Marvel’s biggest event of the year is here along with perhaps the most extensive set of variant covers the publisher has ever produced. Avengers versus X-Men promises to be huge in every way, and each of the series’ twelve issues will be wrapped in at least five different covers. Shipping from April to October, these books will feature artwork from some of the industry’s top names, and if nothing else will result in the most massive entry in our Standard Deviations series to date. As “AvX” rolls on, we’ll be updating this post with all of the associated images and commentary you’d find in each installment. Read on to see where it all begins, and be sure to check back regularly as each issue ships!

• UPDATED: April 13th, 2012 with Olivier Coipel’s C2E2 AvX #1 variant.
• UPDATED: April 19th, 2012 with AvX #2.
• UPDATED: May 2nd, 2012 with AvX #3.
• UPDATED: May 16th, 2012 with AvX #4.
• UPDATED: June 6th, 2012 with AvX #5.
• UPDATED: June 20th, 2012 with AvX #6.
• UPDATED: July 7th, 2012 with AvX #7.
• UPDATED: July 19th, 2012 with AvX #8.
• UPDATED: August 1st, 2012 with AvX #9.
• UPDATED: August 15th, 2012 with AvX #10.
• UPDATED: September 14th, 2012 with AvX #11.
• UPDATED: October 3rd, 2012 with AvX #12.

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In the last edition of Standard Deviations, we took a look at a set of variant covers for Marvel’s House of M series released in 2005. The Scarlet Witch was a central figure in that series as she will be in this year’s Avengers versus X-Men. Also central to AvX  is Hope Summers, the first mutant born since the Witch’s “no more mutants” curse. In the interest of equal time, this go around we’ll be taking a look the variant covers that shipped with 2007’s Messiah Complex, the story that introduced Hope to the Marvel Universe. The story stands as an important part of X-history and a who’s who of top artists turned in some beautiful cover artwork for the thirteen-part crossover.

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It’s like 1991 all over again. In July, Marvel launched a new X-Men #1 by Victor Gischler and Paco Medina featuring a mutants versus vampires story that’s still raging on. Tomorrow, Marvel follows up that launch with Uncanny X-Force #1 by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena. It’s hard to say that this merits its own “day” in celebration of its release, but its launch certainly makes more sense than X-Men #1‘s.

Back in 1991, Marvel released Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 in the same summer as Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld’s X-Force #1. Both were huge sellers with X-Men #1 at 8 million copies and X-Force #1 somewhere around 5 million in the heyday of speculative investment (X-Force also did it with only one cover compared to X-Men‘s five). While X-Force didn’t endure the way X-Men (now X-Men: Legacy) did, it was still a successful concept that was reborn coming out of 2007’s Messiah Complex storyline.

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