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.
![Screenshot 2024 04 22 081148 Avengers, Inc.: Action, Mystery, Adventure](https://i0.wp.com/aiptcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-22-081148.png?resize=740%2C572&ssl=1)
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.
![Screenshot 2024 04 22 081249 Avengers, Inc.: Action, Mystery, Adventure](https://i0.wp.com/aiptcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-22-081249.png?resize=740%2C543&ssl=1)
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.
![Screenshot 2024 04 22 081332 1 Avengers, Inc.: Action, Mystery, Adventure](https://i0.wp.com/aiptcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-22-081332-1.png?resize=740%2C828&ssl=1)
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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