A 'Commonwealth of Heroes' - From Fan Expo Canada...

Yeah, not exactly a BIG story this one, but something which was spotted scrolling through Newsarama's coverage of Fan Expo Canada this weekend. More specifically the Fear Itself panel.

Anybody who follows me on Twitter will probably already know about my very mixed feelings over Fear Itself as an Event (And its vague claim to be a World Wide Event, almost exclusively localised to North America), but it's often the fallout period from Marvel's big summer Events which the company uses as a launchpad to try new things, and launch new properties. So, it's always worth a look in to see if an obscure character or two might be getting an outing.

It had already been announced at Fan Expo Canada (And frankly what more logical place) that the recent Fred van Lente, Greg Pak, and Dale Eaglesham Alpha Flight limited series was going to be made into an ongoing series. According to Newsarama, at the Fear Itself panel:

Alpha Flight’s Fred Van Lente appeared as well, to great applause from the Toronto audience, and said that the team will next have to deal with being a group of renegades of sorts. He also mentioned their involvement in the Commonwealth of Heroes — it seems Canada isn’t the only non-American team that Marvel wants to talk about. Expect Captain Britain, Taskmaster, and Wolverine to appear in the book's pages soon.

A Commonwealth of Heroes? Okay. Colour me interested. It's hardly a new Excalibur or MI13 series, but any use of Captain Britain in Marvel's greater shared universe is a good thing in my book. Just to remind people they're still out there...


And of course, Marvel acknowledging that the Avengers aren't the ONLY superhero team in their Universe is a bonus, also. :)


Exactly what this 'Commonwealth' will mean (Tongue in cheek or deadly serious) we'll have to wait and see. Keep an eye out for this one. I know I will.


UPDATE: Wait! There's more! Courtesy of Comic Book Resources, an interview with Pak and Van Lente provides us with the following:

What about heroes from other continents? Will they become involved? It seems like another major government-sponsored superteam, England's MI-13, would be especially interested by what's going on in Canada.

Van Lente: Captain Britain and MI-13 will play a role in this series. There's a little organization that's existed for years in the Marvel Universe, but no one has really paid that much attention to it. It's called the Commonwealth Heroes. We're going to be introducing them in future issues of "Alpha Flight." We'll see how Alpha Flight reacts to being a member of a "super" superteam formed from the superhero teams of all these different countries, and the insanity will get ratcheted up even further.

So yes, that would certainly suggest that we're talking about an actual organisation of Superheroes from across sections of the Globe, coordinating efforts, or at least sharing common information and goals. I like this idea. It'll be interesting to see where they go with it...