Chapter VI: The Spread of Askani Thought
Chapter VII: The M-Day Aftermath
Section 32: Entrenchment Along the Banks of a Better Tomorrow
When Wanda Maximoff aborted the reality that she created in the throes of her insanity, she restored the world to the way it had been, save for one fatal difference: the mutant population was reduced to the barest fraction of its former numbers, resulting in mass de-powerings across the globe and the increased vulnerability of mutantkind. The government's Office of National Emergency scrambled together a Sentinel guard to watch over the Xavier Institute, whether to protect or ultimately eliminate the last bastion of mutant might. The new order evoked a response from every major player across the board, not least of all that plotting genius, Cable. The infant Cable at once began to “catch up” to his normal age, aging exponentially upon arrival. In the meantime, Forge managed to devise technology capable of restoring his memories. Also, as a side effect of his re-pubescence, his full psi-powers began to reassert themselves. Though he was on a steady course to regain them, he overexerted himself in saving Deadpool from mind tampering. Forcing so much from himself so soon led Cable to a complete burnout—his telepathy and telekinesis ceased to function at all (CABLE & DEADPOOL #18).
The magical interference in the course of mutant population growth caused as yet unforeseen alterations to the timestream. Several possible futures, Cable’s not excepted, may have flatlined, either ceasing to exist or being rewritten to exclude mutants.
Sinister returned to the site of Black Womb and killed the S.H.I.E.L.D. envoy assigned to guard it. He removed all data relating to mutant infants (X-MEN: ENDANGERED SPECIES).
After his failed bid to save the world as he saw fit, Cable continued to provoke the governments of the world by broadcasting along every media outlet his open invitation to accept refugees on his south pacific island nation of Providence. On one occasion, he and Irene Merryweather visited China with the offer to take the country’s undesirables. Part of his long-term plans was to maximize its population, for reasons undisclosed.
Secretly directed by Cable, the Cat stole a device called the Dominus Objective from a private corporation and delivered it to the mastermind of a recent attempt on Cable’s life, the Black Box. The Dominus Objective, a central router that serves as a listening device, links all computers connected to it into a single processing unit (CABLE & DEADPOOL #s 20-21).
In their inevitable confrontation, the Black Box attempted to overwhelm Cable with the combined knowledge of the entire infonet that the Dominus Objective allowed him to access. However Cable, being at ease with the influx of vast amounts of information from his time spent as the world’s most powerful telepath, hijacked control of the infonet from the Black Box and linked directly to the Dominus Objective. Cable convinced the Black Box, who he knew formerly as mutant Gareb Bashur, that he alone could steer mankind through the coming world catastrophe. Bashur willing came under Cable’s employ and moved to Providence. Cable gained not only another high-powered operative, but also infonet access that mimicked his former telepathy (CABLE & DEADPOOL #s 22-23).
Cable obtained the design schematics for the government Project: Cone of Silence. Cone of Silence was a gravimetric shell being designed to cut Providence off from the rest of the world. Once in his own hands, Cable consulted with the Fixer, the Wizard, and Tony Stark to come to an understanding about its functionality as a weapon and defense shield.
S.H.I.E.L.D. considered nuking Providence if they could verify Cable’s threat to the world as being real. Nick Fury sent Captain America, disguised as civilian Roger Stevens, to infiltrate Providence and gather information. While posing as a citizen of Providence, Captain America was tempted by the allure of the hope offered by community he entered into. After allowing him ample opportunity to see his island first-hand, Cable attempted to persuade the captain to reconsider siding with the world governments and opposing Cable in the impending clash to come. Cable urged him to trust his good intentions, appealing to his millennia-conscious perspective (CABLE & DEADPOOL #s 24-24).
Cable tracked down the location of his revivification by monitoring thefts of ancient artifacts from various museums, a callback to the same nonsensical explanation given in CABLE: BLOOD AND METAL. Nonetheless, as Cable was able to track Apocalypse, so were Deadpool, Irene Merryweather, and the Black Box able to track Cable to the site of a pyramid in Akkaba. Considering the recurrence of Akkaba as an Apocalypse hot-spot, it might have proven wise for Cable to check there from the outset.
Deadpool and Irene, the last to arrive, were promptly attacked by the Dark Riders, now a rather generic cadre of identical scarab-like warriors. Amidst their skirmish, Irene stumbled upon what appeared to be a sphinx, but was in fact a disguised spaceship. Cable emerged therefrom to inform her that it had been constructed as a replica of the Celestial ship that had been such a source for Apocalypse’s power, and that it would be used to assist in the rebirth—over which Cable himself would preside. The Dark Riders ceased their assault and bowed before Cable. Ozymandias, too, stood by Nathan’s side.
