When Did Cable Become an Overly Elaborate Bond Villain?
Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness live up to expectations with Avengers: X-Sanction. Unfortunately, those expectations were that the duo would deliver a standard story heavy on action and flare while being light on substance and thought.
Relative to the stories Loeb has produced lately, this is actually pretty good. There's really nothing painfully stupid in this issue. Oh, I know that is some seriously backhanded praise, but it's also my honest thought as I read through this. At no point in this issue am I driven to groan, roll my eyes or quit reading early. I really can't say the same about the majority of issues Loeb has written in the past decade.
The premise of this story is a simple one, but it really works because of its simplicity. It puts Cable in the position of choosing between the Avengers and Hope Summers. It's a emotionally simple choice, given that Hope is practically his daughter. He sacrificed everything to raise her and keep her alive so she could fulfill her destiny. This makes it easy to empathize with him as he's confronted by the idea that the Avengers may now stand in the way of all that. That said, I do think it's too early for this story to be told. Not enough time has passed since Cable's death. This would have the potential to be a much stronger story if Hope had more time since Cable's death to grow and develop. As it stands, Hope is essentially the same as she was when Cable left. Even if Cable never directly comes across her through the course of this story, it's much less interesting to have him return to a world that isn't very different from the one he left.
Then again, would Loeb really capitalize on it if the Hope and the Marvel Universe had really changed while Cable was gone? The shallowness of this issue indicates he wouldn't. There's really not much here, as it's essentially just a fight between Cable and Captain America. Cable's inner monologue is hollow and repetitious, hammering home that he's doing this for Hope and cliches about how war is war.
This lack of depth is really what leaves this issue being nothing special. This reads like Cable Versus Captain America as written over a weekend. The story could have opened with the Avengers involved in some kind of interesting conflict or something that at least related in some way to the current continuity of the Avengers. Instead, we get a pretty generic Lethal Legion that clearly had no thought put into it. Cable's strategy against Captain America is the standard "kidnap the sidekick to lure in the hero" schtick that Captain America plays along with and the rest of the Avengers stay out of for plot convenience. The fight is a nearly unremarkable slugfest, highlighted by Captain America demanding Cable's surrender while simultaneously trying to shoot him.
Possibly the worst offense of this issue is how it tries to tell us that Cable is trying to kill the Avengers. He's not. No one can read this issue and seriously tell me Cable is trying to kill the Avengers. He puts both Falcon and Captain America and ridiculously elaborate situations rather than kill them. With Avengers vs. X-Men on the way, it's already obvious that this story is unlikely to result in anyone dying or really being affected in any way. But the story could at least try to make believe Cable is genuinely trying. Really, the cliffhanger ending is just insulting to the reader's intelligence.
As usual, McGuinness' art is a good companion to Loeb's style of writing. It has a cartoonish style. He's a good go-to guy for big, colorful action stories. If this story was being written to its real potential, I think I would prefer an artist more capable of depicting serious and dramatic scenes. That's really not McGuinness' strength, but Loeb really doesn't ask him for it here anyway.
Avengers: X-Sanction is more than likely an unnecessary prologue to Avengers vs. X-Men. It seems doubtful that anything truly meaningful is going to happen within these pages, especially if this first issue is any indication. It's not terrible and better than what some may expect from Loeb, though. It offers a decent helping of standard comic book action for those who are interested in that kind of thing, but it lacks anything more for those who want more from their comics.
