| "The Heroic Age" | |
|---|---|
 Promotional image forThe Heroic Age. Art byJim Cheung. | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| Publication date | April 2010 – April 2012 |
| Genre | |
| Main character | Avengers |
| Creative team | |
| Writer | Various |
| Artist | Various |
The Heroic Age is a 2010comic bookbranding that ran through a number of books published byMarvel Comics. It began in April 2010 and ended in April 2012.[1] It marked a major change in thestatus quo of theMarvel Universe after the events of the "Siege" crossover event, similarly to how "The Initiative" and "Dark Reign" dealt with the aftermath of "Civil War" and "Secret Invasion", respectively.
Marvel publisherDan Buckley stated that the Heroic Age was intended to be more constrained in its scope than previous initiatives:
We're trying to get a little bit more into the families of publishing, not as line-wide, to provide people with very digestible beginning, middle, and end content with top characters and top creators in conjunction with the Marvel Universe... It's not going across the line in the books. You’ll see that with the X-Men books, you'll see it with Spider-Man.[2]
The initiative began in May 2010'sAvengers #1, which reunitedIron Man,Captain America (both Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes),Thor, andHawkeye as teammates.[3] The same month saw the start of a four-issuecomics anthologylimited series calledAge of Heroes, withKurt Busiek writing the lead story. The idea behind the series is that, according toTom Brevoort, "seeing as how Heroic Age will impact on characters both large and small, we thought it might be fun to do an anthology to delve into some of these stories and to touch upon some of these characters".[4] Busiek's story involvesJ. Jonah Jameson, whereasRick Remender's starsDoctor Voodoo, andPaul Cornell featuresCaptain Britain and MI13 and theYoung Masters.[5][6]
The initiative also saw the debut of a new series,Atlas, featuring theAgents of Atlas, written byJeff Parker.[7] TheThunderbolts series, also written by Parker, featured a new Heroic Age line-up, led byLuke Cage (who is also in the lineup of theNew Avengers),Crossbones,Juggernaut,Ghost,Moonstone,Songbird andMan-Thing.[8] Another series launched wasSecret Avengers by writerEd Brubaker.[9] TheNew Avengers series was relaunched in June 2010, written byBrian Michael Bendis and drawn byStuart Immonen.[10] A new series calledAvengers Academy byChristos Gage andMike McKone debuted in June 2010,[11] as well as a newYoung Allies series written bySean McKeever andDavid Baldeon.[12][13]