As a result of some of the second thoughts Cable had been exhibiting about his approach to the world and the race-issues which challenge it, Cable determined that the threat posed by a returned Apocalypse would reunite mutantkind following its decimation in the wake of the House of M, an event which resulted in the mass depopulation of the world’s mutants. Rather than renew the epic struggle that had defined his mission prior to the Gathering of the Twelve, Cable is now willing to take a pragmatic stance and acknowledge that it is better to combat the Darwinian philosophy which fuels Apocalypse than the immortal mutant himself. As such, he allowed, and even sanctioned, Ozymandias’s efforts to resurrect his master, believing that he can control the outcome of Apocalypse’s return and manipulate circumstance to his own advantage.
When questioned about the lives he’d be endangering and the responsibility that would fall upon his shoulders, Cable cited the billions of lives, past, present, and future, that already weight upon his conscience by merit of the fact that it was his blood that gave rise to Apocalypse in the first place.
This vast reorientation in outlook evinces the first true evolution of the character called Cable since his inception. While Cable has been reenvisioned many times, and while the minutiae surrounding his backstory have been appended and further complicated on a number of occasions, Cable has hitherto always boiled down to a mercenary figure, in part because this image was so fashionable a decade ago. This new version of the character, which is in fact a logical progression from the old, presents himself as a thinker, a planner who, given his past access to the time-stream and his knowledge of future events, can formulate exigencies for the present the outcomes of which he can be assured. Self-righteous to the extreme, he touts himself as a god but orchestrates events to the degree of being diabolical. Truly, this is a believable picture of what a time traveler should look like, and truly, it is one that should be embraced for the character.
Midway through Cable’s explanation for his actions, and while inside the pseudo-Celestial ship, a half-baked Apocalypse arose too soon from his rejuvenation pool to challenge his archenemy. He reasserted control over his Dark Riders, and a brief fight ensued. When Cable and the others finally walked away from Apocalypse, leaving him still standing, Apocalypse entered his chrysalis chamber to await the day, coming soon, when he would reach full strength and lead a devastated mutant race to victory over humanity. And so this current bid for supremacy marks a slight variation on Apocalypse’s modus operandi, as well. This time around, recognizing the changed dynamics of mutant-human relations, Apocalypse will forgo a general culling of mutantkind and focus his attentions on mobilizing its remnants against mankind (CABLE AND DEADPOOL #s 26-27).
Teleporting the Sphinx to South America, Apocalypse obtained the wayward X-Man Polaris, along with her stalker, the Leper Queen, from the entity called Daap. He favored Lorna Dane to become his horseman Pestilence above the other candidate, who he simply imprisoned. Though initially stubborn in resisting him, Polaris was ultimately tempted by his promise to restore a semblance of her lost powers and offer her an undivided purpose as his wholly dependant slave. Once transformed, Apocalypse dispatched her to a World Health Organization lab in Washington, where she ingested a cocktail of deadly pathogens in preparation for his master plan to cull humanity to ten per cent of its current population, thereby (proportionally) leveling the human-mutant playing field.
Having already set his plans in motion, he next teleported the dying mutant Gazer from Earth’s orbit to his secluded Sphinx, where he pitted him against a human archaeologist to vie for the honor of becoming the horseman War. The two captured combatants were hesitant to comply, but they battled for their very survival. The outcome was determined, unbeknownst to Apocalypse, by Ozymandias, who secured Gazer’s victory in exchange for a debt of obedience to be collected at a future date. Ozymandias, sensing a weakness in Apocalypse for his hesitancy to strike against all humanity, began plotting his master’s overthrow.
Apocalypse traveled to Sunfire’s bedside in Aspen to make him an offer not unlike that extended to Polaris. He offered to restore to the crippled ex-mutant his powers and his legs, again at a hefty price—to become his next horseman, Famine! Wishing to regain his honor above all else, Sunfire agreed. He had second thoughts, however, when he bore witness to the torture inflicted upon Gazer in order to transform him into War. Apocalypse stretched the mutant’s diminutive figure to attain a more menacing stature, withholding painkillers to harden his horseman’s soul for the war to come. Though he entertained thoughts of escape, Sunfire remained within the Sphinx to aid in Gazer’s release, thereby recovering his honor. However, too late actually effect a difference, Shiro was overcome by War and broken by Apocalypse, to be rebuilt as Famine.
