After the initial mini-series, West Coast Avengers got itself an ongoing in late 1985. Steve Englehart was the series writer for about the first three years, though apparently several of the issues near the end were almost entirely re-written by Editorial, to Englehart's great annoyance.
Englehart kept the five characters from the mini-series, although by this point, Tony Stark was back in place of Jim Rhodes. There was some restriction in the current status quo that said the team couldn't have more than six members, so Englehart tried getting mileage out of Hawkeye's search for that sixth member. Hank Pym shows up, determined to just be tech support, and of course Clint tries to get him to do it. When that fails, he tries recruiting Ben Grimm, but that gets wrecked by the events of the tail end of Ben's ongoing series. Mockingbird convinces him he's been overlooking Firebird all along, but by the time Clint asks, she's found a different path.
And then Vision tells Clint that limit got tossed a while ago, anyway. Yeesh.
Eventually, both Moon Knight and Hank Pym join the active roster. This is when Pym forgoes changing his own size (as his body apparently can't take it) and goes the "scientist adventurer" route, which eventually resulted in him wearing the flight suit with pockets full of tool, weapons and instruments, shrunk down until he needed them. I think it's actually a pretty good turn for Pym, who never seems to fit when he's trying to be big and punch things.
Of course, to get to the point Englehart first pushed Pym to feel like such a failure he was putting a gun to his head before Firebird stopped him. This was either the first or second of the "drag Hank Pym to the depths, then build him up" stories, an arc that has been repeated probably a half-dozen times since then.
Englehart's run is also the one where Mockingbird gets abducted by the Phantom Rider while the team is in the Old West, then drugged into loving him. Which ends with her breaking free and attacking the Rider until he slips and falls to his death. Which she then lies to Hawkeye about when he asks, enabling the Rider's ghost to pop up a century later and tell Clint a bunch of lies which help torpedo his and Bobbi's marriage. Chelsea Cain at least tried to retcon that story halfway with her Mockingbird run, but I'm not sure it didn't do more to rehabilitate Hawkeye than Mockingbird.
Englehart also decided that Tigra, rather than worrying about whether she was cut out to be an Avenger, should be feeling torn between her human and cat selves. Her cat self manifested in her being almost terrified of water (which was not a problem in the mini-series, even when Graviton flung her and the Shroud out into the ocean), and basically trying to jump almost every man she saw. Wonder Man, Pym (the Pym thing is especially weird since she was on the Avengers during the whole domestic abuse thing, and she pretty clearly thought Hank was scum then.) Heck, even Graviton when he forcibly kisses her after capturing the entire team. This is resolved around issue 15, but that first year was pretty rough, and the Mockingbird thing picks up almost immediately after. I'm not sure it's a great run for the women on the team.
The one development that I actually enjoy is what Englehart does with Wonder Man. Simon is still a bit afraid of dying again, but after managing to beat an Ultron all by himself, starts to accept just how powerful he actually is. This causes him to get a swelled head and start trying to throw his weight around on the team. It is really impressive that he managed to be the biggest asshole on a team with both Tony Stark and Clint Barton. Also, they gave him an absolutely hideous Christmas-colored costume for about a year.
Al Milgrom draws the book a lot, and for the first two years, he's almost always inked by Joe Sinnott. There are some nice looking issues, but a lot of times, I think there's too much information to cram into panels that are too small and everything starts to look clunky. Sinnott's inks might be too heavy, or maybe it's that Milgrom's lines are too thick, although it wasn't as much of a concern in the issue when Kyle Baker inks Milgrom (issue #6). Iron Man in particular often looks like he had to expand his armor to accommodate some middle-age spread.
After Englehart left, John Byrne arrived within a few months, and kick-started his own troublesome storyline for a character, with the whole bit about Wanda and Vision's children being figments of Wanda's power, and she's really crazy, and well, you see where that got us. *gestures to the last 20 years of Marvel comics*
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