Al Ewing has been quietly – almost sneakily – creating a long-spanning, covert epic.
I say ‘covert’ because the epic in question has been percolating in various miniseries, playing with less-than-popular characters, and happening independently of the ‘tent-pole’ titles like X-Men or Spider-Man.
Avengers, Inc, for example, follows both Ant-Man and The Wasp, miniseries released for the otherwise under-celebrated 60th anniversary of the characters in question; neither character (or set of characters, as the case may be) has had much play in the larger Marvel Universe. Janet Van Dyne hasn’t had a featured run in a quote/unquote “major” ongoing book since 2018’s Avengers: No Surrender (which Ewing also worked on); Scott Lang was involved in 2017’s Secret Empire. Original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, has perhaps had it the worst: he’s been bonded to Ultron and shuffled off to ‘unresolved cliffhanger’ territory for nearly a decade.
True identity theft.
Marvel Comics
Given the characters’ unanchored position in the ‘main’ narrative, Ewing (and artist Leonard Kirk) are allowed to get a bit weird with Avengers, Inc. It subverts general Avengers conventions, dropping the bombastic, high-flying antics of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to tell a more subdued, genre tale about superhero noir. While it doesn’t appear in early issues to be anything but its own insulated mystery, that mystery’s solution implies long-term changes in the Marvel Universe.
Janet finds herself called into the Raft (New York’s supervillain prison, which has a history of questionable security integrity) when Whirlwind – one of her signature villains most recently seen in her miniseries – is murdered. It’s a classic locked-room mystery: Whirlwind is murdered in his impenetrable cell by an invisible assassin who couldn’t possibly have gained entrance. What’s more, he isn’t the only one killed in this manner; he is, however, the only one to adopt a brand new personality when the bodies wake up in the Raft morgue.
These weren’t murders, it seems, but failed and impossible prison breaks.
Miss Marple’s drawing room scenes were decidedly less electric.
Marvel Comics
Taking up the identity Victor Shade (a name originally used by Janet’s ostensible step-grandson, Vision), our mysterious, body-borrowing new friend joins Janet on a series of superhero whodunnits; his true identity is only the overarching mystery that binds these whodunnits together.
Ultimately, Avengers, Inc pushes forward a neglected corner of the Marvel Universe – an AI-inventing, size-shifting corner that only Al Ewing and company seem particularly interested in. Time-lost, Ultron-bound Hank Pym is returned to play after a long absence, finding some resolution for an extenuating and horrible (seemingly abandoned) storyline. Ultron seems, for the moment, to be solved – subverted by a convoluted resurrection. Victor Shade, it turns out, is Ultron-12, the lone incarnation of Pym’s robo-child who ever had any chill.
Marvel Comics
But Avengers, Inc doesn’t seem like a conclusion; too many dangling threads are blowing in the wind. However strong and startling the book is, it appears only to be another brief chapter of Ewing’s incredible shrinking epic; readers can only anxiously await the next brief chapter.
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