The Avengers?

I'm about three days behind on this one, but it bears relevant mention anyway. USA Today on 12/27 had a press piece from Marvel Comics about their upcoming most-recent line-wide revamp, "The Heroic Age," largely touted as a return to "old fashioned optimistic" superhero stories following the close of the current "Dark Reign" line-wide arc; which involved most of the company's "Avengers"-related heroes being replaced by rechristened supervillains under the direction of Spider-Man nemesis Norman Osborne. This is, of course, a cousin to DC's "Brightest Dawn" followup to their current "Darkest Night" crossover event, though both companies are spinning their respective shifts as being in some way inspired by the "Age of Obama."

Whatever. These "cycles" are how these things go. USA Today article is HERE: http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-01-27-marvel27_ST_N.htm?csp=usat.me

The point of more immediate interest is an official "teaser" image that accompanied the piece, showing nine Marvel characters standing at attention. As the (evidently soon to be no-longer-pissed-at-eachother) "core" Avengers members Captain America, Thor and Iron Man are side-by-side, most are jumping to the conclusion that the teaser represents the new Avengers lineup, though no one has confirmed that. The other six are Hawkeye, Thing, Beast, Black Widow, Spider-Man and Gorilla Man - which casts some doubt on that notion since Thing, Beast and Gorilla Man are currently associated with other Marvel Teams (Beast is even depicted in his X-Men gear.) However, it's also notable that ALL of these characters have been Avengers members at one time or another.

Of more immediate interest to me: Major comic shakeups made in-advance of a related film production are usually connected in some way (see: Spider-Man wearing black again prior to SM3) and as such what immediately leaps out at me is Clint Barton (presumably) being back in his old-school Hawkeye identity/outfit. It's been heavily hinted that Hawkeye might be turning up in the planned "Avengers" team-up movie and possibly in one of the still-to-release lead-in films (Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America) and this would certainly be in-line with setting the stage for that (Black Widow is ALREADY known to be in IM2.)

Also noteworthy: The Captain America pictured seems to be the original Steve Rogers (blue eyes) but wearing a variation on the uniform of fill-in Cap Bucky Barnes (black pants, no mail-armor) which gives a certain amount of weight to the speculation that that's close to what Cap will be wearing in HIS movie. (FWIW, I like the design okay even if it IS just the standard-issue 2000s revamp cliche of mostly-black witha triangle-shaped suggestion of the original outfit draped over the shoulders.)