AvX

It has taken me a little while to catch up with AvX (Avengers versus X-Men) and I finally got the opportunity to do so on a long train journey to Cardiff and back; that's about three hours each way.

AvX is one of the (too few) titles that Marvel Comics gives you a free digital version when you buy a paper copy. That meant that I was carrying all 13 issues conveniently on my iPad. Rather more convenient than carrying the paper copies around for months waiting for the right moment to tackle them.

AvX is another saga in the style of Civil War and Secret Invasion, though perhaps not quite as all-encompassing due to the scope being limited to the Avengers and the X-Men.

AvX has the Avengers fighting the X-Men over the return of the Phoenix Force. It's a nice idea but played out rather too quickly in just 13 chapters issued over 6 months. A little short for a saga.

And is often the case with Marvel's sagas, nothing much of any consequence happens. Yes some key people die but I expect to see them comeback one day.

There is one other momentous change, undoing one from an earlier saga, but that change has been coming for years and it was just a question of when and how it was going to come about.

What does happen is a neat little story that Marvel pulls out all the stops on by using much of its top creative talent. The writers were Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Jonathan Hickman and Matt Fraction and the artists were John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel and Adam Kubert. All class.

AvX is a fine comic and a jolly read.