Apocalypse steered his airborne Sphinx to the doorstep of the Xavier Institute. He made an overture to the 198, proposing salvation for decimated mutantkind. With a twist of irony, Apocalypse presented his creed for survival of the fittest in such a way as to actually inspire hope. The would-be messiah’s first order of business was to unleash Famine upon the X-Men, the 198, and their O*N*E protectors. Famine used his flame powers to generate a burst of light that stimulated the parts of the brain that produce feeling of intense hunger. Having starved and incapacitated them, Apocalypse used the opportunity to dismantle the O*N*E Sentinels at the hands of War while simultaneously positioning himself to relieve the afflictions of his own victims in exchange for their loyalty. He offered to them his own blood as a cure-all elixir, the same substance he planned to distribute to the ten per cent of humanity he wished to immunize and preserve through the coming plague. The 198 cheered him on as he invaded their makeshift home (X-MEN #181, 185, 182-183).
Amidst the chaos, Gambit approached Apocalypse to follow him as the savior of mutantkind. Relegated and ignored by his fellow X-Men, Gambit felt he could be of greatest use monitoring Apocalypse from a place at his side, in case the ancient mutant should renege on his lofty promises. Little did he realize that the process that would transform him into Death would sever any allegiances he has to his past, and to the X-Men, creating in their stead an unyielding fealty to Apocalypse. Physically, the process bestowed upon him the ability to emit noxious gases.
An X-Jet was able to bring down Famine, whom Rogue captured for the X-Men. The turning tide frightened Ozymandias, who dared to question his master and call for retreat. He chastised Apocalypse for wishing to enlist the 198 for their protection, calling him soft. He urged that Pestilence go forth and poison the world indiscriminately. He challenged Apocalypse and was soundly put back in his proper place. His scribe’s words had an effect on him, however, and so Apocalypse adopted a compromise position whereby he decided to proceed as planned, but to afflict mutants as well as humans with the plague. Ozymandias attempted to spread his treachery by calling in his favor from War against Apocalypse. However War, unmoved by his former dues as Gazer, instead informed Apocalypse of his scribe’s insubordination.
The X-Men, meanwhile, planned to attack by positioning the mutant Pulse close enough to Apocalypse so that he could de-power him, leaving him vulnerable. Cyclops’s team would divert the 198 while Havok’s squad forced entry into the Sphinx. To enable safe passage into the ship, Ozymandias appeared on the grounds of the estate to offer the X-Men his assistance. Upon their arrival, Apocalypse pitted the X-Men against the 198 and unveiled Death, to the shock of everyone present. In the skirmish that ensued, Death nearly killed Rogue and Apocalypse’s storehouse of blood-antidote was destroyed. Cyclops’s team remained behind to guard the school against War’s ongoing attack to recapture Famine. He ran afoul of the White Queen, who was hard at work telepathically de-brainwashing Sunfire, and was warded off by Cyclops and the latter.
Apocalypse retreated aboard the Sphinx. Having lost the blood, he set about devising a new scheme to cull humanity that would not involve Pestilence’s meta-plague. He approached the world leaders assembled at the United Nations in New York and issued an ultimatum: humanity would destroy ninety per cent of its own population, putting man and mutant on level ground in anticipation of the final conflict when the worthy alone would survive—or Apocalypse would unleash his meta-plague on the world and obliterate all humanity (X-MEN #184-185).
The Avengers and the Office of National Emergency’s new Sentinels—Crazy Train and War Machine—launched a frontal assault on the Sphinx, debilitating it and preventing it from teleporting away. The X-Men infiltrated the ship and began to make immediate headway. After pausing to admire the strength of his opponents, Apocalypse again took matters into his own hands and sent Pestilence forward to destroy humanity. Iceman prevented her from doing so, however, and Death and War were likewise taken out of play, War being killed by Ozymandias. Pulse succeeded in de-powering Apocalypse long enough for Sunfire to strike. Sunfire left the battlefield, absconding with the unconscious Death while Apocalypse, being pursued by the X-Men, fled to the ship’s engine chamber. Apocalypse activated the ship’s infernal machine to self-destruct the Sphinx, but the X-Men aborted the sequence. The machine did manage to tear a hole in the membrane of space, however, through which Apocalypse escaped. Awaiting death at the other end, Apocalypse was instead caught up and preserved by the Celestials, ready to call him on his ancient debt…
Pestilence was recovered by the X-Men and revealed to be Polaris, near-death. Havok resuscitated her, despite the obvious health-risk involved with establishing physical contact. A surviving sample of Apocalypse’s blood led to his swift recuperation (X-MEN #186).
In East Asia, Sunfire wrestled with Death to free him from Apocalypse’s conditioning. Sunfire planned to gather the former horsemen to pursue a new and independent direction, free from Apocalypse, free from the X-Men. Persuading Gambit along this line of thought, the two set out to retrieve Polaris, the third surviving horseman, from the Xavier Institute, where the White Queen and Beast were examining her. Finding that her restored powers did not stem from an active X gene, the X-Men—along with her would-be captors Sunfire and Gambit—were shocked by her sudden recovery and violent assertion of her own self-will. Polaris rejected the offer of the former horsemen and set off to find Apocalypse for answers about her condition. Sunfire and Gambit, by contrast, prepared to take their lives in an altogether different direction. They were fast approached by Mister Sinister (X-MEN #187).
