Whoever said print is dead never witnessed the full power of a magazine cover -- and on Wednesday, it was Entertainment Weekly wielding the gloss of thunder, scoring not only the first official set photos from Avengers: Age of Ultron, but a whole slew of plot details, as well.
Before we get into those, here's what Iron Man, Captain America and that rascally robot Ultron look like on the front of next week's EW:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/EW1321CVR_PROMO.jpg" caption="The cover of this week's Entertainment Weekly featuring "Avengers: Age of Ultron."" credit="Entertainment Weekly" alt="EW.Avengers"]
Inside the July 25 preview issue for Comic-Con -- where Disney/Marvel is sure to give us a first look at the Avengers sequel -- are a few key story points, most of which we've suspected since the project was announced in San Diego last year:
Ultron was built by Tony Stark in the movie -- unlike the comics, in which he's created by Hank Pym (Ant-Man). According to EW, he is "devised, essentially, as the ultimate drone, a way for Iron Man to abdicate his duties and offload them onto a fully mechanized protector."
Stark's plan is for a "planetary police force known as the Iron Legion, a team of robotic beat cops who resemble blue-and-white versions of the Iron Man suit but have no human core," so the story goes. But Stark programs in parts of his personality, and Ultron "inherits Stark’s cynicism, but not his sympathy."
An opening scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron will show the superhero clique celebrating in Stark's personal skyscraper -- repurposed as Avengers HQ -- in street clothes when the Legionnaires show up and start trying to kill them. That's when Ultron makes his plan known: World peace via the annihilation of the human race.
Heroics ensue. (This last one we deduced for ourselves.)
The story has a handful of cool set photos, too:
Bromance Exhibit A: Captain America and Thor
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch -- a.k.a. 'The Twins'
Bromance Exibit B: Bruce Banner and Tony Stark
That Party We Were Talking About
