Warning: contains spoilers for Avengers Beyond #2!The Avengers are about to fight their replacements, but these new heroes are Earth's Mightiest Heroes like fans have never seen them before. The Avengers are currently facing a series of crises to help them prepare for a truly unstoppable enemy, and it turns out the last challenge is fighting themselves - with an unbelievable twist.
In solicit information for Derek Landy and Greg Land's Avengers Beyond #4, fans are introduced to the 'Bootleg Avengers.' The Bootleg Avengers are a team of normal people granted the powers of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, despite the fact that they absolutely don't deserve them. The Avengers will have to fight the bargain-basement versions of themselves, with all of reality on the line. Enjoy the issue summary and cover below:
The Avengers Face Their Bootleg Doppelgängers
The Lost One stalks our world, the Beyonder watches from orbit and the Avengers prepare to battle…the Bootleg Avengers! Six ordinary people, gifted with amazing powers and abilities they neither earned nor (frankly) deserve, seek to replace Earth’s Mightiest Heroes at LITERALLY the worst possible time. And when the Ivory Kings show up to judgment on the Beyonder’s last, desperate ploy to keep his race from being wiped out, things—amazingly—go rapidly downhill.
In Avengers Beyond, the team are facing a series of trials created by the Beyonder - a godlike being who is able to reshape reality on a whim. The Beyonder is being hunted by a multiversal god known as the Lost One, who intends to take his powers and raze the Earth in the process. The Beyonder can't take physical form or communicate with the Avengers for fear of the Lost One arriving instantly, and so is instead putting them in situations designed to provide them with new resources or suggest relevant strategies - if, of course, they can survive the gauntlet.
The Lost One Is Coming
It's unclear whose agents the Bootleg Avengers actually are, given that the issue confirms that the Lost One has arrived, and that the Ivory Kings (the Beyonder's species, all as powerful as him) are assessing his attempts to prepare the team. Recently, in Avengers Beyond #2, the team met an alien named Sel Sennan who possesses the ability to grant others superpowers, or else supercharge their existing abilities. She considers the Avengers a threat, believing they will lock her away and force her to aid them in the next battle against Thanos or Galactus, so it makes sense she might try to replace them with identical heroes who don't know of her existence.
The Avengers Are Playing for Their Highest Stakes Ever
However they come to exist, the Bootleg Avengers are a hilarious take on the iconic heroes. Land's art shows Captain America facing off against a dudebro Super-Soldier, while Thor battles a long-haired, sandle-wearing God of Thunder. Amusingly, Iron Man is facing a version of himself with far more complicated armor, suggesting that the bootleg Tony Stark may be a victim of 90s-style overdesign. One member of the Bootleg Avengers is still to be revealed, but they will likely be a take on either Blade or Black Panther, who make up the rest of the team's roster in this series (at least so far.)
Meeting their lesser selves is a perfect moment to poke fun at the Avengers' identities and even their pasts. However, with the Lost One and the Ivory Kings playing out a cosmic game at the same time, even a team of imitators could end up costing the Avengers everything.
Avengers Beyond #4 is available from Marvel Comics June 28.
