Five Guys On One: Marvel Announces Avengers Vs. X-Men

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Yesterday Marvel announced that their big crossover event for 2012 will be: Civil War! Wait – I mean: Avengers Vs. X-Men!

In a streaming press conference with Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonso, SVP of Publishing Tom Brevoort, Senior Editor Nick Lowe, and Marvel’s Architect writers Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker and Jonathan Hickman, they gave the gist of what we’re in store for: about 300 clams to read the whole story! Wait, that’s not right…

…the seeds for this story have been growing for a while. When [the 2007 X-Men event] “Messiah CompleX” introduced the so-called “Mutant Messiah,” a little girl with green eyes and red hair named Hope, it raised the obvious question, “Who is she?” and, of course, the specter of the Phoenix.

So if I had to hazard a guess, the Phoenix Force is returning to Earth, probably to infect the little girl who looks just like Jean Grey, if Jean Grey were redrawn by commission for loathsome perverts. The X-Men will want to protect their messiah, The Avengers will want to stop a potential extinction-level threat to Earth, stuff will explode, and dudes will get kicked.

The interesting thing about this crossover is that unlike most Marvel events, which historically have been helmed by a single artist and writer – as Fear Itself was run by Stuart Immomen and Matt Fraction – this one will be written by all the Marvel Architects, with John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel, and Adam Kubert rotating on pencils every four issues. The writers hashed out the storyline together, but individual script issues will be handled by each writer on some kind of rotating basis. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the talky one will be by Bendis, and Hickman will be behind the one where Reed Richards turns out to be a cock.

On one hand, Goddamn is that a lineup of talent. And there ain’t nobody who don’t like hot, sweet superhero-on superhero action, to which millions of copies of Civil War and Axel Braun comic book porno DVDs can attest. On the other hand, there is a possibility that this could turn into a “too many chefs” situation. A cynic might say that fashioning an event in this way is a risky way to run a railroad, but that would be foolish; everybody knows that story written by committee almost never goes wrong.

So is there any concern about proceeding with the event under five disparate writers upstairs in Marvel Editorial, Axel?

Once everyone agreed to the assignment, our motto was, “Five fingers make a fist.”

You heard it straight from the horse’s mouth: Marvel Comics’ Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonzo promises that you can look forward to being fisted by five guys!

The first of twelve bi-weekly issues of Avengers Vs. X-Men, written by Brian Michael Bendis with pencils by John Romita Jr., drops in April, 2012.