USA Today has the scoop on today’s big Marvel Comics announcement: their tent pole event for 2012 is a 12 issue bi-weekly series called:

Avengers vs. X-Men.

It will be written by the so-called “Marvel Architects”: Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Jonathan Hickman and Matt Fraction. As for artists, the teaser image below lists Olivier Coipel, John Romita Jr., and one of the Kubert brothers (probably Adam).

The series begins with a zero issue in March and then kicks off in earnest in April 2012. Here’s how the story is described:

[The story] begins [in April 2012] with an extinction-level event barreling its way toward Earth, namely the cosmic entity of death and rebirth known as the Phoenix Force. It’s looking for a new host who will possess all of its power, which may or may not be the mutant teenager Hope Summers. Cyclops, Wolverine, Magneto and the other X-Men want to protect her and prepare her if she’s to be the new Phoenix. Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man and their fellow Avengers want her handed over to them so they can figure out what to do with her and keep the world safe from a potentially fiery fate. Suffice it to say, tensions — and fisticuffs — arise.

It’s always Jean’s fault, isn’t it?



More on this story as information presents itself.