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TremorDeth on Cable #1
by James Hunt ~ March 6th, 2008
It’s that time again! Cable’s getting his own series! I mean, technically he’s had one for a while - Cable, through Soldier X, through Cable and Deadpool, now back to Cable. But this time he’s got a post-Messiah Complex springboard to launch himself off. This series is the adventures of Cable, former mutant messiah and babysitter. Am I interested? Well… maybe.
For me, the real hook for the series is figuring out just who the baby is and why she’s so important. Cable’s job is to protect and raise her, so we’re probably looking at a fairly long arc until this gets resolved, barring any time-jumpy speed-aging situations. While there’s plenty of material in raising a child, it’s not exactly mainstream superheroics, so there’s more to it. You may remember that Cable escaped to the future at the end of Messiah Complex - this book is set in 2043. For those keeping track, that’s roughly halfway between the present day and Bishop’s timeline as visited by Madrox and Layla. Seems safe enough, but Cable has also been pursued to this time…
As I predicted way back, Bishop does indeed turn out to be the antagonist for Cable. For now, it seems, the two of them are going to spar their way across time and space. Bishop’s also rocking a massive robotic arm following his encounter with Predator-X. Worryingly, this means that the book stars two time-displaced mutants from distopian futures with a over one eye and a robotic arm. If Bishop wasn’t black, it’d be tempting to believe they’re the same person. Luckily, they don’t make an issue out of it, so they get away with it - for now.
Writing duties are performed by novelist Duane Swierczynski, who is still relatively new to the comics game. So far, there are no massive flaws in his writing and at least one excellent sequence where Cable disarms and kills several snipers through his sheer experience of the situation - more things like that would certainly do nothing to upset the believability of the character. Ariel Olivetti takes on the art, and I have to say that I’m not really a huge fan of the Larocca-esque washes he’s been using lately. Give me a good inker any day. That said, he does make Cable look his age, which is something most artists can trip up on, and any problems with the art are purely a matter of taste, not ability.
If Cable has any real trouble, it’s that there’s no massive cliffhanger to bring you back. Bishop’s status as the series “villain” is pretty much it - that in itself has been no secret, whether you read the solicits or figured it out from Messiah Complex’s narrative arc. Where X-Force had a gun to Rahne’s head to try and bring readers back, Cable just has Bishop standing up and proclaiming he’s a police officer. It’s fair to say that Cable will most likely never have as many readers as this issue - couldn’t it have ended on a stronger note?
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March 9th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I’m an unreconstructed fanboy when it comes to this character, so predictably I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the issue. That said, the first page was a welcome relief- I was under the impression that Cable had jumped back to his own time, which I’ve always found incredibly dull. Swierczynski presents a very stripped down version of the character. There’s no political dimension here and no strategy, just Nathan as a solider with a job to do. Understandably, the book seems less targeted at Cable fans like me and more for readers who are wanting the MC story followed up- in fact I’d be surprised if Marvel hadn’t at least considered entitling the book as an ongoing version of the crossover. (For the kid, my money’s still on a reincarnated Jean Grey, particularly after X-Men #207 confirmed the red hair.)
However, it’s the art that give me the greatest concerns- Olivetti’s psuedo-painted style lacks dynamism, with the flashbacks to Messiah Complex looking particularly absurd. I’m not a fan of the redesign of Summers: the eighties-style outfit doesn’t really work, even with the poncho (If there was every an X-Man who should be wearing normal clothes, it’s Cable), and bulking the character out again without sufficient emphasis on his height makes him look like more of a wrestler than a solider. Another slight bugbear is the lack of clarity as to whether the character has any mutant abilities, or just his weapons and brain. Cable lost his psi-powers in Cable & Deadpool #12, and has been using artificial substitutes since then (which actually makes him much more coherent as a character, as well as suiting his name). However, the gizmos that made this possible are conspicuously absence from Olivetti’s version of the character. If they were just going to have Nate as effectively human, it’d be fine- his apparent lack of powers made his encounter with the bandits far more interesting. However, the opening blurb puts emphasis on Cable as a mutant…