Check out footage of Wasp's appearance in Avengers

A new storyboard animatic from Avengers Assemble has been unveiled online, and it shows just how close mini-heroine Wasp came to being in the movie.

The animatic, created by artist Federico D'Alessandro, is a conceptual series of images that storyboards the arrival of Loki's army in New York.

That in itself is pretty exciting, but the awesome levels go through the roof with a shot of the Avengers assembled - with Janet Van Dyne aka Wasp hovering among them.

Check out the video below…

Director Joss Whedon has talked previously about his attempts to get Wasp - a founding member of the Avengers in the comics - into his film.

However, we didn't realise just how close Wasp came to being a part of the madness until this animatic was released.

It's surely a bittersweet feeling for comic fans who love the movie but would have loved to see Wasp involved, too.

Whedon is currently working on Avengers 2 . No word yet if he's planning on enlisting Wasp this time around…

Avengers: Age Of Ultron
opens in 2015.

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.