It is indeed. Classic, but more streamlined (no clunky shoulder pads).
Though my favorite is still the blue and yellow costume. With that being long retired, he does need a new one. And color scheme.
This is a pretty rad drawing of Cable by Nick Bradshaw…
https://twitter.com/RPHutch1975/stat...22834117611523
Not sure if it’s just a character sketch or for something upcoming. Probably the former. But cool nonetheless.
Random thought, but Cable was created during a very specific time and zeitgeist that existed right before and as most of the people involved in his early stories split off from Marvel and formed Image Comics, as well as the Wildstorm imprint in particular. I've always thought so many of the concepts that existed in Wildstorm like Stormwatch, Team 7, Backlash and Taboo, Grifter, etc, as well as even later ones like the Authority, were inherently of the same 'vibe' as Cable and most of his stories.....and given that Wildstorm was eventually bought up by DC and folded into its universe, with many of its most popular characters and concepts just integrated into the DC Earth.....I've always kinda had 'what if' thoughts about how things might be different if Wildstorm had been integrated into the Marvel U instead.
Just seems really likely that Cable would have been tied into concepts like Team 7 or Wetworks and maybe even Stormwatch (which isn't inherently that different from what he's doing now with SWORD), and could have really beefed up his gallery of peers/support characters by giving him ties to Backlash, Grifter, Battalion, Henry Bendix and various other characters along those lines.
Anyone else ever read the Wildstorm books back in the 90s and think similarly?
Yeah, I think I see your point and kind of agree with it. Early on when Cable was a new and mysterious character, they were very invested in making him and X-Force a standalone spinoff franchise, to the point where they even had their own spinoff Toy Biz line (I had all those figures as a kid). From Stryfe and the MLF to the Externals with characters like Gideon and Krule to Weapon P.R.I.M.E. and Department H you can see they were really building him up to be, as Liefeld had envisioned “another Wolverine for the X-books”. Somewhere along the way that stopped, and I personally believe it’s when they made him baby Nathan Summers who had returned from the future and basically co-opted him to create angst for Scott, Jean and the rest of the X-men. So I truly do have mixed feelings about X-Cutioner’s Song because, while it put Cable front and center in the X-books, it also took something away from him in terms of being a standalone character with his own rogues gallery and whatnot. Suddenly the X-men’s major enemies became his major enemies, Apocalypse and Sinister mainly. And he really didn’t feel as much like his own character anymore, rather he was a plot device.
Having said all that, they did attempt to create some new villains for him beyond that point but never really invested much in them so they became throwaway. Thinking about characters like Sinsear who appeared once in Cable #4 and the Dark Riders who became servants of his son, Tyler (who was also Tolliver), when he attempted to reinvent himself as Genesis. Shit like that.
So I have to say I’ve always had mixed feelings about them making him Scott’s son from the future and whether or not that was the right move at the time. Had he remained his own standalone character it might’ve been better for his sustained popularity. At least IMO. But who really knows? “What is, is” as I believe the Askani saying goes.
But, more directly to your point, I also agree that had Image not spun off some of those concepts would’ve made their way into the X-books and specifically into X-Force. Probably as both new members of the team in some cases but also villains.
Yeah, Rob Liefeld came up with some wild ideas that had a lot of potential (IMHO):
Last edited by K7P5V; 02-06-2022 at 03:50 AM.
Yeah, Liefeld certainly had a bunch of crazy ideas, that’s for sure. It was like he started by envisioning what the action figure would look like and went from there when creating characters. Ha.
Another guy who always had crazy big ideas who I would’ve loved to have seen go nuts with a character like Cable was Mark Millar, but he doesn’t do any work-for-hire anymore. I’m really looking forward to what Ewing will do with him as part of his X-men Red cast too, even though I doubt he’ll get a ton of focus with other marquee characters there like Storm and Magneto as well as Sunspot who is a Ewing fave. Nathan probably won’t exactly get top billing in this book, but hopefully he gets some cool moments and Ewing adds to his rogues gallery too. Sounds like in the first issue he’ll make a new enemy so there’s that… fingers crossed.
Cable might get more page time in X-Men Red than we think. I could see Ewing's selection of him having a lot to do with like, Storm using him for street cred with the Arakki.
Like "hey, check out this guy who's the son of two of our most respected heroes and has been literally spent his entire life fighting (and often winning) a war throughout time, against the husband and father of some of your most respected warriors, Genesis and the Horsemen. We might have more in common than you think."
I like how you think and hope you’re right. He’s the son of the first X-man, Scott Summers, and the Goblin Queen, Madelyne Pryor, and was also raised by her genetic template, the Omega mutant Jean Grey. Dude is straight up mutant royalty and a battle hardened warrior through and through.
So you’d think Storm would lean heavily into Cable as her enforcer as she did with Wolverine back in the 80s when she led the X-men.
Actually no, I think it more likely she'd lean heavily into Cable as an advisor. Like Cable has power, but Storm has power. She doesn't need him for that specifically, and my gut feeling is Arakki aren't likely to be characterized as people who are all that impressed by a leader who delegates enforcing or displays of power to someone else, no matter how capable. Like, the point of their Great Ring being all omegas is that they're all big guns. I kinda picture the Great Ring interacting with ambassadors from other civilizations who are surprised that the Ring's Council Chambers never have guards posted, or that none of the Great Ring have actual honor guards or anything like that......Isca and the others are just like, "lol, who could do a better job of guarding us than we ourselves? If we actually needed to be guarded, we wouldn't be able to hold on to our seats."
Rather, I think it more likely we'd see Storm relying heavily on Cable for his expertise as a general specifically. Storm's been a leader herself for most of her life, but largely of smaller groups like the X-Men, or as a Queen of Wakanda where she wasn't in a martial capacity specifically. But Cable has spent most of his life building, training and leading literal rebellions, actual armies. And the Arakki are a people, but they're also an army. Cable understands SOLDIERS. How to speak to them, what they expect, and he can provide a lot of insight into how a people who have spent their entire lives waging a specific war might react to various events, threats, changes, etc.
He also has a lot of expertise specifically in fighting unconventional fights against unconventional enemies. He's waged a guerilla war throughout time and space, and what Krakoa and Arakko are building in terms of a burgeoning galactic civilization is wholly new to them, there's no real precedent for it. And Cable doesn't have precedent in fighting on the galactic stage specifically, outside of a few adventures here and there, but he DOES have a lot of expertise at landing on his feet in a totally foreign environment or situation where there's a steep learning curve and a 'learn quick or die' directive. A lot of what I feel like Storm and others will be facing in X-Men Red will be brand new to them, and Cable is someone that Storm can implicitly trust she can throw into the deep end of a situation with the Arakki or an alien conflict, with little warning or preparation, and trust he'll figure out a way to make things work, freeing her up to devote her attention to Great Ring politics or the like.
Interesting. Yeah, I can see that point. But I do hope we still get to see him kick some ass, not just advise.
Well granted. There's room for both, lol. And we know one of his old students Sunspot is in the thick of this book, and there was some art going around twitter awhile back that had Cannonball and Darkstar, and I'm pretty sure it was a scene from X-Men Red. I can't imagine Cable, Sunspot and Cannonball all sharing page time and NOT getting to kick ass together.
And I'm really looking forward to seeing how Ewing characterizes Cable interacting with Vulcan. I really want to know what Nathan thinks of Uncle Gabe, lmao. And what does Gabriel think of him, for that matter.