NYCC 2013: Whats next for the Avengers in All-New Marvel NOW!

What's next for the Avengers and the many titles associated with the name? With many of the one word teasers to be announced at the panel only a couple of these announced new Avengers titles. The first is really a way of no longer having the solitary "Avengers" title being released twice a month. Avengers will become a once a month title once again with Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer and Stefano Caselli on Avengers World a new on going monthly title this January.

                                            

This pairs together the successful team of Hickman and Caselli again from there brilliant title Secret Warriors, with Nick Spencer co writing with Hickman as he has been doing with the most recent Infinity tie-ins. Being another Avengers title I will probably pick this up, but with there being so many Avengers titles currently on the shelves I hope it manages to stand up with some of he better titles out there.

The next new title to be announced, the unofficial sequel to Avengers Arena, Avengers Undercover to be created by the same team of AA, Dennis Hopeless and Kev Walker. Avengers Arena was one of those books that when announced during the previous slate of Marvel NOW! titles everyone guffawed. Despite those who did it has turned out to be a surprise hit! Avengers Undercover will see the young heroes who survived the Arena trying to gain some retribution by trying to take down the Masters of Evil. But will some of our would be heroes find out they are better suited to the life of a Villain? This will be going on my pick list and if you have not yet read Arena I strongly recommend you do. The first image of the characters involved can be found below.

                                            

The next big announcement was not regarding a new title as such but a new creative team of Ales Kot and Michael Walsh on Secret Avengers, who recently released the great Zero from Image Comics, with it also receiving a new #1 issue to go with a little bit of a team change with Spider-Woman joining the team of Hawkeye, Black Widow, Agent Coulson and Nick Fury Jnr, I can not wait to see what these two creators get up to with the team and also the image released with the announcement was drawn by a favourite artist of mine Declan Shalvey so fingers crossed he may be on covers duty for this after finishing a great run on Winter Soldier and Venom. Considering I have recently had to take Secret Avengers off of my monthly pick list during my most recent "Budget Cull" it looks like I will be having to find a space for it once more.

                                           

My current favourite Avengers title, and as far as I'm concerned the best thing to come out of Age of Ultron, is Avengers A.I. from Sam Humphries and Andre Lima Araujo. Issue #8.NOW will see the team heading to the 130th century where Dimitrios is at his peak. We will see the introduction of another A.I to the team in issue #7 and also come issue #8 a new division of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be involved specifically there Robot Hunter Squad and also to my surprise we will be seeing the Uncanny Avengers, I can't wait to see how Araujo draws these characters and the scenery for the 130th century, this story involves the extinction of the human race,  with the original teaser now making more sense and as Humphries said in his most recent interview with CBR about his All-New Marvel NOW! story "Artificial Intelligence never die -- they just grow smarter." and I am super excited to see how this takes the title further!

                                          

Other highlights from the panel included the apparent return of Original Nick Fury who will be making appearances in the the Avengers books, which is nice to hear seeing as one of my favourite books in recent years heavily involved him so I look forward to seeing why he appears.

Not much was mentioned regarding Uncanny Avengers other than the already known news that Steve McNiven is joining the title for "Ragnarok Now", being one of my favourite artists I can not wait to see how he brings Remender's story to life, we were also teased that some time soon there will be more on the future of the title and it's third arc beginning with Uncanny Avengers #18 that will be called "Avenge Earth" so it may not have had a major presence at the con but sounds like there are big things coming from Marvel's Avengers Unity Team.

Finally New Avengers will be the Avengers title heavily involved in Inhumanity and will involve the Avengers and Black Bolt side of the storyline. New Avengers is easily one of the best Avengers titles currently out and you can see that Hickman is enjoying writing about the Illuminati and the secrets that they deal with behind the scenes of the everyday Marvel Universe.

So there is a lot to look forward to from the Avengers titles going forward into 2014.