Brian Bendis

Avengers & New Avengers flagship titles (2010 – present) – The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Updated Apr 10, 2025! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Avengers flagships comic books from 2010 to present, including Avengers & New Avengers, Avengers by Hickman, Avengers by Aaron, & Avengers by MacKay via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through December 2025.

In 2005, Marvel stopped publishing a comic called “Avengers” for the first time since 1963 in the wake of Brian Bendis’s “Avengers: Disassembled” event. In its place was his relaunched New Avengers, and later Mighty Avengers along with it.

That changed in 2010, when Marvel and Bendis launched the twin Avengers flagship books of Avengers (2010) and New Avengers (2010), each focused on a different element of the team – the heavy-hitters and the street-level characters. He would later add Avengers Assemble (2012) to focus on a movie-friendly team.

After that point, Avengers flagships continued into Jonathan Hickman’s relaunch of Avengers (2012) and New Avengers (2013), his Infinity (2013) event, the addition of Avengers World (2014), and the lead-up to his Secret Wars in 2015.

The return of the Marvel Universe launched with two flagship titles – All-New All-Different Marvel included Mark Waid’s All-New All-Different Avengers (2015) and Al Ewing’s New Avengers (2016). It later added David Walker’s Occupy Avengers (2016).

The refocus on classic characters and foes in Marvel Legacy saw those two flagship titles transform into Waid’s Avengers (2017) and Ewing’s U.S.Avengers (2017), culminating in the “Avengers: No Surrender” weekly event. (Some of the All-New team also spun out into Waid’s Champions (2017) – see Guide to The Champions.)

Then, Marvel Fresh Start kicked off with the launch of Jason Aaron’s lengthy run on Avengers (2018), which includes the Heroes Reborn (2021) event and tie-ins to Avengers / X-Men / Eternals: Judgment Day (2022). (While “Avengers: No Road Home” is listed below, for Savage Avengers see Guide to Conan the Barbarian).

This guide tracks all of those flagship Avengers titles from 2010 forward as well as supporting books and events tied closely to those titles and Avengers one-shots from those periods.

For Avengers+X-Men titles from 2010 to present, check out the Guide to Uncanny Avengers. Also, see Guide to Young Avengers, which includes both actual “Young Avengers” titles as well youthful or in-training teams like Avengers A.I. (2013).

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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).
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X-Men Titles (2010 – 2019) – The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting X-Men flagship title comic books from 2010 to 2019, including Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, Extraordinary X-Men, X-Men Gold, and X-Men Red via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through October 2025.

This guide follows the main, “flagship” titles in the X-Men line from after “Second Coming” in the Heroic Age in 2010 through Marvel Fresh Start in 2019, just prior to Jonathan Hickman’s takeover of the entire line.

X-Men titles had been distinctly separate from the rest of the Marvel Universe for years even before they headed into two years of tightly coordinated stories and crossovers from 2008 to 2010.

It had been since Onslaught in 1996 that the X-Men interacted significantly with other Marvel heroes – or even wider Marvel Universe storylines! – in their own books. They also didn’t get out much. Aside from House of M’s ramifications in Decimation, you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-mutant Marvel hero in any X-Title other than Wolverine!

While that made for thrilling in-continuity stories for big X-Fans, it didn’t help bring new readers into the fold – or to share the wealth of X-Readers with other Marvel titles.

Marvel’s solution began with X-Men (2010). As with Astonishing X-Men before it, this title occurred relatively free of the convoluted continuity of other X-Titles, even though it made reference to outside events. And, unlike the self-contained Astonishing, X-Men, this title frequently featured guests-stars from throughout the Marvel Universe.

In 2011, Marvel ended their longest-running and highest-numbered title when they cancelled Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 1 with #544 to make way for a split in the X-Men between Cyclops and Wolverine explored in Schism. The subsequent Uncanny X-Men (2011) was still written by author Kieron Gillen with a similar tone and cast – just less Wolverine and Kitty Pryde. It was by many accounts (including mine) one of the best runs of X-Men ever written.

This, too, was in the service of steering the X-Men toward more interaction with the wider Marvel Universe – this time in the form of the major event, Avengers vs. X-Men.

In the wake of Avengers vs. X-Men, Marvel relaunched their entire line with nearly every creator shuffled onto a new book. In the shake-up, Brian Bendis hopped from the Avengers franchise to the X-Men franchise, taking over Uncanny X-Men (2013) (as well as a team of time-displaced teen X-Men in All-New X-Men).

Meanwhile, the adjectiveless X-Men volume relaunched a few months later with a primary cast entirely composed of X-Woman! It didn’t feel like a gimmick at all thanks to the X-Men’s legendary roster of women – including Storm, Psylocke, Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, and Omega Sentinel, and more. Unfortunately, the title was quickly sent askew by the “Battle of the Atom” crossover and launch writer Brian Wood never quite recovered. Two later arcs by Marc Guggenheim (of TV’s Arrow) and G. Willow Wilson (creator of Ms. Marvel) were well-steeped in X-history, but not terribly exciting.

Bendis promised a lengthy run on X-Men, but another creator shuffle after Secret Wars in 2015 saw him depart the franchise for Iron Man in the All-New, All-Different Marvel.

In his place, Cullen Bunn took over Uncanny X-Men (2016). After a long streak of wrapping up soon-to-be-cancelled series for other writers, Bunn improbably struck gold on a menacing take on Magneto (2014) in his first ongoing series. He brought that villainous tone to his ongoing.

Alongside that, a more-heroic new title – Extraordinary X-Men – launched under the pen of Jeff Lemire and tied in closely to the wider Marvel Universe plot of the Inhumans and their Terrigen Bomb being poisonous to mutants.

After the resolution of the Inhumans thread in Inhumans vs. X-Men, Marvel relaunched the entire X-Men line in “ResurrXion.” This marked the first time since 2013 that there was no ongoing “Uncanny” title serving as one of the flagship books of the line. However, X-Men Gold was effectively “Uncanny,” with a Claremont-esque classic team of Kitty, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Rachel Grey, among others. Meanwhile, Cullen Bunn continued his Magneto thread into the All-New X-Men cast with X-Men Blue. Nearly a year later, Phoenix Resurrection returned Jean Grey to the cast of X-Men, and she launched a third flagship with X-Men Red. And, finally, the period wrapped up with five X-Men Black one-shots focusing on major X-Men villains.

Then, in November 2018, Uncanny X-Men returned with a bang – as a 10-part weekly story arc called “X-Men Disassembled.” That story branched out into “Age of X-Man” – an alternate reality event – while writer Matthew Rosenberg continued the storylines of his past year of X-Men mini-series into a disturbing final run on the title that killed off many beloved characters… only for them to return in Jonathan Hickman’s relaunched Age of Krakoa!