The plot mechanics of much of the storyline are shaky. Apocalypse’s master plan is often described as being distinct from his former operating principle, yet it frequently becomes apparent that he is pursuing the same ends as he always has, but now in the context of M-Day. Far from aiming to save mutantkind, he is in fact looking to give mutantkind a boost, launch it into a bloody conflict with humanity, and then turn it on itself until only the fittest are left standing. Ultimately, there is no change here.
The targets of his meta-plague and the recipients of his blood-antidote are also perplexingly vague. It seems that, although the point of the plague is to reduce humanity, Apocalypse is intent on making sure that it has been tailored to afflict man and mutant alike. Is it a fair assumption, then, to assume that his blood is intended for ten per cent of humanity and something less than one hundred per cent of mutantkind? This is less than clear.
The 198, who Apocalypse arrives at the mansion to woo, are written unbelievably. For Apocalypse to expect them to trust him as their savior after he intentionally attacks them at the hands of Famine, they must be truly stupid. They are also impossible to pin down. In one scene, Cyclops informs Havok that his team will remain behind while Havok’s breaches the Sphinx, in order to keep an eye on the 198. Shortly thereafter, however, it becomes apparent that the 198 are themselves aboard the Sphinx, and they come face-to-face with Havok’s team. By the start of the next issue, they are nowhere to be seen. Utterly confusing.
The lineup for Apocalypse’s Horsemen is an interesting one, especially since two of its members are current X-Men. Unfortunately, the duration of their tenures is a joke. It used to be that when Apocalypse altered another human or mutant, they were physically and mentally scarred for years, or even irreversibly. In this instance, both Sunfire and Polaris seem to cash in on the benefits of their transformations, and then check out just as soon. Fortunately Gambit has not yet fully reverted to his former state, but given the popularity of these characters, I fear it won’t be long before the effects of these changes are swept under the rug completely.
Finally, the big revelation is that the heavenly Celestials are using Apocalypse as a pawn. This is an interesting story point, and one consistent with his use of Celestial technology in the past. However, the details laid out here clash with established continuity. We now have three distinct explanations for how En Sabah Nur became empowered as Apocalypse. Two of them involve Celestial technology, and two of them take place in Egypt. This newest one involves a pseudo-Celestial ship (built by Apocalypse himself, not to be confused with Ship) designed from alien “blueprints” in Egypt. He builds it in Egypt, doesn’t find it in Asia. Again, it is Celestial, not related to the technology of Rama Tut. Nothing like this has been described before, and it is an odd and curious choice for the creators to avoid just having Nur use an actual Celestial (S)hip. We’re really beginning to get muddled up here, but we’ll see where this goes. Frederick Slade, the founding member of the revived Clan Akkaba, kept tabs on the former mutant Chamber, who lost half his face and chest along with his powers on M-Day. Steering Starsmore’s hospitalization to England and impersonating a social worker, Slade got close enough to whisk his unconscious form to a rebuilt Alexandria House and a new inner circle. There he acted without permission to infuse Starsmore with Apocalypse’s blood, which restored and augmented his powers and transformed his appearance to resemble that of Apocalypse. When Chamber awoke, Slade informed him of his lineage. Chamber rejected the clan, disdaining those who thought they knew what was best for him and who had ever tried to use him or recruit him. Ozymandias, disguised as Apocalypse, allowed him to leave, believing that Chamber would be integral to his future plans as they related to his secret clan and Apocalypse. After being similarly shrugged off by Starsmore, Pete Wisdom of MI:13, along with Excalibur, investigated a hastily abandoned Alexandria House but discovered no lead (NEW EXCALIBUR #9).
Nothing much of long-term significance occurs here, except that writer Frank Tieri gets to reshuffle some of his characters from APOCALYPSE VERSUS DRACULA and WEAPON X within the rickety framework of NEW EXCALIBUR, an England-based title that he happens to be guest writing. Cable traveled to the United States to offer Captain America asylum from the Superhuman Registration Act on Providence, but he declined, realizing that leaving the country would send the wrong message. Cable knew that Captain America would eventually lose, and that superhumans would eventually comprise a totalitarian military patrol. Nonetheless, he assisted the anti-registration forces until the clone of Thor murdered the superhero Goliath (CABLE & DEADPOOL #30, CIVIL WAR #s 3-4).
