Marvel announced a new Avengers spinoff series, Avengers. Inc, from writer Al Ewing and artist Leonard Kirk, that will put a new spin on the name “Avengers” by having Wasp try to avenge a number of super villains who were mysteriously murdered. This will bring Wasp, one of the only founding members of the Avengers still active in the Marvel Universe, into a conspiracy that somehow involves the history of the Avengers.
The series will tie-in directly with Jed MacKay and C.F. Villa’s Avengers, but it is unclear as to how the series will tie-in. In addition, as of right now, this “team” appears to only include Wasp and one other character, Victor Shade.
Who is Victor Shade?
In the press release for the new series, here is how Victor Shade is described, “Her name is Janet Van Dyne. She’s a hero. She’s a celebrity. She’s hunting a killer. His name is Victor Shade. He’s a villain. He’s an enigma. He just got killed. And together, they’re out to solve every mystery in the Marvel Universe…starting with their own.
Victor Shade was an alias that the Vision used in the early 1990s when the Vision had seemingly lost his original personality (which was based on the brain patterns of Simon Williams, the hero known as Wonder Man) and had his body rebuilt devoid of color (the so-called “White Vision” era), so he was given new brain patterns to use, a murdered cop named Alex Lipton. Now with a more human personality, Vision adopted a fake human identity, Victor Shade, to try to live life as a human.
In a 1994 Vision miniseries by Bob Harras, Manny Clark and a number of inkers, there was an issue where Lipton and Simon Williams (whose brain patterns still lived in Vision’s mind to a certain degree) worked together to create a sort of noir detective version of the Vision. That same miniseries saw Vision fight against “Anti-Vision,” an alternate reality version of Vision who swapped bodies with Vision during the Gatherers Saga during Bob Harras, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer’s Avengers run in the 1990s. Anti-Vision hasn’t been seen since.
What do Ewing and Kirk have to say about the new series?
Al Ewing had this to say about the new series, “AVENGERS INC. takes the beating, buzzing heart of the original Avengers, teams her up with an undead mystery man with an identity so secret even he doesn’t know it, and sends them both out to solve the most amazing, fantastic and uncanny whodunnits the Marvel Universe has to offer!” It’s kind of a classic ‘will-they-won’t-they’ crime-solving partnership – or it would be if the ‘will-they’ in question was ‘save the world from…’ well, that’d be telling. See you in September!”
Leonard Kirk added, “I am unsure what can be said of AVENGERS INC. without spoiling anything for the readers. I can say this is a fun and intriguing take on some familiar characters that leans more into detective skills over super strength, wit rather than eye beams and cunning instead of small, genetically mutated, furry creatures. Al is doing a bang up job with this and I am having a load of fun. I hope the audience does too.”
Avengers Inc. #1 is due out on September 13th, with a cover by Daniel Acuña.
Source: Marvel