The MCU continues to grow in heroes since the first Avengers (2012) film but a new fan art illustrates the original Earth's Mightiest heroes reimagined as new heroes of color. The fan art keeps to the heart of the Avengers by matching the hero's inspiration with new original characters from various cultures and mythologies.

The Avengers assembled for the first time in Avengers #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, with a predominately white cast of heroes including Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Hulk. The group was formed coincidently to help stop Hulk from a rampage brought on by an enchantment spell cast by Loki. The Avengers would later bring in new members Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawk-Eye, and Hercules after the leave of a few members. Marvel's The Avengers mirrors the original Avengers comic, in terms of Loki causing trouble, and with a similar white cast of characters like Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawk Eye, Black Widow, and Hulk. With the occasional Nick Fury, the MCU wouldn't see a POC hero until Sam Wilson aka Falcon in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War.

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The fan art reimagines the Avengers as a new culturally diverse group of heroes created by artist Takeia Maria. The art was shared on Reddit with a link to an Inverse interview with the artist and who closely examines the different cultures also represented in these new characters. The artwork features 5 heroes all hailing from different parts of the world but still embodying the classic Avengers team-up. The inspiration for her new characters was driven from the original Avengers films and underrepresented cultures, and mythologies outside Norse and Greek. In terms of race swapping the artist revealed how she didn't want to swap a new race on the defined heroes but "incorporate things that made sense culturally".

Avengers Fan Art

In her research for Captain America, the artist dove into the Taino culture, where she created a superhero that incorporated the Puerto Rican flag as the hero's costume design with the Taino Sun God symbol on the shield. The Norse God of Thunder, Thor was replaced by Shango the Yoruba God of Thunder who's presented with long flowy locks and wielding a mighty ax. Billionaire Tony Stark's Iron Man suit was upgraded to a guardian robot of Buddha based after Vishwakarma, the Hindu god of engineering and architecture. Black Widow inspired the creation of a new hero from China named Ximu, which translates to "spider" and represents good luck. Hawkeye meets his match with the Egyptian Goddess of creation Neith who also bears a fierce emerald green bow and arrow.

Each hero draws inspiration from the original Avengers in connection with the many different cultures of the world. These reimagined Avengers are the true embodiment of representation that deserves to be shown in comics and on-screen. As Marvel drives closer to Phase 5, new heroes will soon evolve into the MCU with hopes of one day creating a new Avengers similar to Takeia Maria's illustration.

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Source: Reddit