Cable next approached the president of the United States to urge him not to go forward with the Fifty States Initiative, which he warned would transform the country into a police state. When the president refused to listen to reason, Cable manipulated Deadpool into smearing the good standing of the Superhuman Registration Act with the world audience. This manipulation sundered his relationship with Deadpool (CABLE & DEADPOOL #31).
An explosion on Providence presaged an infiltration of the island by the teleporter Solo and Deadpool. Deadpool, unbeknownst to Cable, sabotaged the island’s fusion chamber. Cable bodyslid from Rumekistan to Providence to avert a nuclear explosion. He used his gravimetric field to funnel away the radioactive fallout. By bodysliding, Cable inadvertently pulled Deadpool to his side from his location in the fusion chamber.
As Providence was being breached, a newly reformed Six Pack infiltrated Rumekistan by order of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the White House, which in the meantime worked to smear Providence’s public image by falsely reporting to the media that it was “choked” with radiation. It seemed that the president was now intent on burying Cable’s name following the damage he caused to the Superhuman Registration Act.
Now consisting of G.W. Bridge, Domino, Solo, Anaconda, and Hammer, with Deadpool acting as a secret agent on Cable’s side, the Six Pack sabotaged Rumekistan with pulse-emitters that would disrupt the country’s power grids. Cable bodyslid to Rumekistan with Deadpool for backup, apparently still oblivious to the fact that it was Deadpool who had breached the fusion chamber in the first place and was working against him. While Cable’s gravimetric field was recharging following the bodyslide, Deadpool shot him in the back of the head.
When the Six Pack had successfully disrupted the power grid, the citizens of Rumekistan were left to find medical assistance for their president and savior. Unconscious, Cable’s mind accessed the infonet and utilized his gravimetric field to identify and manually bypass every point of damage to the country’s power grid, thereby pulling it out of the dark. He engaged the Six Pack, revealing that he had allowed them to sabotage the country so that he could cement his power by revealing the world governments’ participation in trying to disrupt Rumekistan’s infrastructure and smear his name. On a personal level, his manipulations put Domino in a position to reconsider her role in opposing him. When the Six Pack operatives were apprehended, Domino chose to remain with Cable, finally supporting his dream (CABLE & DEADPOOL #s 33-34).
The idea here is to bring in Domino to provide a counter-point to the view that Cable’s interference in world affairs is actually to the benefit of everyone involved, most notably the people whose country he presses himself upon. It may have been interesting to investigate some of the more detrimental aspects of Cable’s direction. Unfortunately, the only people in Rumekistan that are shown to dissent prove to be either foreign spies or hired mercenaries. The urgency of the question is lost when the only people complaining don’t matter, and when every naturalized citizen is shown to be in such unswerving support of their savior that strangers in the street form an impromptu procession to convey him to the hospital.
The crossover with CIVIL WAR has its ups and downs. The art is a consistent downside, as Staz Johnson provides fill-in pencils for soon-to-be regular artist, Reilly Brown. Johnson depicts the United States president as G. W. Bush, while Nicieza writes him as a conniving but competent realist—a demeanor that vastly contrasts with the visuals. It’s surprising that Marvel would allow Bush to be used at all, let alone cast in such a blatantly negative light. Given that the White House plays such a minimal role in CIVIL WAR proper, these issues must therefore define the canonical outlook of the government. This pessimistic outlook, in turn, colors the Superhuman Registration Act and the Fifty State Initiative as two undisputedly evil pieces of legislation.
In the context of Cable’s own story, CIVIL WAR provides a solid occasion on which Cable can chime in, “I told you so,” and continue to peddle his own, more informed, solutions to the world’s problems.
It also provides the springboard to Act II of Nicieza’s wider plot, which sees the United States government and S.H.I.E.L.D. attempt to silence Cable’s self-righteous public assertions short of resorting to nuclear war. While ostensibly the middle act and the first of several escalating encounters with the world’s governments (this time by proxy via Six Pack), this storyline must stand as the big payoff to all of Nicieza’s storylines, as Cable’s fate was shortly to be removed from his hands to be placed in those of X-MEN writer Mike Carey.
Sinister’s Marauders covertly hunted and killed a number of precogs and alternates, among them Vargas, the Dark Mother, Gateway, and the Witness. They sought out Bishop but were unable to corner him alone so long as he was employed by the O*N*E (X-MEN #202).
Dark Beast convinced his other to accompany him in investigating the abandoned Alamagordo facility. The two first entered into the complex’s underbelly, the Black Womb, before digging deeper to reach Sinister’s lair. As with Neverland, Sinister left behind no evidence of his research there.
