War of Kings: Spoils of War - New Avengers, Old Avengers

Marvel Studios announced thier movie slate for the next few years:
Iron Man 2 - May 7, 2010
Thor - July 16, 2010
The First Avenger: Captain America - May 6, 2011
The Avengers - July 15, 2011
Iron Man 3 - No date yet

Still no Ant-Man. Does that mean he's out of The Avengers, despite rumours they're looking for a Wasp actress for the movie? Anyway, back to comic books.

Before:
New Avengers - Brian Bendis
Mighty Avengers - Brian Bendis
Avengers: The Initiative - Dan Slott & Christos Gage

After:
Dark Avengers - Brian Bendis
New Avengers - Brian Bendis
Mighty Avengers - Dan Slott (which I nickname Old Avengers)
Avengers: The Initiative - Christos Gage

Interesting shuffle. Raise your hand if you see sales on the Initiative dropping.

But seriously, what does this mean? I'm still in the dark about Dark Avengers. It could be about Luke Cage going Cyclops after his Invasion experiences and forming a clandestine team of Avengers to hunt down threats to earth in the wake of SHIELD's collapse. But it could be about anything. A character called the Iron Patriot will be in this book. For some reason, the name makes me think of the cover to What If? Civil War:

Bendis and Slott gave a bit more info about the other two - New Avengers will continue to be about a new iteration of the team, whereas Mighty Avengers will be a group of old Avengers getting together to fight a classic Avengers villain who is not Ultron. Does this mean Ares is no longer on the team? All we have confirmed is that Jarvis and Jocosta will be on the team. New Avengers will also deal with who the new Sorcerer Supreme is. Anyone remember that Arcana miniseries a while back? I wonder if they'll bring that into it, or if they've forgotten about it.

Bendis also said that Dark Reign is 'kind of a sister book to the Illuminati Special we did just before Civil War' and that the image of the 'evil illuminati' is related to the Dark Reign Special. My theory seems to be panning out. Joe Quesada's answer to 'Where is Doom?' was that we'll soon be asking where he isn't. Perhaps the members of the 'evil illuminati' will be spread throughout the Avengers books, so one goes up against Doom, one against Loki, another the Hood's empire, etc. But whatever it is, I'm excited that we'll finally be seeing heroes fighting villains again, instead of other heroes. Or aliens pretending to be heroes.

I suspect that the guy in the middle of the 'evil illuminati' is Doctor Doom's master and trainer who's being set up by Mark Millar in his 1985/Fantastic Four/Wolverine crossover thingamajig, 'an all-new baddie who will play a significant role across the Marvel U from here on out.' If he's this important, I find it weird they haven't hyped up Millar's stuff more, it seems to have been lost in all the Secret Invasion publicity.

Quasar's back - the original one - and will be making his presence felt in Guardians of the Galaxy. Which implies that even if she leave the team, Phyla-Vell will not be leaving the book. And lets not forget this image: