So here’s a quick one. X-Sanction, the much anticipated return of Cable, already has nothing to offer. Not because the story is bad or they shouldn’t have killed off Cable in the first place (which they shouldn’t have, but that’s whole different thing), but because of something that annoys me quite a bit about comics these days. There is no surprise anymore. But allow me to illustrate.

First we got the teaser going “_ _ _ _ _ Reborn” and everyone was wondering who it was. Is it Bucky? He wasn’t quite dead at that point, but we knew he was going to bite it because of the same reason why X-Sanction isn’t all that good anymore. Is it Steve? Whoever Steve might be. Or Synch? Was he even dead? Excitement, you know. Or was it someone else, maybe someone who will be retconned into having always been there but then kind of forgotten on the butt-end of some reality-altering event? Could be! Who knew?

Then it got very, very boring all of a sudden at the moment where we learned who the about-to-be-reborn “_ _ _ _ _” was. Cable. Sure, we’ve speculated that it might have been Cable. And we were pretty sure that it was him for some odd reason, but the official confirmation suddenly put an end to most of the excitement. No longer could we speculate about who would be returning. No longer could we try to figure out if some books have left clues to who _ _ _ _ _ might be. But still, we knew it was Cable. The speculation began… somewhat. The how and why were left. And most importantly: What will he be doing?

Then they told us that as well. Cable was going up against the Avengers who are now apparently big killers and blahblahblah… who still cares at this point? Because as much as you try to avoid the comic book news, you’re bound to be somewhat market-savvy. So here’s the things that will immediately kill any sort of excitement for the whole event.

• The Avengers are the good guys. Always have been, always will be. They will not end up being the bad guys.
• None of the Avengers will die, because they have a movie coming out.
• The Avengers won’t be destroyed, either.
• Cable won’t die, because he just got better.

This leaves us with the following: Details. We know the premise, we know the ending – something to the extent of “Sorry, people, I mistook you for someone else!” – “Oh, you!” – and so there’s no real excitement anymore. It’s endless monotony (thanks to my friend Vlorghax to get me back on track with this). Same crud, different characters. And of course, we’re being fed the same PR-crap. “This will shatter the status-quo.” Sure it will. Just like the last fifty-nine events we’ve had in the last week. And nothing changed.

And that’s what’s wrong with most of the announcements for new comics these days. Currently, we have this “What if there wasn’t only one?”-mystery going on. People are still speculating, most agree it’s Bucky. And it might be. But we don’t know. And if I didn’t know that they’d tell us who it will be and who will do what when, then I’d go into the shop, all excited and interested and buy a comic.