House of M

I've heard some not-so-fantastic things about this story, but I ended up liking it a fair bit. Olivier Coipel's art is pretty darn good, and while I've definitely seen legitimate complaints about Brian Michael Bendis' writing, he keeps the cheeky dialogue to a minimum and weaves and interesting alternate reality story featuring a ton of Marvel characters in interesting ways. I also liked that it wasn't terribly action heavy, there's the requisite crossover giant clusterfuck battle at the end, but for the most part it's about the characters, not shoving them together into fights. Really, the central question is one I would generally expect super hero comics to try and answer - what's better, a perfect illusion or an imperfect truth? The decision the heroes make is an obvious one since it's hard to imagine a large comic book company completely flipping the status quo of its entire universe, but it's a neat experiment for a few months.

Basically, some time after Scarlet Witch went nuts and killed a few fellow Avengers, a bunch of heroes are having a debate over what to do with her when she uses Xavier to change the entire world so everyone gets what they want. Thanks to Wolverine's healing power I guess he's immune to the effects and along with a powerful little girl is able to slowly wake up a bunch of other heroes to the truth and they try to break the illusion. Not everybody's happy to realize the current reality is a false one, but their ultimate goal is never really in doubt. I didn't know a few of the featured characters, though Bendis did a decent job of keeping it understandable for someone like me who doesn't religiously read this stuff. Seemed like the right way to do a crossover. There are a couple threads that aren't resolved by the end, though I doubt any ended up being a huge deal.