if you don't know, now you know- Avengers vs. X-Men

All the comic-heads out there know that Marvel's last big thing-- Fear Itself pretty much sucked ass.  DC has since taken over the industry marketshare for the last 3 months with the New 52 and sadly heads have rolled at Marvel. Well...the House of Ideas just announced their next big thing and Marvel employees and readers can breathe a sigh of relief until it's release in April 2012.

A vs. X brings together Marvel's two most successful product lines (Avengers and X-Men bear their brand across at least 10 comicbooks, not counting standalone titles like Wolverine, Captain America, Iron Man, etc that have links within each respective continuity) in a time that is desperately needed for a big push by the powerhouse publisher.

Avengers vs. The X-Men will focus on the return of Hope Summers (daughter of Cable and last mutant born) and the Scarlet Witch (who was responsible for the near genocide of Mutants) with the potential of one of these or another character central to A vs. X  to be the new host for the Phoenix Force.  I see this as a mash-up of two of Marvel's past events that were viewed as successful-- House of M and Civil War. 


It has been seven years since The House of M, Marvel's last mega event that also focused primarily on The Avengers (New Avengers) and The X-Men.  Since then the X-Men have become a dying breed and have taken on more of a Magneto-ish mantra of them versus us.  You can see how this wouldn't stand well for the head of security-- Captain America, especially with highly symbolic returns of family members to both teams.  The all-encompassing , Spring event will touch most Marvel titles and you can imagine the struggle that each family faces-- especially those with history, membership and connections to both-- Beast, Wolverine and now Storm.

The creative team of the 12-part bi-weekly will be treated as an collective co-op each issue by some of the industry's best writers and artists, to name a few- Frank Cho, Jonathan Hickman, Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, Jason Aaron, Olivier Coipel, and john Romita Jr.  I am skeptical on how well over 10+ creators can keep a well-contained story together to us readers, but it also could represent some excitement and freshness by issue.  We will just have to see yeah?!

Fraction says, all that internal conflict and external strife is a home run for Avengers vs. X-Men's creative collective.  You crush these characters again and again through various different crucibles, and you see what's left of them at the end. You see if they can still stand up when it's all said and done. That's drama.

With all that said I pray to Buddha for Marvel to keep Jean Grey out of all of this, but you know that with a connection to the cosmic deity- Phoenix, we can probably expect her return.  See you at the big press conference tomorrow on livestream at noon PST.   For now, peeps we can soundoff here and here. #AvX

 Via CBR / USA Today

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big O