The Avengers are jerks

Because I (literally) have nothing better to do with my money, I've been buying a bunch of books from the Marvel Essentials collection...black and white reprints of the 1960s era Marvel Comics. My latest purchase was the first volume of The Avengers, Marvels premier superhero team, traditionally featuring their greatest heroes (and some not so great...). I was more of an X-Men/Spider-Man fan growing up, so I never realized until now...The Avengers are jerks. Big time. Evidence? Oh, there's plenty.

1) The first issue features the formation of The Avengers (details = not important for this). Basically, Thor (the thunder god
himself), Iron Man, Giant Man and his partner The Wasp...hunt down The Hulk. It's all just a misunderstanding caused by
Loki (oh you trickster!) and they decide to form a team...including The Hulk who they JUST attacked. Not too bad.

2) The next issue, a Space Phantom impersonates The Hulk, again causing The Avengers to attack him. No warning, just an
all-out attack. AGAIN. They all beat the Space Phantom, but Hulk (rightfully) realizes they all hate him and he quits.

3) Issue three: realizing The Hulk is too dangerous on his own, The Avengers hunt him AGAIN. There's a whole bunch of
other stuff going on involving The Hulk and Namor (the Prince of Atlantis, and also a jerk) trying to destroy humanity,
mostly because of mistreatment (perceived or otherwise). Avengers win, Hulk escapes, moving on...

4) Captain America joins to try and bring a little class to this team...and promptly takes young teen Rick Jones as a
sidekick, stealing him away from The Hulk, his previous partner. Why all the Hulk hate guys? It's also worth mentioning
that Rick Jones is brought along on Avengers missions which tend to be insanely deadly. It's more than a little
irresponsible, especially when you consider that Caps previous partner, Bucky, was blown up by a missile. Not a very
good track record.

5) This is probably more of a sign of the times, but sprinkled throughout the first volume are various sexist comments
made by Giant Man (Dr. Henry Pym) towards The Wasp (Janet van Dyne). Come to think of it, Reed Richards was pretty
sexist towards Sue Storm as well...could it be a scientist character trait? Hmmm....

So, thanks for saving the world a bunch of times Avengers...just try and be a little nicer to your fellow heroes from now on, okay? Spider-Man may tend to work locally, and only saves one city, but at least he's pleasant about it!