AvX #12: How did I do?

So, AvX #12 is out (and AvX: Versus #6, and Uncanny #19), and it's 8pm (BST), so the Internet is talking about it. My critical reaction will come later. For now, I'm going to talk about something far more self-obsessed.

Back in April, after the first couple of Avengers vs. X-Men, I posted a bunch of predictions as to how things would play out. I think I did reasonably well, despite getting some big things wrong.

Note, this post contains massive AvX #12 spoilers. Do not read unless you have read AvX #12 or don't care about spoilers.

One big thing I didn't see coming was the Phoenix Five and the nature of second act. I think I saw it as a much more straightforward Civil War-type battle, rather the cosmic struggle it ended up, which in hindsight is silly of me, 'cos the Phoenix was involved. Of course it was going to be an epic cosmic battle and someone was going to go Dark Phoenix.

So, what did I say, and how did it pan out?

Whoever will win the actual fight will lose the moral high ground. Since I think the X-Men will be ultimately vindicated, and the Avengers will apologise; then the X-Men will lose in combat.

I think it's fair to say that happened.

Probably the mass-repowering of mutants will be prevented. There's no solid editorial rationale for reversing that, after all.

But there's another detail to "no more mutants", in that only a very few mutants have arisen since then (Hope being the first, and then the Lights). That I expect will change, and we'll see new mutants manifesting at a modest rate as we did back in the 1980s, without the weirdness associated with Hope's powers.

It's not clear exactly how many more mutants there are now, but it seems like I'm right.

Hope will die. She's a messiah. It's what they do. Self-sacrifice or not? It'd be repeating a beat from the Dark Phoenix saga, and I'm not sure whether they'll deliberately do that to invoke it, or avoid it.

Hope didn't die, but she did perform a self-sacrifice, by agreeing to and participating in Wanda's "No More Phoenix".

Summers will die. They toyed this in some of the post-Schism publicity, and people thought it was semi-plausible for a while. That means they can get away with doing it now (people will think they will just be teasing again if any rumours get out). Although it'd be quite funny if he did die of hypertension, I don't quite see that happening. Summers will die defending Utopia. Which will fall.

Well, I was seeing this in a much more straightforward superhero fight way, I didn't expect Utopia to end up being the levitating sky city we saw. But certainly, it has fallen now. Scott hasn't died, but was shorn from the Phoenix, and is now disgraced and arrested.

Since I was predicting these two deaths, I didn't see Professor X going. But frankly, I don't think I'd have done anyway. We already had Professor X believed dead at Messiah Complex, it seems like repeating themselves to me. But this time we'll actually deal with the consequences of his death, rather than being used as a story hook for a bunch of tales about his life.

There are three people who are members of the X-Men and the Avengers. Storm has only been part of the Avengers for a little while, making it seem as if she's been put there specifically for this event. And yet, she goes straightforwardly back to the X-Men and fights on their side. And she's been established as the moral compass of the group. She'll defect for sure.

Not wrong there.

Similarly, I'd expect to see Wolverine change sides.

Wolverine stayed with Cap till the end. Well, apart from the bits where he betrayed the Avengers by taking Hope to the moon. But then, I wasn't expecting the gradual peeling away of support from Cyclops as the story went on.

Afterwards, the X-Men will regroup back at the Westchester school.

This looks to be true. This would be Bendis's All New X-Men.

Meanwhile, Storm and Beast will be off founding some other group of X-Men.

We still don't know exactly what's going on in the X-verse yet - this will become clear as the month continues and AvX: Consequences comes out.

And with Summers dead, Emma could go either way - back to supervillainry or perhaps back to teaching.

There's something that looks awfully like a new Brotherhood of Evil X-Men line-up, with Emma and Magneto and Cyclops. Maybe the rest of the Phoenix Five - although it's difficult to imagine Colossus and Magik being the same team, or indeed on speaking terms! Again, have to wait and see.