Origin

After Mr. Immortal discovered his powers after failing to killing himself, he decided to become a superhero and join a team of like-minded people. After placing a personal ad in a local newspaper, Mr. Immortal was joined by Big Bertha, Dinah Soar, Doorman and Flatman to make the Great Lakes Avengers. They also attracted the attention of a sexual deviant known only as Leather Boy who completely misunderstood the ad.

Creation

The Great Lakes Avengers were created by John Byrne and first appeared in West Coast Avengers #46.

Team Evolution

The Great Lakes Avengers were inspired by the creation of West Coast Avengers, believing the Midwest could use their own Avengers group. The haven't undergone many roster changes in their few scattered appearances. The were founded by Mister Immortal, who recruited Dinah Soar, Big Bertha, Doorman, and Flatman (Leather Boy was retconned into an original recruit who was immediately rejected). The only major new addition was Squirrel Girl, who replaced Dinah Soar after her death. Other members of note include Hawkeye, Mockingbird and honorary member Deadpool.

Most of their changes were in their name. Over the years, they have been known as the Lightning Rods, Great Lakes X-Men, Great Lakes Defenders, Great Lakes Champions, and eventually, as part of the 50-State Initiative, the Great Lakes Initiative. As the GLI, Gravity was assigned to them by Norman Osborn, and Living Lightning attempted to join thinking they were a gay and lesbian activist group.

When Stark Holdings Company had a filing issue with the Avengers trademark, the Great Lakes team was briefly allowed to use the name again. As part of the deal, Stark gave them a defunct Detroit warehouse as a new headquarters. Eventually, they gained themselves some new members: Pansy, a goth intern, and Good Boy, a female wolf shapeshifter, but once the trademark filing was correct, they were fired.

They had a long history of members using the Grasshopper identity having tragic ends:

• The first Grasshopper died 5 seconds after accepting membership
• The second Grasshopper never joined the team, but Doorman sensed his demise when his jet boots sent him into space.
• The third Grasshopper sought membership but was killed by Deadpool as soon as he arrived at their headquarters.
• The fourth Grasshopper was revealed to be a Skrull and presumably killed with all the other Skrulls who invaded the Initiative.
• The fifth Grasshopper was never properly introduced. His first act revealed to readers was an alien warrior stealing his armored legs to complete a full alien armor.

Major Story Arcs

Franchise

After the Vision appeared on the David Letterman show to introduce his new look to the public, the team decided to call themselves the Great Lakes Avengers and act as the team's Midwest branch. Hawkeye and Mockingbird, who had only recently quit the Avengers, were curious and investigated the team and Hawkeye decided to take the young heroes under his tutelage and shape them into a real team.

The Possession of the Scarlet Witch

When the team detected an emergency summons from the real Avengers, Hawkeye led the team in a battle against the threat of That Which Endures which had already possessed Avengers' Scarlet Witch and She-Hulk in a bid to push evolution forward. As the team battled against the possessed Avengers, Mr. Immortal saved the day by destroying its Assimilator which freed everyone from its influence.

Terminus Factor

Despite Hawkeye leaving the team to rejoin the real Avengers, the Great Lakes Avengers continued to try and make a name for themselves despite the Avengers refusing to endorse them. However, when Terminus attempted to drain away all life on Earth, the Great Lakes Avengers fought against Terminus alongside the real Avengers and for the first time they were truly accepted by the real team. The Avengers still refused to endorse them.

Lightning Rods

After the Avengers and Fantastic Four seemingly perished after battling Onslaught, the Thunderbolts took their place as the premier superhero team. The Great Lakes Avengers decided to abandon the Avengers name and attempt to become the West Coast equivalent of the Thunderbolts; namely the Lightning Rods.

After several skirmishes with Deadpool, the Lightning Rods were frustrated to learn that the Thunderbolts were actually the Masters of Evil in disguise. The team decided to try and arrest the Thunderbolts but were humiliatingly defeated by them and had their costumes stolen. The Lightning Rods tried again to get even with the Thunderbolts only to be defeated once again. They eventually just gave up trying.

