So, let me see if I can write the “official” announcement for Watchmen 2:
Not the announcement from DC— the article that’ll be run by hacks like that USA Today guy or that one shitty LA Times blog when Watchmen 2 gets announced. I always enjoy those articles more. The first paragraph will start with some bland sentence that references the book’s popularity, maybe mentions its placement on Time’s Top 100 books list, and then segues into a question like “But a sequel?” Or maybe it’ll go more daring like “The only thing crazier than publishing Watchmen is publishing its sequel.”

And then there’ll be a couple paragraphs of the plans— DC to launch a wave of Watchmen 2 miniseries, created by various C or D-list talents, whatever also-ran is writing these. Then, quotes from … I’m guessing they’ll put Jim Lee out front on this one. ”There’s risk, but we want fans to be excited and talking about the risks we’re taking. It’s our top talents on these books” (again, alluding to, like, Andy Kubert who’s never even been a top talent within his own family, but…). Allusion to Alan Moore’s prickly relationship with the company— Moore is “unavailable” for comment at time of press and/or declines to comment. Maybe, maybe he says something pithy like “All of those characters are already dead to me. I’m busy writing a 10,000 page poem about a molehill’s evolution over 20,000 years. But why doesn’t anyone working in comics have their own ideas, I wonder?” (Jason Aaron tells him to fuck himself again 4 months later, then goes back to architect-ing X-Men vs. The Hulk crossovers). That feels more like a subsequent snippet of an interview to me from Obscure Magazine Quarterly, than an opening article, though.

Then, there’ll be allusions to controversy on the internet, with half-witted quotes from SLAMPENIS654 like “How darez they?” or “This makez my nutz sore! #SLAMPENIS”, a snapshot of the discourse from fucking twitter… Best case scenario, they get a quote from someone associated with Comics Alliance like “Many fans are very troubled by concerns.” Then follow that with an upbeat quote from one of the creators. ”I welcome the challenge. I think fans will be excited when they see what we’ve done here,” says Amanda Conner or whoever. And then end with a quote from Jim Lee, some kind of meaningless bit of inspirational nonsense like “The only risky thing in life is to not take risks.” End of article. I think that’ll be the article.

After that, Marvel will immediately announce a “major press event” and try to promote something they’re doing; after DC’s 52 thing, they announced a Spiderman comic that Joe Madureira drew, like, 4 issues of. So— they haven’t really set the bar that high for themselves, in the past. But I’m sure they’ll architect up some kind of major event of events. Axel Alonso and all of the architects past, present and future will all join hands and together declare it “the biggest story we’ve ever told, ever, for real this time, seriously, the biggest, really, we mean it.” (Five months after whatever they do, some Architect will tell the audience in interviews that they’re stupid for having believed in anything, at all, at any point in their lives, and then try to bully the audience into believing that every bad comic ever published was actually about “escape” this entire time and we were all too stupid to realize it).

Then, the books actually come out. By the time they do, everyone’s already bored by the idea of it, after all the pre-release hype / the way-more-entertaining internet fracas. “Sales” to retailers— the ones still standing— for the first issue will be good, “justifying” the whole thing— no one will care by issue 4 (which will be late because of REDACTED). There’ll be some reviews at CBR or IGN or wherever— the third paragraph of that will be “but setting aside the question of whether it should exist, I’m instead going to judge it by the criteria of whether the writing and art are executed with the bare minimum amount of skill, and then leave it up to you to think about what it means.” (Like those videogame reviews that talk about how “gameplay is a 7”, whatever the hell that means.) I’m guessing 4 out of 5 “stars.”

One of the writers involved will later be heard at a bar at a comic convention saying, “Well, if fans wouldn’t buy it, we wouldn’t waste our lives making it, just the same way that if men didn’t pay for sex, I wouldn’t blow every man with $5 in his pocket— so really this is all the fault of comic fans, as is everything, always; the creative personnel in comics will never be in any way responsible for the state of comics”; everybody nods, and goes home happy. The end.

Mainstream comics in 2012! Previewed!