Roughly the first half of ENDANGERED SPECIES dropped substantial hints as to the course of the X-titles through the upcoming MESSIAH COMPLEX storyline. The Alamagordo chapter, in particular, suggested that Sinister may have foreseen M-Day well in advance of the Scarlet Witch’s mental breakdown. His past association with Destiny, along with his work in mutant infanthood, forecast the subjects of the aforementioned crossover. Similarly, as yet unexplained references to the Grey bloodline may give an indication of storylines to come, especially as they pertain to the new mutant birth in MESSIAH COMPLEX. As for these chapters themselves, they go out of their way not to prematurely overemphasize Sinister’s centrality to the plot, and passing references to Sinister in the first two chapters serve to undermine his role. They next set up shop amid the ruins of Genosha, where Xavier had granted Dark Beast permission to experiment on the remains of the island’s exterminated inhabitants. The cadavers confirmed that even those who died before M-Day lost their X-gene. Beast reasoned that depowered mutants must have retained their mutant potential despite lacking a central X-gene. He conceived of reengineering a new X-gene, one which could then be implanted into depowered mutants. He briefly envisioned rebuilding this viable X-gene from humans who had shown an elevated potential to give birth to mutants in the past. Following poor results and a falling out with the Dark Beast, Beast took a new tack in seeking out Doctor Strange. The sorcerer uncovered that the Scarlet Witch’s spell had become so entwined with reality that it would be nearly impossible to unravel its effects. Finally, Beast encountered the witch herself in Transia. She refused to uncast her spell (X-MEN: ENDANGERED SPECIES).
Cable arrived at the Xavier Institute to help dispatch an attack by the brainwashed Beaubier twins, Northstar and Aurora. His appearance put a crimp in the Children of Vault’s plans to eliminate the X-Men and hide their existence. Cable inferred from events that the twins were not acting alone. He actually intimidated Sabretooth, then being held captive by the X-Men, bullying him into sharing with them what he knew about the Children. Later, while conversing with Mystique while tracking the Children, he revealed to her that his future remembers her as a traitor.
Rogue confirmed Cable’s place on her new strike team before her squad departed the mansion to intercept the Children’s airship, the Conquistador. Once aboard the ship, Cable detonated the Children’s solar satellite dish, severing them from their power source and decisively turning the tide of battle, allowing the X-Men to win the day (X-MEN #s 190, 192-193).
While seeking the use of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s technology to de-brainwash the Beaubier twins aboard the Helicarrier, Rogue, Cable, and Mystique of the X-Men came under attack from a new team of Acolytes, led by Exodus, and consisting of Random, Tempo, and Frenzy. The assault had Cable as its target. Exodus needed to glean from his mind design specs for a future version of Cerebro that could detect potential mutants. Exodus assembled the device using his psi-powers and set about looking for mutants to save and recruit aboard his new Genosha—the hijacked Helicarrier. Grief-stricken and disoriented when he could not locate a single new mutant birth, Exodus and the Acolytes abandoned the Helicarrier and sought the aid of the only one capable of redressing the deficit in the mutant population—Mister Sinister, then based in Antarctica. Exodus put himself at Sinister’s disposal in the pursuit of this goal (X-MEN ANNUAL #1).
In the aftermath, and while refurbishing the Conquistador for use as Rogue’s team’s base of operations, Cable clarified for Cyclops that he considered his presence with the team to be a mere visit, and that he had no intention or desire to assert leadership over Rogue’s squad.
After a fight with the villain Pandemic in Calcutta left Rogue close to death and infected with a virus called Strain 88, Cable decided to bring her—and the team—to Providence to get medical care. When they arrived, Cable began to take notice for the first time of how much he had been neglecting his long-term plans in favor of gallivanting around the globe with the X-Men.
Meanwhile, X-Man Lady Mastermind uncovered a psionic alien parasite residing in her psyche. The alien, a Mummudrai, switched hosts and next indwelled Mystique. Through this mouthpiece, it conveyed to Cable that it had been traveling to Earth for a period of centuries to meld with a mutant psi-talent capable of facing its pursuer, the Hecatomb. The Mummudrai, called Urizen, indwelled Cable and showed him the origin of the Hecatomb—an artificial Mummudrai created by the Shi’ar to destroy enemy worlds while preserving their infrastructure for colonization. It absorbed and merged with eight billion minds, then set about pursuing Urizen, its template, to Earth.
Urizen temporarily restored Nathan’s psi-powers, powers he had learnt to live without. Circumstances were reverting his carefully orchestrated manipulations, derailing his plans, and overshadowing his long-term vision for humanity.
