Earlier today, we reported on the next big thing coming to Marvel Comics — Avengers VS. X-Men.

While you’ll have to wait until April 2012 for Avengers VS. X-Men #1 to simultaneously hit store shelves and the Marvel Comics App, you can participate in the official launch of the new event with Marvel Comics during their Live Stream event, which kicks off today at 3pm EST.

This afternoon (Wednesday, December 7), head over to Marvel’s Live Stream page, where the series creators will be celebrating the launch of the new event and a handful of Marvel fans will be chosen to to “hang out” with the creators in Marvel’s Hang Out set up in Google+. The creators will also be answering questions from fans posted on Facebook and in Twitter with hashtag #AvX.

Avengers VS. X-Men finds the two most popular Marvel teams fighting against each other in an epic 12-issue series. In the story, The Avengers and X-Men have learned that the “all powerful embodiment of death and rebirth” known as the Phoenix Force is returning to earth to find a host to “unleash its immeasurable power.” The Avengers and the X-Men differ in how this situation should be handled because they eventually end up in a battle that makes one-time friends into desperate enemies.

The House of Ideas is bringing on the big guns for this twice a month series. The story will be written by Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, and Jason Aaron. The artwork is coming from John Romita Jr., Oliver Coipel, and Adam Kubert.

“Avengers VS X-Men brings together the most powerful forces in comics for a super hero war like you’ve never seen before and will never see again. We all want to see the best of the best go against each other””Lakers & Celtics; Ali & Frazier; Yankees & Red Sox; and in comics it’s the Avengers fighting the X-Men,” said Axel Alonso, Editor in Chief, Marvel Entertainment. “We’ve brought together the biggest writers, biggest artists and biggest characters for the biggest story we’ve ever told. This is the kind of high-octane action-packed story that fans demand while also having a profound effect on every character involved””and reshaping the Marvel Universe in its wake.”