It appears that everything old truly is new again over at Marvel. First the publisher announced a new Clone Saga storyline, this time starring newer wall-crawler Miles Morales. That storyline will kick off in April, and today the publisher announced Heroes Reborn, a new series from Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness that will debut its first issue the following month. No inker, colorist, or letterer were named in the series announcement, which was accompanied by a teaser triptych not by McGuinness but by artists Iban Coello and Espen Grundetjern.
Spinning out of the events of the Aaron-written Avengers series, Heroes Reborn will follow a world in which the Avengers not only never formed, but never existed at all:
Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the ice, because there were no Avengers to find him. Instead this world has always been protected by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Squadron Supreme of America. And now the Squadron face an attack from some of their fiercest enemies, like Dr. Juggernaut, the Black Skull, the Silver Witch and Thanos with his Infinity Rings. Blade is the one man alive who seems to remember that the entire world has somehow been… reborn. And so begins his search for the cause behind this ominous shift in reality.
Along with the announcement, Marvel also released a trailer for the upcoming series:
The Heroes Reborn title, like the aforementioned Clone Saga title, has a somewhat infamous pedigree. The title calls back to a 1996 initiative in which, in the wake of the Onslaught storyline, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were removed from the Marvel Universe and sent to a pocket universe created by Franklin Richards. Four titles — Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, and Fantastic Four — were relaunched under the direction of creators Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld‘s studios, while in the main Marvel Universe the remaining heroes had to find a way to continue on following all of those characters’ apparent deaths. “Heroes Reborn” lasted for just over a year, with each of the new titles running for 13 issues, before the Heroes Reborn: The Return miniseries restored all of the heroes’ memories and brought them back to the Marvel U.
The new Heroes Reborn bears very little resemblance to the original, save for the removal of the Avengers from the timeline. Marvel released a series of teaser images for the series last week featuring artwork by Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Fontirez, Mariano Taibo, and Matt Milla of alternate and mashed-up versions of other Marvel U characters, all of which you can see below along with the full text of Marvel’s announcement. The new Heroes Reborn will debut in stores in May.
New York, NY— January 25, 2021 — Last week, fans saw Marvel’s most iconic heroes in mysterious teasers. Today, Marvel Comics proudly announced that these characters will be part of a bold new vision of the Marvel Universe crafted by super hero masterminds writer Jason Aaron and artist Ed McGuiness. Their critically-acclaimed work on Avengers will reach its zenith with HEROES REBORN, a new series that answers the question of what the Marvel Universe would look like if the Avengers never assembled. What new super team would step up to fill the void, what deadly threats would emerge unchecked, and what would become of your favorite characters if they never became heroes…
Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the ice, because there were no Avengers to find him. Instead this world has always been protected by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Squadron Supreme of America. And now the Squadron face an attack from some of their fiercest enemies, like Dr. Juggernaut, the Black Skull, the Silver Witch and Thanos with his Infinity Rings. Blade is the one man alive who seems to remember that the entire world has somehow been… reborn. And so begins his search for the cause behind this ominous shift in reality.
“Maybe the wildest story I’ve ever put on paper. I got to cut loose on this and release my inner comic-reared child in a really profound way, and together with a cadre of immensely imaginative artists, we built a world that I’m pretty confident in saying is quite unlike any version of the Marvel Universe you’ve seen before,” Aaron said of his latest Marvel saga. “It grew out of the pages of my AVENGERS run, but kept getting bigger and bigger as it went, and the more pieces I put in place for this Reborn world, the more gleeful and excited I became. This project really stoked the fires of my love for comics in all the right ways.”
“It’s only natural that after the Phoenix burns the world to ash, there should come a rebirth, and so REBORN is the next big step in the massive super-story that Jason and Ed have been crafting in Avengers,” Executive Editor Tom Brevoort said. “Prepare to enter a very different yet hauntingly familiar Marvel Universe!”
“I’ve been having an absolute blast designing and drawing some new spins on old favorites Jason Aaron has brought to the table,” McGuinness said. “They are all with a purpose story wise which makes them really cool to get into from the art side of things. He may be the maddest scientist of all!”
Get your first look at what this exhilarating new era has to offer in a special announcement trailer and keep a lookout for more information in the coming weeks. Be there for this radical transformation of the Marvel Universe when HEROES REBORN #1 hits stands in May.
