Cable (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Cable, the grim time-traveling soldier of Marvel Comics, first reached readers as a rumor. At the end of The New Mutants #86, dated February 1990, a teaser promised him for the next issue. He appeared nowhere in that issue's story. Even the people building him held different ideas about who he was. Was he a stranger from a ruined future, or someone readers had already met? Why would a publisher launch a hero before settling his past? And what becomes of a character whose origin is decided only after he arrives?

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• 2. A Directive and a Sketch

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  Editor Bob Harras wanted to "shake things up" on The New Mutants. He felt the book needed a new leader, one in sharp contrast to its founder and first mentor, Professor X. Writer Louise Simonson thought a military figure would fit. Harras gave artist Rob Liefeld the job of designing him, and Harras may also have suggested the bionic eye.

  Liefeld remembers the assignment in stark terms. "I was given a directive to create a new leader for the New Mutants. There was no name, no description besides a 'man of action', the opposite of Xavier." He says he supplied the look, the name Cable, and much of the history. After he chose the name, Harras proposed Quinn and Simonson offered Commander X.

  A "Dark Schwarzenegger Type" was the label attached to Liefeld's sketches. The look drew on Arnold Schwarzenegger's roles in The Terminator and Predator. Simonson and Liefeld each separately imagined the new leader as a mysterious time traveler from the future.

  The Six Million Dollar Man supplied another root. Liefeld says "Six Mill was my religion growing up," and he borrowed the eye and arm of its hero, Steve Austin. He adds that actor Lee Majors has said cybernetic characters ever since owe the show a debt. Liefeld's verdict on that claim was brief: "He isn't wrong."

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• 3. Son Sent Ahead

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  In X-Men/Alpha Flight #1, dated December 1985, writer Chris Claremont revealed that Madelyne Pryor was pregnant. Claremont had been writing the X-Men series since issue #94, in August 1975. Madelyne went into premature labor in The Uncanny X-Men #200. In issue #201, from January 1986, her son Nathan appeared as a newborn.

  Nathan's father was Scott Summers, the X-Men member known as Cyclops, and Madelyne was his first wife. The Inferno storyline later revealed her to be a clone of Jean Grey. When an adult warrior called Cable debuted about four years later, readers took him for an unrelated character.

  The link came from X-Factor, the X-Men spinoff starring Cyclops and the other four original X-Men. Its writer-artists Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio, together with Harras, decided Nathan would be sent to the future to grow up as Cable. Liefeld had imagined Cable and his archenemy Stryfe as one and the same, and he disliked the plan. Stryfe was eventually revealed to be a clone of Cable.

  In a 1991 X-Factor storyline, the villain Apocalypse infected Nathan with a techno-organic virus. Only the technology of the far future could save the child. Scott reluctantly let Sister Askani, a member of a clan of warriors opposing Apocalypse, carry the boy forward. She told him it was a one-way trip. That journey took place in X-Factor #68, dated July 1991, and Cable #6 in December 1993 confirmed the adult warrior was Nathan.

  The 1994 miniseries The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix filled in the years that followed. Mother Askani, a time-displaced Rachel Summers, pulled the minds of Scott and Jean into the future. There, as "Slym" and "Redd", they raised Cable for twelve years. Together the family stopped Apocalypse from moving his essence into a new body. The story also established that Mister Sinister had created Nathan to destroy Apocalypse.

  Rachel Summers, from the Days of Future Past timeline, counts as Cable's "half" sibling, as does Nate Grey from the Age of Apocalypse storyline. Cable is also the adoptive father of Hope Summers.

  A 2019 miniseries, Major X, added a son from a possible future where mutants live together in a Utopian society called the X-Istence. There Cable fathered Alexander Nathaniel Summers. Alexander wears a red-and-black costume covering him from head to toe and goes by Major X. He traveled to the past hoping Cable could help save his fading reality.

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• 4. Team Leader

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  The New Mutants #87, dated March 1990, gave Cable his first full appearance. He was in conflict with Stryfe's Mutant Liberation Front, the United States government and Freedom Force. The New Mutants intervened, and he asked for their help against the Mutant Liberation Front. Seeing potential soldiers for his war against Stryfe, he became their teacher and leader.

  Wolverine harbored a feud with Cable. The two warriors still teamed up with the New Mutants against the Mutant Liberation Front. In the 1990 storyline X-Tinction Agenda, Cable led the group against Cameron Hodge and the Genoshans.

  With help from Domino, Cable reorganized the team into X-Force. The New Mutants ended with issue #100, and X-Force #1 followed the next month. That series revealed his future origins and his mission to stop Stryfe's plans and prevent Apocalypse from rising to power. He crossed between the 1990s and his own era in a ship called Graymalkin. It housed a sentient computer program named Professor.

