Preview: AvX and Vertigo 2012

I love preview books. I especially love it when there's a lot of meat to the previews. Such is the case with the preview books I get to talk about now.

Everyone knows about AvX, otherwise known as Avengers vs. X-Men. As outlined in this preview, the story's lineage is this:

1. X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga, which is not surprising, since someone seems to have finally realized the Phoenix is a huge element of the X-Men mythology.
2. Avengers: Disassembled, the first Brian Michael Bendis impact story, important for that if no other reason.
3. House of M, the elephant in the room.
4. X-Men: Messiah Complex, the most relevant X-Men story of the modern era.
5. X-Force/Cable: Messiah War, in which someone actually tries to do something with it.
6. X-Men: Second Coming, in which Hope returns.
7. Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis Vol. 1, in which Marvel pretends is more important than Civil War or some other important story.
8. New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis Vol. 1, in which Marvel continues to pretend much of the Bendis Avengers didn't exist to be Bendis Avengers.
9. Uncanny X-Men: The Birth of Generation Hope, in which someone pretends that the X-Men have actually not been squandering Hope.
10. Avengers: The Children's Crusade, in which someone actually appreciates this book.
11. X-Men: Schism, in which someone pretends that this exact story hasn't been told a dozen times in the recent X-Men past.
12. Avengers vs. X-Men: It's Coming, in which hopefully (ha!) Marvel finds some relevant stories that don't have anything to do with the above.

So on the one hand, I'm glad that Marvel is having some fun telling fans that this is another story they've intentionally been building toward, but it's increasingly unlikely that anyone will believe them when they say there will be definitive and long-lasting actual repercussions from this event. That's why the title is more generic and hoping to cash in on the Civil War concept of simply pitting groups of fans against each other.

No, I'm not cynical, why do you ask?

Then there's the Vertigo Preview 2012, which provides some previews for some fairly generic new series, including Fairest, the latest Bill Willingham effort to milk the success of Fables; Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child, which seeks to milk further sympathy from Hurricane Katrina; The New Deadwardians, which seeks to milk the zombie phenomenon; and finally Saucer Country, the one book that seems to have a unique vision, from Paul Cornell, whose premise cannot be entirely explained in this preview, and is written by Paul Cornell, to emphasize, a writer I believe will be among the biggest in the medium, certainly thanks to projects like this.

But that's my take on material meant to provoke a gut reaction.