X-Sanction #2-4

It’s six months later and I’ve finally gotten past issue #1 of X-Sanction. This Loeb and McGuinness pretty much sets up the whole Avengers vs. X-Men crossover this summer in a quick manner.

The whole point of X-Sanction was to set up a rift between the two camps. Cable is protecting his adopted daughter Hope–the last mutant and the future savior of mutantkind–from the Avengers. And by protecting her, I mean killing the Avengers.

Cable is under the assumption that they will kill his daughter and he won’t allow that. Loeb uses a series of flashbacks to the future where Cable finds out that the Avengers wind up possessing several weapons designed to kill mutants. Because the Avengers are awesome, Cable is nearly dead thanks to being physically beaten and the techno-organic virus wreaking havoc on his body. Hope–now controlling the Phoenix force–is able to not only save her adopted father, but completely remove the techno-organic virus, something that has not been accomplished in the disease’s twenty plus year history.

What it also accomplishes is a huge distrust between Captain America and Cyclops, which again makes this a starting point for Avengers vs. X-Men.

So should you read this?

I’m going to say its you can pass it. Don’t get me wrong, it all made sense story wise and McGuinness’ art is always great. But at the same time, this is just a feeder story for another crossover.You can skip this and start straight at Avengers vs. X-Men #1 without losing anything.

X-Sanction #1

I feel kind of sorry for the X-Sanction mini-series. The creative team of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness have nothing to do with it. Unfortunately for X-Sanction, it comes before and is a prequel of sorts to the upcoming Avengers vs. X-Men mega-crossover. That said, it still looks like an interesting book.

I can sum up this issue pretty quickly. Cable has been informed that Hope, the last mutant born after M-Day (the time Scarlet Witch wished all the mutants away) and his ersatz daughter, will be killed at the hands of the Avengers. Obviously, he’s not going to let that happens so our time-travelling cyborg mutant has his sights set on them. This issue has him taking out Falcon and ends with him in a position to literally pull the trigger on Captain America.

You can’t help but have that feeling that you know what is going to happen by the end of the mini series. Cable is going to do something drastic that is only going to widen the rift between two sides. I think I’m going to wait till this is in a hardcover or trade paperback format to continue reading. That’s no fault of Loeb or McGuinness; I just have too much other stuff already in the reading pile at this point.