Joss Whedon to Direct THE AVENGERS?

As you can imagine, April Fool's Day is a strange one for trying to report movie news. Every story must be taken with a grain of salt. If it looks sketchy, it's probably some sort of prank. So you can imagine my trepidation when I saw this headline "Joss Whedon = The Avengers?"  For me, that doesn't mean all that much. Sure I pray at the altar ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer like a lot of folks, but I'm no Whedon fanatic. A headline like that, though, is sure to have the fanboys melting into little puddles of drool and other bodily fluids.

IESB is reporting(and swearing it's legit) that Whedon has been added to the shortlist of directors Marvel is considering to helm The Avengers. The only other name on that list that we know of is Louis Letterier(Clash of  the Titans).

Everything Marvel Studios has been building up lately with Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, and The First Avenger: Captain America will come to a head in The Avengers, uniting the heroes together to take on a threat that is too big for the each of them. Zak Penn is currently handling scripting duties on the film, with a projected release date of May 4th, 2012.

Obviously, Whedon already has a tight connection with Marvel, thanks to his lengthy stint writing Astonishing X-men, as well as his brief run on The Runaways. So the working relationship is there. Still to me this seems like an odd fit. Wouldn't it make more sense to have Whedon direct, say, X-men 4? A property he's intimately familiar with?