdock conspiracies), it's quite possible that Moon Knight was a man of some wealth, and could cover the man's medical bills himself. In addition, it wasn't entirely uncommon for the Avengers to do things like this - the Maria Stark Foundation had a quite generous endowment set aside for situations such as this.

[avengersmansion-official]

Is the Doctor Nemesis who works with the X-Men the same one who fought the Invaders?

Oh gosh, that guy. Talk about weird, even by X-Men standards. James Bradley is one of those guys that we're lucky to have on our side (ostensibly), because if he wasn't.... shudder.

(photo of James Bradley, alias Doctor Nemesis, taken at a Krakoan state function)

James Bradley was born sometime in the early 20th century, and his fate was intertwined with that of the X-Men from birth, it seemed. Delivered by his future self (more timey-wimey nonsense, as if the X-Men didn't already have enough of that going on...), Bradley was the child of the inventor of the first Sentinel robot prototype, Nicola Bradley.

In adolescence - as they do - Bradley's mutant powers emerged, granting him an enhanced intellect that enabled him to become a highly skilled polymath, talented across a range of sciences comparable to the range studied by Reed Richards in modern times.

In the 1930s, Bradley met and began to work with Dr. Phineas T. Horton, creator of the original Human Torch. Bradley made his own android, Volton, but his partnership with Horton was not to last. After warning Bradley not to publicize his work for fear of the flammable nature of the Torch, Horton went ahead and did so himself. Feeling betrayed, Bradley left Horton.

Operating as a doctor at Mercy Hospital in New York, Bradley then took the nom de guerre that he's best known by: Doctor Nemesis, becoming a vigilante who fought mobsters and fifth columnists in New York. His heroic career culminating in stopping a criminal known as the Surgeon from spreading the Black Plague around New York using trained rats. The Surgeon turned out to be none other than his hospital superintendent.

Dejected and feeling unappreciated, he became easy prey for the Nazis, who offered him a new lease at life. He began calling himself "Doctor Death", and organized a league of other dejected, Nazi-sympathizer superheroes called Battle Axis. This group is the one that fought the Invaders - although it was Volton, Bradley's own creation, that struck the final blow against him.

Left for dead, Bradley went into hiding, following Nazi war criminals to Argentina where he'd spend the next several decades hunting them down and modifying his body to ensure his longevity via a series of chemical cocktails and surgical implants.

These modifications allowed him to survive the Decimation unscathed, and get recruited by the X-Men, joining their "X-Club" of scientists in San Francisco. He's been loosely affiliated with the X-Men and mutant causes ever since.

And like I said before, thank goodness. As intelligent as some criminal masterminds - guys like Graviton, Thunderball, and the Wizard - are, Doctor Nemesis is at another level, closer to Doctor Doom than any of the above. And trust me, after what we've just been through, we don't need another Doom.

[avengersmansion-official]

Do you have any info on the teen brigade?

Ah, the Teen Brigade. We certainly do have information on them, the only question is "which one"?

Because, as with many names in this world, the Teen Brigade is now a legacy. Albeit, a legacy with a very tenuous connection to the original, but a legacy nonetheless and an interesting one.

(Panel from Marvel's Avengers #1, depicting a dramatization of Rick Jones's Teen Brigade meeting the original Avengers.)

The Teen Brigade has a storied history as a behind-the-scenes group of teenagers aiding heroic figures that stretches back to the time of the First World War. Started as a grassroots organization by teenaged admirers of the Phantom Eagle who were too young to enlist and fight in the Great War but wanted to assist, the original Teen Brigade gathered intel to aid the Eagle and his team, Freedom's Five, using early shortwave radio to communicate with one another at points across America.

This Teen Brigade was followed by other, successor groups as members aged into adulthood and new members joined. The Brigade operated as a whisper network of young amateur radio enthusiasts through the 20th century, but suffered a steep decline with the advent of other forms of communication - specifically, the Internet.

By the time of the modern age of heroes, Rick Jones was one of only a handful of members of the Brigade remaining - and yet, his Brigade will probably be remembered as the most impactful in history, as it was his distress signal that caused the formation of the Avengers. Jones's Brigade would aid the Avengers on several early missions before, too, fading into obscurity.

Enter the "new" Teen Brigade.

(Photo of Ms. America Chavez from Chavez's Instagram, I'd post what Chavez actually looked like during her time with the Teen Brigade but I don't want her to hurt me.)

Another incarnation of the Teen Brigade made a splash recently, this one led by the mysterious young man known as Ultimate Nullifier (yes, just like the dangerous weapon that the Fantastic Four used against Galactus. no, we don't know why, this man is a complete enigma). Nullifier was joined by his then-girlfriend Ms. America Chavez (yes, she's a very out-and-proud lesbian, no, we haven't asked her about this because it seems to be a sore spot), as well as depowered mutants Barnell Bohusk and Angel Salvadore, and the In-Betweener. A cosmic entity representing the balance between order and chaos.

Again, no clue there.

They aided the Defenders of the time from the shadows, fighting against the group known as the Young Masters, who would later come into conflict with the students at the Avengers Academy in the employ of Jeremy Briggs. And at this point I'm just writing filler because this is just about all we know about this Teen Brigade.

Presumably some iteration of the Teen Brigade is still around, doing what they've always done, but nothing has caused them to come out of the shadows just yet.

[avengersmansion-official]

Is there an official procedure when two superheroes or two supervillains or a superhero and a supervillain end up using the same supranym?

Again you ask about "official procedures" for things, and I get the sense that you think that the superhero community is far more organized than it actually is.

Because, again, I'm sad to say, there is no official procedure. Which makes the database engineer in me very sad. Legacy heroes and villains are one thing - it's easy enough to say "Clint Barton is Hawkeye I, Kate Bishop is Hawkeye II, Lester was Hawkeye III for a time, Barney Barton was Hawkeye IV."

What's more difficult is when two completely separate, unrelated heroes/villains/superbeings use the same codename and we have to figure out creative ways to disambiguate in our databases.

Case in point:

(File photo of Inez Temple, the mercenary known as "Outlaw.")

(Photo of Nigel Higgins, the so-called "British Punisher", alias Outlaw, taken at a Champions of Europe gathering.)

Inez Temple and Nigel Higgins are both entirely unrelated individuals who use the supranym "Outlaw", much to our consternation. This isn't an Electro situation, where there's a World War II-era robot who shares the name with a pair of modern-day superhuman criminals, but the robot has been inactive for long enough that it's basically irrelevant.

No, these two individuals are both active in the here and now, completely unaffiliated with one another, and as far as we can tell, have never even met.

So no, as much as we would like for them to meet and sort out IP rights to the "Outlaw" name, there is no formalized process or database registering codenames. (And with the SHRA still in recent memory, the very idea of any sort of registration among the super set is a non-starter for most of them.)