Irene Merryweather, Black Box, and Johann Kriek rejected the idea of evacuating the population from Providence using ferries since this would leave them even more vulnerable to the Hecatomb, then ethereally rampaging across the island’s telepathic landscape. To save his population, Cable gravimetrically severed his island in two—the top half from the bottom—separating the bulk of his people in the air above from the Hecatomb—and the 20% of the island’s inhabitants still at its mercy—below. He pondered to himself, “I thought I’d get the chance to change the world. Instead, I just get the chance to save it.” Lamenting how he had always either been classified as an unforgiving soldier or a mutant messiah, he even paused to speculate whether some other genius, more manipulative that he, could have engineered this about-face in his approach, forcing him into an alliance with the X-Men to derail his goals.
Cable, still melded with the Mummudrai, intentionally crash-landed the Conquistador into the Hecatomb, hoping to damage its solid core. It failed to affect it. The Cable-Urizen amalgam engaged the Hecatomb directly, but the device utilized its composite inventory of absorbed minds to tear Urizen from Cable. It succeeded in bringing them asunder, and it consumed the Mummudrai, but not before a psi-enabled Cable could revive Rogue from her hospital bed so that she could absorb the Hecatomb’s eight billion minds. Iceman then froze the solid core so that Cannonball could shatter it upon impact.
Cable, once again psi-blind, remained on Providence after the X-Men departed. The bottom half of the island, without the use of its de-powered tachyon fusion core, was sinking. Cable headed to the core to restore power, while Domino went to the infonet chamber, where former prisoner of the X-Men, Sabretooth, had already killed the Black Box and held Irene Merryweather hostage. Domino and Deadpool safely parted the two.
At the core, Cable recovered his copy of the Professor, still hidden therein. The plan was for the Professor to keep the island afloat for as long as possible until Cable could download his archival information concerning mankind’s future. Sending Domino and Irene away by ferry, Cable and Deadpool dealt with Sabretooth and prepared to defend his data from new invaders. Cable sent Deadpool to another part of the island to keep him out of the fray. The Acolyte Senyaka there assailed the merc, who sparred with him over a device of seeming importance.
The Professor alerted Cable when he registered an additional occupant on what remained of the evacuated Providence. Gambit, no longer sporting his horseman look, engaged Cable. Gambit unsettled his opponent by uttering the phrase, “It’s one minute before dawn.” He distracted Cable long enough for Sunfire to dive in from above and deliver a direct sunburst. Gambit followed up with a direct kinetic burst, leaving Cable a bloody mess, barely able to crawl away. He managed to board himself up within his teleportation matrix chamber, but he could not hide from or evade his pursuers, not in his condition. When they breached the door to the chamber, Sunfire referred to Cable as a “door that needed to be closed.” Before he could kill the Askani’son, Cable instructed the Professor to run a sequence called “Requiem,” which detonated the chamber and, apparently, the remainder of the island as well. Gambit and Sunfire were able to escape, but without Cable’s data, which was destroyed by the blast. The device that Deadpool safeguarded, which he believed to be integral to Cable’s plan, revealed itself to be worthless when it executed its only function—to teleport Deadpool from harm’s way—before the island detonated. As for Cable himself, he escaped at the last moment to the future, from which he planned his next move in the present.
In Caldecott County, Mississippi, Rogue’s squad took refuge at Mystique’s residence. They called in Cyclops, the White Queen, and Beast to tend to Rogue’s deteriorating mental condition. Malice digitally gained access to the estate via the internet, using the connection to possess the Omega Sentinel. Lady Mastermind cast an illusion to cover an attack by the rest of Sinister’s Marauders, who surrounded the X-Men before they could prepare a defense. The moment that Rogue began to assert control and wrestle the situation back to manageability, Mystique shot her daughter and revealed her alliance with the Marauders (X-MEN #s 194, 196-200, CABLE & DEADPOOL #s 40-42).
Since X-CUTIONER’S SONG, this current storyline, still unfolding, is proving to be the most significant use of the character Cable within the X-Mythos in a long while. Looking back on our chronology from the last several years, we see the following: in X-Editorial’s THE TWELVE storyline, Cable was marginalized within a plot that he was literally destined to be at the center of; he was pulled into the X-Men by Chris Claremont only to be mishandled and underused; he was thrown to David Tischman to use as a tour-guide for global issues; canceled and relaunched under Darko Macan to function as a bizarre and often comedic entity only barely resembling Cable; played second fiddle to a glorified Wolverine story written by Frank Tieri; and saddled with Deadpool to co-star in an unlikely book scripted by the extremely talented Fabian Nicieza.
To perhaps everyone’s surprise, Nicieza brought the character that he had helped to define in the early 1990s to new heights, and though his book was far from a breakout success in terms of sales, it was a solid performer. Meanwhile, in comes Mike Carey on X-MEN, another book which had suffered following Grant Morrison’s run from overly melodramatic storylines which had confused the X-Men’s familial and somewhat soapy elements with the worst forms of novella storytelling.
