In contrast to live-action television shows, comic books experience no special expense when they bring in new characters, whether as new members to an ensemble, or as recurring guest-stars, or as allies who simply don't belong to the ensemble-mix. Case in point: the 1960s continuity of Marvel's AVENGERS title, following the period when Stan Lee passed the title into the hands of scripter Roy Thomas.
As most readers of Silver Age Marvel know, Lee decided, for whatever reasons, to make the AVENGERS feature look less like DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE, with the result that founding members Thor, Iron Man, Gi(ant) Man and the Wasp decided to leave the team. The latter two returned to the ensemble a little later under Thomas, but the immediate replacements, led by the new addition of Captain America, were two former X-Men adversaries, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and one former Iron Man opponent, Hawkeye. All three of them were forgiven for their earlier missteps and soon became sterling examples of reputable super-heroes.
Absent from the mix, though, was Black Widow, who had been an Iron Man foe prior to Hawkeye's appearance in that venue. Despite the fact that she had been retooled in the IRON MAN feature to make her into yet another costumed hero-type, Thomas did not bring Black Widow into the Avengers. In fact, the writer raised a certain amount of "sturm and drang" by having Giant-Man (rechristened Goliath) oppose the Widow's admission to the group, largely on the basis of her Communist past. (Later fan-writers might've added that the size-changing superhero had had more than a few bad encounters with Commie villains, though Thomas never went into that much depth.) Though the Widow was eventually inducted to the super-group in the 1970s, that was some time after Thomas's tenure, during which she was something of a hanger-on at best. Thus, in the terminology I've introduced, the Black Widow was a subordinate figure to the regular ensemble of coordinated centric heroes.
However, I should clarify that membership alone was not the only factor capable of making a character a coordinated member of an ensemble. Here I return to my definition of centricity as stemming from narrative emphasis. Thomas's Black Widow hung out with the Avengers and helped them from time to time, but she wasn't coordinated not because she wasn't a member, but because Thomas didn't tell stories that relied on her presence.
As contrast, there's the example of Marvel's Hercules. This character was introduced as a "friendly adversary" to Thor in various issues of the Asgardian's title. Then in AVENGERS #38, the Olympian strongman was used by a pawn against the mortal superheroes by their old enemy the Enchantress. By the end of that story Hercules managed to throw off the villainess's control, but Herc's heavenly father Zeus conveniently exiled the demigod to Earth. For the next six issues, Hercules was no more than a guest at Avengers Mansion. He became a full member of the group in AVENGERS #45-- but during the issues in which he was just a guest, was he also just a "guest star?"
Not so. Even the stories in which the Greek hero was not an official member, Thomas wrote all of the stories to emphasize the ways in which Hercules mixed and mingled with the rest of the ensemble: challenging Captain America to a fight, darting lusty looks at the Scarlet Witch, and so on. Even a casual reader of the time could've probably guessed that the Olympian was being groomed for permanent membership, probably as a replacement for the verboten God of Thunder. Hercules didn't remain a regular member all that long in the scheme of things, but he was indubitably part of the ongoing ensemble. To be sure, some later appearances were more in the nature of guest-starring shots, but these appearances bore this nature because of a *lack* of narrative emphasis.
An even more pertinent example-- even though it takes the argument away from the Thomas tenure-- is that of the character Mantis. She came to the super-group as part of a package-deal when they agreed to bring a rogue member, her boyfriend the Swordsman, back into the fold. However, in one of her earliest appearances, she denies any desire to join the group.
However, she became, to all intents and purposes, a regular ongoing member, fighting at the sides of the other heroes, and only at the end of her association with the group do all of her superheroic friends make her a member by acclimation. But from her introduction to her last appearance, Mantis was always a part of their coordinated ensemble.
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