Spoilers for Avengers#39 ahead!
Marvel has just revealed that the first Avenger was in fact not Captain America. As a matter of fact, the First Avengers predates Cap by almost a million years! In Avengers #39, by writer Jason Aaron, artist Dale Keown, inker Scott Hanna and colorist Jason Keith, readers revisit the Stone Age Avengers, featured earlier in Aaron’s run, and learn just how they came together.
In the eyes of many, Captain America is the first Avenger; he may have not been a founding member, but he embodies everything the team stands for. The First Avenger was even the subtitle to his first MCU film. Throughout Aaron’s tenure, however, fans learn of an earlier team of Avengers—dating back to the year 1,000,000 BC, featuring Odin, the first Ghost Rider, the first Black Panther and the first host of the Phoenix Force, among others. The team was responsible for turning back a Celestial invasion. And now Marvel has revealed that none other than the Phoenix was the catalyst for the team’s formation.
Cast out of her tribe as an infant for being “different,” the first host of the Phoenix Force was rescued and raised by wolves. After growing to maturity, she meets a mysterious telepath she comes to call “Highwalker.” A kind of Stone Age Professor X, Highwalker takes her to a tribe of mutants, all of whom had been cast out of their respective tribes for also being different. He refers to them as the “Tribe Without Fear.” After humans destroy the Tribe, she returns to the place where she was cast out, a buzzard-infested den called The Burning Place—and becomes the first person to be possessed by the Phoenix Force. Gifted with the power and intelligence of the Phoenix Force, she realizes the world needs protecting, and reaches out to Odin, telling him she is putting a team together to save the world, finally asking “You in?”
This completely upends everything fans knew about the Avengers and who started them. Captain America gets credit as the first Avenger, but now it looks as if the Phoenix was the first. Much like Captain America, she is everything the Avengers represents—she saw a need and proactively acted on it.
After two years of teases, details about the Stone Age Avengers are starting to come out. Fans have heard about some of their battles and have met the members and now they get to learn who started it all—the Phoenix. And much like Captain America, Phoenix embodies the qualities that make an Avenger.