  Cable: Blood and Metal ran two issues, in October and November 1992. Fabian Nicieza wrote it, John Romita, Jr. pencilled it and Dan Green inked it. It explored the battle between Cable and Stryfe and its effect on Cable's supporting cast.

  A solo series titled Cable began in May 1993 and ran 107 issues, until September 2002. It was relaunched as Soldier X, which lasted 12 more issues, until August 2003.

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• 5. Partners and Clones

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  Deadpool, a near-invincible assassin, battled Cable often before becoming an on-again, off-again ally for years. When Cable's solo series ended, Marvel paired the two in Cable & Deadpool. The series followed Cable's efforts to make the world better. He turned his old ship Graymalkin into the floating utopian island of Providence. In the first arc he suppressed his virus almost effortlessly and tapped most of his psionic power. He then tried to force the world's people to live in peace.

  On the 27th of July 2011, Marvel announced Cable's return at San Diego Comic-Con. The project, first called Cable Reborn, became Avengers: X-Sanction, written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Ed McGuinness. It led into the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline that began in April 2012.

  In December 2012, writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Salvador Larroca launched Cable and X-Force. Its fugitive team was Cable, Colossus, Doctor Nemesis, Domino and Forge. They hunted disasters revealed by mysterious visions that Cable kept receiving. They sometimes used harsher methods than the main X-teams would.

  Writer Simon Spurrier's X-Force gave Cable a new team of Psylocke, Dr. Nemesis, Fantomex, Marrow and a new recruit, MeMe. They dealt with mutant threats using lethal force. An extra-dimensional Super Soldier Serum granted powers but killed its users in around a year. Cable was injected with an early version designed to kill him in a day.

  Hope accidentally copied the virus and had to be placed in a coma to save her life. Unable to defeat it, Cable made a new clone each day to replace himself. Every clone had only one day to live.

  The team tracked down Volga, the man who created the biotech virus, and defeated him. Fantomex, driven mad by a need to "be the best", then betrayed them with god-like powers. Nemesis and Forget-Me-Not unleashed hundreds of Cable clones against him, and Hope finally stopped Fantomex. Hope then took over as leader of X-Force and "fired" Cable for his morally questionable methods.

  In Cable and Deadpool: Split Second, Cable and the present-day Deadpool travel through time to fix mistakes a future Deadpool caused. Repairing the timeline returned Cable to his original status quo, with his robotic arm and his original telekinetic and telepathic powers.

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• 6. Death and Return

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  The year 2087 finds Cable in Uncanny Avengers, dealing with an unidentified issue connected to Stryfe. An Inhuman attack led by the Shredded Man had covered Boston in sentient plant life. Cable and his A.I., Belle, joined the Uncanny Avengers to help Synapse in the present. He stayed when he learned the team's true mission was to stop the Red Skull, who held Professor Xavier's brain and powers.

  Captain America later disbanded the team after the Civil War II storyline. Cable and Rogue then teamed up with the villains Sebastian Shaw and Toad to find a cure for the Terrigen Mists. Rogue kept the team going on its mission against the Red Skull.

  After the Secret Wars storyline, Cable starred in his third ongoing series, part of Marvel's 2017 X-Men: ResurrXion relaunch. Here he belonged to an organization protecting the Marvel universe timeline from damage caused by time travel. The first arc, Conquest, had him hunting a time-traveling villain. The second, The Newer Mutants, had him assemble a team to learn who was murdering Externals. The third, Past Fears, spanned five eras of his history and pitted him against the techno-organic villain Metus.

  In the 2018 Extermination series by Ed Brisson and Pepe Larraz, Cable was assassinated by his younger self, who took his place. That younger version, Nate Summers, sometimes called Kid Cable, had decided the older Cable was ineffective in his crusade. He operated until 2021, when the original was revived. The older Cable returned and took a position in S.W.O.R.D. He then helped his younger self defeat Stryfe, after which the younger one was sent back in time.

  Tim Seeley's Inglorious X-Force opens with Cable failing to prevent the assassination of the first mutant President of the United States, revealed to be Kamala Khan. He returns to the present with partial amnesia and a cryptic message. He reforms X-Force and recruits Khan for her protection. Yet the clues he holds lead him to suspect every member of the team of being her future assassin.

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• 7. Powers and Price

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  Cable was born with telepathic and telekinetic abilities, but their strength has swung wildly across his appearances. At first his need to restrain the techno-organic infection limited both, and he relied on traditional fighting skills. As the infection subsided, his powers grew to rival those of Nate Grey, to whom he is genetically identical. At his height he levitated the floating city of Providence while fighting the Silver Surfer.

