Possible spoilers ahead.
Rich Johnston has a code-amber spoiler-y rumor at the latest Lying in the Gutters about just who’s causing all this trouble in Avengers. I think the rumor is pretty plausible, not because the development makes sense, but because it serves the deck-clearing exercise.
Three issues in, there’s still a marked lack of attention to who’s causing the worst day in Avengers history or why, aside from the titular clue (“Chaos!”), the suspect’s conspicuous absence, and some murky coloring which, given some of the coloring choices in this title, might not constitute a clue at all.
So, presumably we’ll learn in #503 why this longtime mainstay of the team has suddenly decided to punish them for reasons that are still entirely unclear. (It’s double-sized, so there should be plenty of room to squeeze in a rationale.) And while there are plenty of potentially plausible explanations, I’m not filled with confidence that their intrinsic storytelling merits will outweigh their service in breaking with the past.
It’s all so reminiscent of “The Crossing.” Mysterious forces attack the Avengers, deaths of varying impact ensue, a longtime ally of the team undergoes a radical shift in established character to plot the team’s destruction (Mantis then, Wanda now), and uses members to facilitate that (Iron Man and Gilgamesh in that case; crash-dummy Vision with villain-puke action, suddenly soused Iron Man, and suddenly savage She-Hulk in this). There’s even the same kind of misdirection, where a member is wrongly suspected (a grieving Hawkeye in “The Crossing,” a badly mischaracterized Hank in “Chaos”).
Honestly, are super-hero comics so creatively starved that they have to dip into “The Crossing” for inspiration? And, strenuous destruction aside, has there been any narrative logic in “Chaos” so far to merit the shift to New Avengers? I know it isn’t fair, but the creative team will have to come up with something fairly spectacular to convince me of this story’s value.