West Coast Avengers: L.A.’s World Ambassadors
Jason In Hollywood, a transplant from England who’s been blogging recently about his misadventures in gaining a drivers license, has an entry devoted to Marvel comic’s West Coast Avengers, a superhero squad that called Los Angeles home.
“When you’re growing up in a small mining village in Wales, where the weather is mainly cold and wet,” Jason writes, “it was a joy to escape to a world of imagination which was so completely different and interesting.”
Whilst other superheroes were swinging from the Empire State Building, tearing up Fifth Avenue or battling it out in Central Park, The West Coast Avengers (or WCA for brevity’s sake) were as their name implied stationed on America’s West Coast. They lived in a compound in Palos Verde, which is in the Los Angeles/South Bay area of Los Angeles.
And that’s why I loved them so much, because their adventures were so utterly different from the New York based heroes. Rather than existing in a rain soaked cityscape of skyscrapers, yellow cabs and bustling streets (which were also very alien to me at the time), they explored sun drenched locales, exotic beaches, barren deserts and the over-the-top glamour of Hollywood.
Who’d have thought that almost 20 years later, here I am on that same West Coast, having slightly different adventures granted, but that’s why they’ll always hold a special place in my heart and memories.
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I like this guy. I think though he needs to admit he’s jumped the shark and just loves this place start calling himself an Angeleno. It’s not about duration here but your love for the city, warts and all.
Growing up in Palos Verdes, it was always really cool to me as a kid that it was home to a fictional superhero group.
I had no idea they were headquartered in Palos Verdes. I wonder if they went to the same Library I like to go to?
The time is right to bring these heroes back to L.A. Anybody here good friends with Stan Lee?
Today the members of that team are now either dead, wanted by the govt., registered with the govt., or SKRULLS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers_Disassembled
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(comic_book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Invasion
’nuff said.