Prompting a flurry of fans visiting their local comic book store...

[Spoilers for the mid-credits and end-credits scenes from The Avengers follow]

Andrew Garfield, who plays the title role in the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man, was recently spotted carrying Avengers comics featuring the villain Thanos, who was set up as the Big Bad for future Marvel movies (perhaps The Avengers 2) in the mid-credits scene of The Avengers.* As a result, it was immediately assumed that obviously this must mean he plays Spider-Man in The Avengers 2. Presumably, this seeming cause-and-effect relationship was followed by comic book shops instantly becoming as popular as they have been since Free Comic Book Day.

Of course, Andrew Garfield could just be a big Avengers fan. He loved the movie and what Joss Whedon did with it, and may simply be geeking out ahead of the sequel.

However, such fandom naturally resulted in wanting to be involved himself, as we reported the other day. So maybe Andrew Garfield is going to get his wish by being in the Avengers sequel after all. Or maybe not. The rights issues are complicated, with Sony owning the Spider-Man film rights and Marvel owning the Avengers film rights, and if wishes were new Firefly episodes, we'd be on Season 100 right now. (Oh man, that bit where Mal...sorry.)

In any case, if this is just a publicity stunt, or simply a case of Andrew Garfield enjoying reading comics (yay for him!), it deserves to be more. I've said this before, but one of the many cool things about The Avengers was the crossover of so many different superheroes, and so if Spider-Man were to join them, like in the comics, that would be cool too. Obviously the key thing is a great story, but a connected universe (such as that which Marvel Studios is already building, modelled on the comics) just offers more possibilities for great storytelling and character dynamics.

And given the popularity of The Avengers and the Spider-Man films, a crossover between them is sure to be lucrative for all parties. The only thing standing in the way is a (hypothetical) army of lawyers. But Joss Whedon has plenty of experience of taking on evil lawyers, with his TV series Angel (Season 5 complications notwithstanding).

The Amazing Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary, Rhys Ifans, and Irrfan Khan, and is released on 3 July 2012.

* Well, either Thanos, or shawarma. Maybe at the beginning of The Avengers 2, all the Avengers die of food poisoning, resulting in lawsuits, shawarma being outlawed (making it a world without shawarma), and then the rest of the movie is Nick Fury crying for two hours. It won't be as successful as the first movie.

Movies.com

See also:

The Amazing Spider-Man trailer online

EXCELSIOR! Why the Future of Movies is Marvel

5 lessons DC could learn from Marvel, movie-wise

The Avengers movie review

Seven things that will make the Avengers movie awesome

8 reasons why a Spider-Man TV series would have legs

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