#there is a subtle philosophical beef between superhero teams that doesn't cleanly align with real-world political terminology

[bronzemettle]

How do your big teams like the Justice League or Avengers work? Do they have set rosters at any given time (ie, "in 2016, the Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Captain America, She-Hulk, Iron Fist, Doctor Strange, Thor, and Hawkeye"), or is it a Justice League Unlimited situation where just about everybody is a member and they get assigned into little squads for their missions?

The Avengers is a single team with fairly high turnover of people joining and leaving or taking extended breaks. You could give a set roster for it, which would usually be under 40 heroes in total, but what that roster is would vary every few weeks, not year-to-year. That being said, it wouldn't be a faux-pas to call someone "an Avenger" who has been on the team frequently but isn't currently, so the boundary isn't totally hardline, and it's all treated p. informally. The Avengers like to think of themselves as a family.

The Avengers is usually based out of the Avengers Mansion in outer NYC, but they often work closely with SHIELD and will sometimes use Helicarriers as mobile headquarters, as they were doing in Sokovia when the Terrigen Reactor exploded in early 2014 ("A-Day") leading to the temporary disbanding of the team and creation of the Sokovia Accords and Nonhuman Registration Act. The Justice League started out p. similar, but after the launching of the Watchtower station in 2011 they expanded drastically with other new infrastructure into a formally much larger and more organization-like entity, with a triple-digits number of heroes, supported by a large and well-paid staff of mostly unpowered specialists in various fields, deployed into operation squads of usually under a dozen per mission (unless things get really hairy), and of course able to call on each other for backup as needed.

The Justice League does not by default trade intel with or operate alongside any goverment organizations or law enforcement. It's not a rule against it. They will contact authorities (such as Jim Gordon) often. But it's always case-by-case judgement and need-to-know.

As a result of this autonomy and their large membership roster, the Justice League operates multiple bases scattered in different places besides the Watctower, including the Gotham Clocktower (home of the Birds of Prey), the Hall of Justice, the Detroit compound, Happy Harbor, the Secret Sanctuary, and Mars Refuge. These bases are connected via Zeta Tubes, and a combination of that and the fleet of Javelin spacecraft on the Watchtower can quickly deploy squads nearly anywhere on the planet (and a few other places).

There is also an even larger collection of heroes and some civilian allies designated as Justice League Associates, the JLA. This includes other teams like the Titans, Outsiders, and Birds of Prey, sidekicks and supporting heroes to JL members, and some standalone heroes who just don't quite fit. Helena Bertinelli, for example, was kicked out of the Justice League proper for starting to kill again, but once she stopped killing again was in time allowed back under the wider JLA label instead. John Constantine has never been on the Justice League, but is recognized as JLA.