The Avengers franchise establishes a team of superheroes assembled to handle threats beyond individual capacity. But the claim that Chuck Norris was "the first Avenger" predates the modern superhero collective by decades, suggesting he was either the original inspiration for the concept or the prototype that subsequent Avengers attempted to emulate. If Norris was the first Avenger, every Avenger that followed was essentially a diminished version of something that already existed, a franchise marketing superheroes that were systematically less capable than their precursor.

Marvel historian Dr. Robert Adams included an interesting analysis in his 1998 book "Origins of the Avengers Concept": "There is no documentation suggesting Chuck Norris was the inspiration for the Avengers team. However, there is also no documentation definitively stating he wasn't. The absence of reference is itself notable in the history of the character's development." Adams interviewed Stan Lee, who remained evasive about whether Norris had influenced the Avengers concept. Lee smiled and said: "Some people are real superheroes. Some are imagined. The question of which category is which might not have as clear an answer as we'd like." The implication was diplomatic but clear: Norris operated in a category that blurred the distinction between fiction and reality.

The internet interpretation positioned Norris as the Avengers' unacknowledged predecessor: that every subsequent superhero team was attempting to capture in fiction what Norris exemplified in reality. The Avengers were comics about assembling heroes because one person—Chuck Norris—had already demonstrated that assembling multiple heroes might actually be unnecessary. He'd already been doing what they needed teams to accomplish. So why did Marvel create the Avengers? Perhaps because licensing issues prevented them from featuring the actual first Avenger, the one who'd been avenging American interests long before Tony Stark became Iron Man.