  After that story his powers burned out, and he replaced both with technological substitutes. During House of M he was de-aged while mending Deadpool's damaged physiology, and he lost and regained his abilities again. Cable himself said his telepathy and telekinesis had faded to nothing. Later, in the Messiah War storyline, he hid others from Stryfe's mental view, which showed some telepathy remained. He kept some telekinesis too, but used it only to hold back the virus.

  The virus itself turns organic material into techno-organic material, which resembles both machinery and living tissue. Every techno-organic cell works like an independent machine and carries the carrier's memories and appearance. That lets a damaged being rebuild itself from a single cell. The alien Technarchy naturally carries the virus, and Apocalypse created a second version.

  Even weakened, Cable has fought Wolverine to a stalemate and beaten Captain America in hand-to-hand combat. He also defeated Falcon, Red Hulk and Iron Man with brute force and wit. He did all this in severe pain and hours away from dying of his infection. He is also said to have a brilliant mind for military tactics.

  In the Legion Quest storyline, Professor Xavier's son Legion travels back in time to kill Magneto. Beast observes that Cable has "latent time-travel abilities". With Shi'ar technology, Xavier jump-starts the ability while Jean Grey telekinetically holds Cable's body together. This lets Cable send his consciousness into the past.

  His techno-organic body parts add strength and durability. His techno-organic left eye sees farther than a normal human can and in the infrared spectrum. He can interface those parts with machinery to hack computers, open electronic locks and travel through time.

  At the end of Avengers: X-Sanction, Hope Summers apparently cured him of the virus using the Phoenix Force. His cybernetic eye and arm turned back to flesh and blood but barely worked. He now wears an eyepatch and an enhanced brace made by Forge and laden with special weaponry. A future Hope's tampering with his mind also let him see multiple possible futures before they unfolded.

  During a psionic battle with a clone of the Red Skull, who had stolen the brain of the deceased Charles Xavier, the clone revealed that Cable was an omega level mutant. Cable often wields the Psi-Mitar, a spear-like morph weapon. It began as a long staff with a spear point at one end and a scythe blade at the other, used mainly by the Askani. It focuses and amplifies his telepathic or telekinetic power and projects it as psychic force blasts.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  Artist Alex Ross disliked Liefeld's design of Cable, and he put that dislike to work. For the 1996 miniseries Kingdom Come, writer Mark Waid asked him to build a character from design trends of the time that they disliked. Of Cable's look, Ross said, "I hated it." He complained about the scars, the eye, the arm and asked, "what's with all the guns?" Yet combined with the ram horns and gold helmet of Shatterstar, those elements produced Magog, one of the designs Ross felt happiest with in the whole series.

  Critics ranked Cable well. In 2014, Entertainment Weekly placed him 6th in its list ranking every X-Man ever. In 2018, CBR.com ranked him 11th among X-Men kids cooler than their parents. The same year, it ranked him 1st among powerful members of X-Force.

  X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran from 1992-1997, introduced Cable to a wider audience, voiced by Lawrence Bayne. That version is active in the year 3999, fighting Apocalypse's forces with his team Clan Chosen. On trips back in time he teams up with the X-Men and Bishop. In X-Men '97, voiced by Chris Potter, he first appears as the infant son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor. Mister Sinister kidnaps and infects the baby before Bishop takes him to the future. As an adult, Cable travels back in a failed attempt to save Pryor from Sentinels. He then reluctantly joins Cyclops and Marvel Girl to defeat Bastion.

  In video games, Cable is playable in Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, again voiced by Lawrence Bayne. In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, voiced by David Aragnov, he is a boss. In the Pro-Registration campaign the heroes defeat him, and in the Anti-Registration campaign he commands the player for a mission. He later became playable through downloadable content on Xbox 360 and PS3, and joined the initial roster on PS4, Xbox One and PC. Deadpool received a "Cablepool" costume in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Cable is a purchasable outfit in Fortnite Battle Royale.

  Josh Brolin was cast in a four-picture deal with 20th Century Fox to play Cable in their X-Men film series. In Deadpool 2, released in 2018, Cable is a mysterious time-traveling soldier from a devastated future. He goes back to assassinate the young mutant Russell Collins before Russell kills Cable's unnamed wife and daughter. After meeting Deadpool's X-Force and the Juggernaut, Cable joins forces with the former. Deadpool sacrifices himself to save Russell and avert Cable's future. Cable then gives up his ability to return to his own time in order to save Deadpool, and stays so his family can have a brighter future.

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