Could 'Avengers 4' Be Called "Heroes Reborn?"

With the secrecy surrounding the title of Marvel's next Avengers film, most fans have assumed for a while that it would spoil some element of Avengers: Infinity War.

Note: We're going to do exactly that later in this story, so turn back now if you haven't seen it yet.

A popular theory -- and one that would definitely spoil stuff if you know enough about the comics -- is Avengers: Heroes Reborn.

"Heroes Reborn" was a publishing event from 1996 and 1997. Featuring work from DC publisher Jim Lee and Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld, with an assist from Marvel TV chief Jeph Loeb, the story springboarded out of "Onslaught," an X-Men story that ended with all of the non-mutant superheroes (except Spider-Man, because he had other stuff going on in his titles) of the Marvel Universe sacrificing themselves to stop the titular villain's rampage.

They all got a high-publicized relaunch from superstar talent, which took place in an alternate Marvel Universe where they were newly-debuted heroes. While much-maligned by modern fans, the "Heroes Reborn" books sold incredibly well and some of the ideas contained therein have made their way into the movie universe as well.

Last chance on the spoilers thing, folks.

When Spider-Man was erased from existence in the final moments of Avengers: Infinity War (along with almost every next-gen superhero, leaving the original Avengers mostly alone to deal with whatever is next), he said "I don't want to go," rather than "I don't want to die," which some fans are taking as a sign that the characters being "snapped" from reality might not be dying in the traditional sense.

...One way of making that a reality would be to have had them sent to an alternate plane of existence, parallel dimension, etc.

It could even be a subconscious desire of Thanos's in the context of Infinity War since, unlike in the comics, he does not see himself as cruel or homicidal.

It would also give an opportunity to revive those characters without "undoing" the ending, per se, and/or give a chance to reboot the Marvel Cinematic Universe by merging the two worlds (which is essentially what happened in Marvel's recent crossover Secret Wars).

We've talked about this before, but it seems like this could also be a great way of bringing the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters into the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe.

At the end of "Heroes Reborn," the pocket universe was destroyed and the heroes came back home and reverted to their pre-reboot selves in a second event, titled "Heroes Return."

Backpedaling a bit from the hype which imagined the Avengers 4 title as an obvious spoiler for Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige recently explained a new and less exciting reasoning for the title to be withheld.

"When we announce the title I am not sure, but as I've probably said to you, it's gotten completely blown out of proportion," Feige said. "It will just be a name and the reason to hold it back was to keep the attention on Infinity War. That backfired a little bit because now everyone thinks what's the name of the next one gonna be? But it was really just to keep the focus [on Infinity War]. We did not want to call it Part One and Part Two. Although it will be quite evident that the films obviously connect, as all our films do, but this in particular connects very directly. And then we changed the Part One and Part Two, we said let's just keep this Infinity War and we'll talk about the next movie later. We had done things in the past that had taken attention off of whatever the film at hand is because we talked about this. For instance, Infinity War announcing before Ultron came out, and it worked out, it was fine, but it felt like let's keep the attention on the film at hand."

Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War are now playing in theaters. Ant-Man and The Wasp is set for release on July 6, 2018. Captain Marvel will follow it on March 6, 2019, with the untitled Avengers 4 set to tie everything about the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a bow on May 3, 2019. Leave your Marvel questions and thoughts in the comment section below or send them to @RussBurlingame on Twitter!