Wed Nov 2, 2016
Today’s review features Cable, a character that, along with Deadpool, has somehow managed to survive the ‘90s boom that spawned him. I was never fully sold on the extreme nature of the Liefeld X-Force, but I suppose I get why Cable remains interesting to many.
He was, for some time, the consummate 1980s action hero ideal, a “mystery man” and “tactical badass” that speaks directly to the fantasies of the stereotypical superhero comic consumer. Plus, he has a cool eye scar and a metal arm! (Ironically, I think the Magog design for Kingdom Come, meant to play on all the Cable-era tropes that Waid & Ross hated, is much more awesome.)
Since his introduction, Cable’s been fleshed out a lot more, and the Cable series that this issue (discussed more below) comes from has a really interesting initial story premise: Cable has to flee to the future with a special infant girl, who is supposed to one day be the mutant messiah, and he tries to keep her alive while mutant cop/ethnic cleanser Bishop chases them both through time.
The cover to Cable #011 features an image of young Hope Summers in front of a white background, where she is dressed in an adorably ill-fitting X-Men uniform resembling Cable’s outfit (complete with giant shoulder pads) and wielding an oversized gun of some sort … maybe a sawed-off gatling gun or something?
Cable issue 011
Okay, so when this issue begins, Cable has taken Hope (although in the comic Hope does not yet have a name) to an oasis-like settlement in a post-apocalyptic hellscape populated by vicious insectoid beings (called “the cockroach army” by Cable). Cable has a wife named Hope, met during one of the time-jumps made by Cable and the child he’s protecting, who ends up dying during a bandit attack, and so he names the child Hope.
The remaining humans devise a bomb or gas or something to destroy the cockroaches, but Cable worries they’ll kill the humans too. So, he and Hope jump a hundred years into the future, surrounded by salt flats and human skeletons. The image (a two-page spread) is actually pretty incredible, the clean art style juxtaposed with the apocalyptic horror and Hope’s vomiting from the experience of sliding through time.
Unrelated: this issue, more than many before it in this series, really calls to mind the Futurama episode where Fry, Professor Farnsworth, and Bender use a time machine and witness the end of the universe. (Like the Futurama crew, Cable can only jump into the future.)
I think I enjoyed this series (picking up the first twenty or so issues from a dollar bin) in part because Cable is depicted stylistically so far from his Liefeld origins: no ludicrous thigh pouches, consistent realistic proportions, and his relationship with the child Hope is really believable: he’s clearly come around from seeing this as a duty put upon him to a genuine parental concern for her well-being. It’s like an X-Men version of The Road, and I mean that as a compliment.
On one page, there’s a moment that has to be a reference to Philip K. Dick’s “The Second Variety”—Cable hunts a wolf that turns out to be a machine with a wolf’s external appearance.
As I reread this issue, the focus on Cable and Hope is really quite enjoyable. The conflict is almost entirely on Cable trying to decide what sorts of details to tell Hope about the past and her potential destiny (along with details about child development and puberty) rather than on forcing gunfights and explosions and whatnot into the mix. There’s a lot of characterization here, and maybe it’s the sheer lack of possible distractions that has made it possible or my interest in depressing apocalyptic wasteland stories, but … yeah, I dig this issue. This Cable is so much more interesting than when he was a mix of Kyle Reese and the Terminator but with no real backstory to lean on.