PRPG:

Too-Weird-for-the-Movie Avengers, Assemble!

May 10, 2018

Avengers: Infinity War is filling up movie theaters around the country, irresistible to audiences for how it assembles literally dozens of well-known superheroes from Marvel’s “Avengers” team, including Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Dr. Strange…but definitely not these characters from old Avengers comic books.

Big Bertha

Ashley Crawford is another member of the Great Lakes Avenger…well, when she’s not modeling, that is. When she’s on the clock to fight crime, she transforms into Big Bertha, who has the ability to instantly make herself extremely overweight. In order to turn from Big Bertha back into Ashley Crawford, the character continuously vomits until she’s at her “regular” size. (Really.)

Wheels Wolinksi

As part of a group called “The Wolfpack,” Wheels stared out fighting street crime in his home neighborhood of the South Bronx. He also has excellent mechanical abilities and uses a wheelchair for reasons never made clear…but which is the source of his slightly politically incorrect nickname.

Doorman

Marvel Comics has maintained a sub-group of the Avengers called the Great Lakes Avengers—they literally fight crime in the upper Midwest out of their Milwaukee home base. One of its members is Doorman, whose main power is the ability to open the “Darkforce Dimension.” Sound amazing? Well, all he can really do with it is to create doorways wherever he wants, allowing the teleportation of people from, more or less, one side of a building to another.

Dazzler

Officially added to the Avengers later on, Dazzler was created in 1980, when disco record label Casablanca asked Marvel to create a comic book about a disco singer. Plans to release disco music attributed to “Dazzler” fell through because by the time the comic launched, disco was dead. The character is a law school student who drops out to become a singer…who can use her powers to transform sound into pure energy.

Jack of Hearts

This superhero’s “real” name is Jack Hart, which inspired his heart-covered costume that makes him look like a playing card. His special powers came to him as a child, when his father, a scientist, accidentally covered the boy in a mysterious substance called “Zero Fluid.”

Flatman

He can make his body really flat, which makes him impervious to injury, able to slip under doors, and, if viewed at a certain angle (like if he’s pressed up against a wall), invisible. He can also take the form of any animal…in that he can fold his flat self into the shape or an origami-type animal.