HEROES FOR HIRE to Return This December

Marvel recently dropped four promotional images for what appears to be the next lineup of the discontinued Heroes for Hire comic series.

The teasers, shown below, depict four members of the mercenary team including Misty Knight, Elektra, Paladin and The Falcon. As of yet, no creative team has been announced; only a publication date of 'December 2010'. It is also unclear if this will be an ongoing title, mini-series, or series of one-shots. The last volume of Heroes for Hire ran for 15 issues and was written by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Zeb Wells, with a myriad of artists throughout the series.

Updated: Marvel Comics has announced the creative team for the Heroes For Hire relaunch to be none other than Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Abnett and Lanning, known collectively as DnA, will collaborate with their Guardians of the Galaxy artist Brad Walker to bring the newest revision of Heroes For Hire to the masses. The team appears to be comprised of many of the heroes involved with the Shadowland mini-event, including H4H mainstay Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, Moon Knight, Black Widow and even the Punisher.

"It's a treat for us to be playing with some of the all-time classic street-level Marvel characters, and it makes a very refreshing change of pace for us-about as far away from the big scale cosmic stuff as you can get," says Lanning. "We were very keen to exercise some different areas of our imagination, and this is the ideal place."

According to the authors the team will not function in the same manner as traditional teams such as the X-Men or Avengers, but will have some core members with specialists that will be hired based on the situation. Lanning says "there will be some really fun and often unexpected guest star combos, depending on what the threat is. Characters often get 'hired' without realizing how or why they're being used."

That said, they do not intend for the title to be a series of one shots. "We don't want the book to feel like a disjointed team-up title," chimes in Abnett. "There is also a very strong, intriguing ongoing story driving the series along underneath the missions in each issue."

The first issue of the new Heroes For Hire series hits stores in December.