Misassembled

After the Scarlet Witch forced the Avengers to break up, the Great Lakes Avengers saw this as a great opportunity to finally become premier superheroes. After a failed battle with Maelstrom which killed Dinah Soar, the almost instant death of new member Grasshopper and the rejection of almost every superhero they invited to join the team, Mr. Immortal gave up on the Great Lakes Avengers leaving the leadership to Flatman. The team invited Squirrel Girl to join and they subsequently fought Batroc's Brigade and a vengeful Leather Boy. A depressed and suicidal Mr. Immortal rejoined the team to confront Maelstrom again, and the two both decided to kill themselves. Although, Mr. Immortal immediately returned to life on account of his powers.

Great Lakes Schizophrenics

After the team were forced to stop calling themselves Avengers, the team decided to instead call themselves the Great Lakes X-Men in a bid to capitalize on the decimation of mutantkind. They subsequently renamed themselves the Great Lakes Defenders and Great Lakes Champions before finally renaming themselves the Great Lakes Initiative. After constant battles and alliances with Deadpool, Mr. Immortal invited the merc with a mouth to join the team as an honorary member. They came to regret this decision as all Deadpool would do was hang around their headquarters and watch porn and Maude all day long.

50-State Initiative

After the New Warriors fought super villains well above their own power level causing the destruction of Stamford, CT, Tony Stark sponsored the Super-Human Registration Act, forcing superhumans to register their abilities and masked aliases (if they so had them) with the government. He also instituted the 50-State Initiative, where each state would get their own "Avengers." The Great Lake Initiative (as they were now calling themselves) were assigned to Wisconsin.

As the team from Wisconsin, their roster remained mostly the same, however, the newest version of Grasshopper turned out to be a Skrull, as did a number of superhumans. Later, Gravity was assigned to them by Norman Osborn, who had taken over The Initiative after his public heroism during the Skrull invasion.

GLA Again

Due to legal issues with Stark Holdings, they had lost the trademark to the Avengers name, which then went to the only other person who attempted to trademark it: Flatman. Avengers legal counsel, Connie Ferrari, offers Flatman the legal rights to the Great Lakes Avengers for the return of the Avengers trademark, which was good enough for Flatman, so he got the gang back together, except Squirrel Girl, who had become too popular for them. They even got a defunct Detroit Stark factory for their new headquarters, however, they got into a feud with a masked supervillain named Nain Rouge, who owns a neighboring club.

After causing chaos at this club, the group was arrested and ran into Goodness (aka Good Boy), a female blue-haired humanoid wolf shapeshifter who threw a bottle at the Detroit councilman, Dick Snerd, who is also secretly Nain Rouge. He continued to spout propaganda regarding poor communities being breeding grounds for crime while sending in his own superhuman goon squad to tear them up. To keep them out of the way, Snerd used the GLA and Good Boy’s recent arrests to have them barred from acting as heroes.

Bertha and Goodness did not care about the injunction and went to confront Nain Rouge again. They found him, drunk and passed out without his mask, revealing he was Snerd. The duo decided to kidnap, and, in a fit of rage, Goodness attacked and injured him. The team had to ditch him after Connie found out about it, dropping Snerd off at a hospital with his mask pinned to him. The city appreciated what the GLA did, as well as their other acts of heroism, however, a court ruling did not rule in favor of Flatman’s trademark so the Avengers sent Deadpool, active member of the Avengers Unity Squad at the time, to fire them.

Reckoning War

The GLA eventually recruited yet another Grasshopper, just as unlucky as the others. The alien warrior, The Cormorant, hunted him down, beating the whole team while he was at it. Cormorant was looking for Grasshopper's armored legs, which belonged to an alien power suit including the gauntlets of Gauntlet and Southpaw. Cormorant ripped the armor off Grasshopper's legs, presumably crippling him, maybe worse.