Cobie Smulders In The Lead To Play Maria Hill In The Avengers

Someone take Chris Rosen off suicide watch. His immortal beloved Cobie Smulders is reportedly the front-runner to join the dude-studded cast of The Avengers. And now we have word from sister side Deadline as to exactly which Marvel lady she's be playing: SHIELD agent Maria Hill.

For those of you that don't know your Daisy Johnson from your Jarvis, here's a quick bio. After a typical world-threatening crisis, Maria Hill replaced Nick Fury as the head of the international strikeforce SHIELD. She took a dim view to superheroes and generally made life miserable for them. She also slept with Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, but he's kind of the man-slut of the Marvel world, so it's not terribly remarkable.

I'm not familiar enough with Cobie Smulders to say whether or not she'd be a good fit (but I do know that you can rearrange her weird name to spell "Ms. Obscure Deli"), but my colleague Christopher seems to think she's aces. Despite his being completely wrong on Harry Potter's best movie, that's good enough for me.

But this is sad news for anyone who was hoping that Ms. Deli and the other gals were in the running to play erstwhile Avenger Janet van Dyne, aka the Wasp. The Wasp, whose powers include shrinking down to insect size, flying around and zapping people with her wasp's sting, was a founding member of the Avengers and many thought she'd find her way into the movie.

Which means that while Maria Hill and Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow will be representing the ladies in the Avengers, they don't get any cool super-powers, like Thor, Captain America, the Hulk or Iron Man. Which means that, as always, I'll be secretly hoping for my full-length Dazzler movie to right this particular wrong.

· Cobie Smulders Closes In On 'Avengers't [Deadline]