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New Marvel Concept Art Shows ‘Civil War’ Is Basically ‘Avengers 2.5’

Marvel's new teaser image proves the next Captain America movie is chock full o' heroes that are pretty pissed off at each other.

Marvel

It’s a new year, and there’s no shortage of Marvel news that keeps dropping left and right: After hints of when we’ll see Thanos in Phase Three and that Black Panther basically has the best possible director it could get with Ryan Coogler, the Marvel news that kicks off 2016 comes in the form of new Captain America: Civil War concept art:

Just released on the comic book studio’s official website, these new images give us our best look yet on what characters will square off in the upcoming war that threatens to split the group of heroes in half.

Take a look:

Why can't they all just be friends?

Marvel

Marvel super fans may recognize the image above — drawn by Marvel’s in-house artists Andy Park and Ryan Meinerding — when it debuted in the pages of British movie mag Total Film in December. But this marks the first time the image in question was officially released by Marvel themselves for total geek consumption.

So what are we looking at here? Well, it’s a bunch of superheroes fighting. But it isn’t just that the superheroes are fighting each other, it’s all about who’s fighting who. This is a civil war, after all, and the amount of them guarantees that Civil War is basically going to be a mini Avengers movie before Infinity War kicks off in 2018. Do we really miss Hulk or Thor? Nah, not really.

But right off the bat in the image itself we have Cap squaring off against Iron Man, which we’ve seen plenty of times in the trailers. We also get Black Panther taking a big swipe at Cap’s new ally, the Winter Soldier, and both Cap and Iron Man’s fellow flying former friends Falcon and War Machine scrapping in the sky. Then there’s Hawkeye hanging out in the background fighting no one and with nothing to do in particular. No surprises there.

The real surprises come when you realize Cap’s Avengers partner, Black Widow, is battling Ant-Man, someone we thought would be fighting alongside Captain America and company, based on the implications of the post-credits sequence at the end of his standalone movie. Seems like that brief fight in Ant-Man between the titular insect-sized hero and Falcon meant a little more than we realized.

The other surprise is Scarlet Witch facing off against Vision. This pair gave off some bizarre mutant/synthetic being sexual tension at the end of Age of Ultron. It looks like that tension will play out in both taking sides against one another. Awkward.

Another noticeable absence of a confirmed character in Civil War is there’s no glimpse of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, who will undoubtedly be revealed in some sort of lavish magazine spread closer to the film’s release or (we hope) saved like in the old days until audiences actually go see the movie.

See Spider-Man close up, and all of these Marvel all-stars battle one another — at least until Thanos eventually shows up a few movies later to mess things up — when Captain America: Civil War hits theaters on May 6, 2016.

Captain America (Chris Evans) in Marvel's 'Captain America: Civil War.'

Marvel