The Avengers’ West Coast Address

The Palisades is not only prime real estate in movies and TV.
When Marvel Comics spun off its long-running comic book, “The Avengers” (hitting multiplexes in 2011), Pacific Palisades became home base for the West Coast Avengers: Iron Man, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Mockingbird, Tigra and Wonder Man.
“West Coast Avengers” made its publishing debut as a 1984 mini-series and quickly jumped to series, lasting a lengthy 102 issues (1985-94). As both Marvel’s superhero universe and Marvel’s offices are Manhattan-centric, Steve Englehart, the series’ revered writer, explains how Pacific Palisades––and not Malibu or Beverly Hills––became the Left Coast address for the invincible Iron Man and his super-powered peers.
“There’s actually a story about that,” Englehart emails the Palisadian-Post. “I’m not from L.A. (I’m from Indiana by way of New York . . . ). But in the mid-1980s, I took on, at the same time, ‘West Coast Avengers’ and ‘Green Lantern,’ both of which were situated in Los Angeles.
“So I drove down to see my cousin, who lived in Westchester at the time. He then took me on a day-long drive around the L.A. area, telling me about the reputations of each of the enclaves, while I scribbled notes on a Triple A map. We went down the coast past Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes, over to Long Beach, up the 710 past Compton, to downtown Los Angeles, to Mulholland Drive, Topanga Canyon, Pacific Palisades, and finally Santa Monica. It was like working through a treasure map for me; a very enjoyable, memorable experience.
“By the end of it, I had a comprehensive, if superficial, feel for L.A., and I’d decided that the well-to-do, optimistic, enjoying-the-spotlight West Coast Avengers would be in Pacific Palisades, while the more secretive Green Lantern Corps would be up on Mulholland.”
Did the Palisades figure prominently in his plotlines?
“Nothing big,” Englehart admits. “I used that map to decide where people lived or worked . . . and I called my cousin if I had a question . . . I was pretty much limited to ‘sounding’ like I knew the area, not actually knowing it.” West Coast Avengers assemble!