If there is awesome pre-internet Avengers fic then I really hope someone considers transfering it from hard copy to digital :D Even if it's scans of the paper if the author doesn't want to transcribe it.

From all accounts, Star Trek is one of the very first fandoms to exist but that was always TV so I think fic happened a lot sooner for it, where as fic for Avengers probably increased dramatically once it went from purely comic books to TV & film - from smaller audience buying comics to larger general audience watching. But may be worth tracking down some older fansites (Geocities etc), see if they link to any fanfiction sites? :-)

And you may steal the emoticon lol! I can't remember who created it, someone on a community I mod just started using it one day a year or so ago so we made it a tag :D