I work in an office where everyone loves films. It's our job - I work for a DVD review magazine, and sharing our floor is one of the UK's best-selling movie titles. Only a few people, including myself, read comics. But if there's one movie this summer that everyone in the office is talking about, it's SPIDER-MAN.

SPIDER-MAN is tipped by pundits to be the biggest box-office draw this summer. Which at first seems odd, because it doesn't star anyone at the top of the Hollywood A-list, and the director, Sam Raimi, is hardly renowned for his multimillion dollar blockbuster action movies.

And the number of people getting excited about this movie can't be attributed purely to comic readers. Perhaps not even to the legions of people who remember the SPIDER-MAN cartoon series or live action show. After all, a lot of kids who remember neither (and who've never read a comic) are getting excited about this movie.

No, most of this anticipation has come from two things: first, the trailers actually look pretty good. Certainly better than any other superhero movie within the last ten years (yes, including X-MEN; the trailers may have been great, but the film was distinctly average, and people know that by now). The trailers also emphasise the actual story over the webslinging action (what a concept, eh?), implying there's more to this movie than just another brainless explosion-fest.

'In movies, 'events' happen all the time, and people have come to expect them.' And second? Sheer, unadulterated hype.

Sony is very good at this. It did it with the WalkMan, it did it with the PlayStation, and it often does it with some of its biggest musical acts. Sony is an old hand at creating excitement for something before its launch.

But Sony isn't the only one. We have at least one, often more, 'event' movies every year. This summer alone there's also STAR WARS EPISODE II, MEN IN BLACK 2, AUSTIN POWERS 3 and MINORITY REPORT. And, of course, the end of the year will see the second instalments of both THE LORD OF THE RINGS and HARRY POTTER franchises, and the twentieth 'official' James Bond movie. The fact that most of these are sequels isn't lost on me, but anyone who can't create anticipation for a sequel to an already-successful movie really shouldn't be in a job.

And if we look back, there are many original movies that had the same 'event' feel to them. TITANIC. PULP FICTION. UNBREAKABLE.

There's still a thread here that relates to sequelitis, of course. That thread is that these were all films made by people with very good track records of successful, enjoyable movies. They may not have been sequels, but they were sold on the strength of the creators' previous works.

So that's 'mainstream events', if you will. Smaller films, with smaller budgets, don't generally get the opportunity (or promotion) to create this sort of hype. What they can benefit from - if they're good enough - is word of mouth. For a smaller movie, which people are often more reticent to spend money on, nothing works better than recommendations from those who have seen it. After all, which are you more likely to trust - advertising copy, or one of your friends?

Nevertheless, 'indie events' still sometimes happen. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is surely the best known of these; through a shrewd, inexpensive internet campaign and distinct teaser material, the makers created a genuine curiosity in people. What the hell was this film all about? What witch? And was it really real? Opinion on the film itself was fairly sharply divided after the fact, but that doesn't matter; enough people coughed up the cash to see it that it was an instant success.

'The last 'event' in comics was DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN.' In movies, 'events' happen all the time. They're carefully orchestrated campaigns, sure, but they work, and people have come to expect them.

You know what I'm thinking, don't you; "Why aren't there more of them in comics?"

Comics do have events, of course, but they seem increasingly rare. Even the long-heralded 'relaunch' events don't create anywhere near as much excitement as they used to, possibly because there have been so many of them over the last decade.

The last 'event' we had, on the scale of true events, was DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN, which had almost six months of solid hype and excitement-building from DC. Unfortunately, at time of writing, the last instalment is well over a month late. For something that was obviously planned at least a year ago, that's ridiculous. Nevertheless, that doesn't affect the 'event' status; and DKSA was definitely an event. It traded on the reputation of not just Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, but also being a sequel to what is often held up as their best work.

From the other side of the Big Two, we recently had ORIGIN. This was an event for entirely different reasons to DKSA. Paul Jenkins and Joe Quesada are hardly unknowns, but the real draw here was the story, or more specifically the character; Wolverine's definitive, official origin story (something that Marvel had previously stated they would never do, but that's comics for you). And that book has also suffered from ridiculously extreme delays in its schedule.

Marvel did have another event recently, and one that was very much tied to the creators; Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely taking over X-MEN. Morrison himself is no shirk at creating hype, and even went so far (by mainstream terms, anyway) as to change the title of the book to NEW X-MEN. I think it's safe to say that the creators were the draw here; X-MEN has had numerous changes of creator, and none of them created quite the kind of furore that Morrison and Quitely did. Carefully chosen art previews only helped.

'The industry needs - and wants - to create excitement again.' But what else can we think of? The 'death' of Superman was nearly a decade ago. THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN were posthumous events, books that launched with little hype but grew to giants through word of mouth. A more recent example would be AUTHORITY; a book that launched on the back of two other failed revamps, gaining (and, subsequently, losing) its reputation through quality and evangelism by its readers.

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, ZERO HOUR, SECRET WARS... All of these are by now history, and the 'epic crossover' is no longer the draw it once was due to distinctly mediocre execution of many over the last few years. No one really looks forward to crossovers any more; the occasional one may be brilliant, but no-one expects them to be. If anything, the lead-up to crossovers is nowadays filled with dread, not excitement.

Probably the biggest event of the '90s was - and I know you'll laugh - X-FORCE #1. Yeah, we can look back now and realise how awful it was. But just check out those sales figures - back then we fell for it hook, line and sinker.

And as for any 'indie comic events' akin to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT... Well, if anyone can think of one I'd love to hear about it.

So where does that leave us now? Where are the big events? The next one on the horizon appears to THE FILTH, from Vertigo - another book by Grant Morrison, and once again it's easy to see his hand in the manipulation that's brought about hype for the book. For a start, the book really is being sold purely on his and Chris Weston's reputations - at time of writing, no-one actually knows what the book's about. Even the PREVIEWS solicitation for issue #1 contains no real information beyond Morrison promising us a weird, wild ride.

Beyond that, I can't see any. Which is a bit sad, really. The industry desperately needs - and wants - to create excitement again, the sort of excitement we all had for the end of SANDMAN or the launch of SIN CITY #1. We, the readers, want to be teased, to be told and shown that we Must Not Miss This Comic.

Because right now, there isn't much to get excited about.

Antony Johnston is the author of JULIUS, SPOOKED and THE LONG HAUL. His new ongoing series WASTELAND begins in July 2006.

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