Carey combines the gritty and proactive feel of X-FORCE with a faith in underused and obscure characters reminiscent of GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1 while utilizing subplot mechanics, exploiting scenery and environment to the fullest (with monumental help from artist Chris Bachalo), and employing storyline carry-over techniques that evoke the golden age of Chris Claremont. He also isn’t shy to rely on continuity, and he is staunchly loyal to the characterizations set forth by his predecessors, Nicieza included. For, you see, he had also found a prominent role in his cast for Cable.
While Carey has been well received for his work on X-MEN, Nicieza had inadvertently been left in the lurch when Carey’s storyline called for the near-destruction of Providence and—more pressingly—Cable’s death. Naturally, this would have severe repercussions on a book called CABLE & DEADPOOL, as well as on a years-long storyline counting down to another confrontation between a messianic Cable and the rest of the world.
CABLE & DEADPOOL #40 suggests that Nicieza isn’t handling the situation very well. Here the writer unabashedly vents over the reversal of his direction for the character that he had worked to fashion since the beginning of his series. An uncharacteristically poor issue for the veteran writer, it is almost impossible to read as a story in its own right without being pulled out of the action by the clear references to the current politics of the X-Office. Nicieza suggests that Carey—or, more generally, his larger audience, editorial and the readership—are only able to understand Cable as we’ve known him from the early 1990s, presumably as a gun-toting soldier and muscleman.
This is a rather unfair assessment. For one thing, Cable has always been a thinking man, a strategist, from his days as a soldier to his days as a wannabe messiah in recent years. Even in Carey’s X-MEN, Cable functioned as much more than a grunt, taking point as a leader (though not by name) after Rogue, as evidenced by his role when Rogue was incapacitated as a result of her infection with Strain 88. Nicieza grasps this point himself when he defines Cable as “something” apart from or in between soldier and messiah. Thus Carey’s use of the character can hardly be considered a “reversion” to an antiquated image of the character, although it is true that his long-term goals (as defined by Nicieza) had been impeded and then outright canceled (with Cable’s death). Cable could function as soldier and messiah simultaneously; a quick glance at the covers to Nicieza’s series alone finds 17 of 29 depictions of Cable to feature the character sporting some sort of gun, although these weapons have not been prominent accessories of his in the interior pages.
Nonetheless, Nicieza seems to hold some bitterness for the way in which events unfolded. It is well to remember that a book like CABLE & DEADPOOL did not have a great prospect for success from its inception, and that, despite its very real success, its cancellation was never far over the horizon. Nicieza did enjoy an extended run on the title. I suppose that the true determinant for whether the change in direction was just or unjust lies in the question: Did the change somehow invalidate the prior 39 issues of the series? Did it deprive the readership of an expected payoff? Truthfully, Nicieza was probably quite a few issues away from that payoff before the plug was pulled. Given the unlikelihood of the book’s continued publication cited just above, it seems that the problem is central to the fact that Nicieza’s storylines were not paced quickly enough to compete with the book’s creeping mortality.
In any case, let’s recount the gory details of the way in which Nicieza’s plot was dismantled, as well as the inconsistencies between the accounts of X-MEN and CABLE & DEADPOOL:
The next X-Men to fall were Iceman, whose powers were countered with a neural inhibitor, and the White Queen, who was physically paralyzed with a biotoxin. Overpowered and on the verge of defeat, the X-Men took desperate measures. The White Queen telepathically steered Cannonball and Iceman away from the lost battle aboard the Blackboard, showing them what she had gleaned about the Marauders’ targets during the process. With the bulk of the team downed and at the Marauders’ mercy, Mystique secured Rogue for medical care and instructed Arclight to literally bring the house down on the X-Men.
Simultaneously at the Xavier Institute, the student Blindfold seemingly committed suicide to the shock of the New X-Men. In truth, she induced a voluntary coma to spare herself from being murdered in the Acolytes’ imminent attack, which she foresaw. Led by Exodus, these allies of Sinister arrived shortly to face Kitty Pryde, Colossus, and the student body. Tempo slowed down time to a near standstill while Exodus read the minds of the students to discover the reason for Blindfold’s death. Finding that no one knew, he passed over his slumbering target and went after his second objective, Destiny’s diaries. When they were uncovered to be fakes, Exodus mentally interrogated their former caretaker, Kitty Pryde, as to their true location. Frustratingly for him, Pryde was conditioned to perceive the fakes as genuine. The New X-Men engaged the Acolytes and warded them off. The students revived Blindfold once the Acolytes left empty handed, and Colossus departed to recover Cyclops’s team from Caldecott County.
Sunfire attacked Cannonball and Iceman while aboard the Blackbird. He claimed responsibility for Cable’s death but Sam, to his credit, was skeptical as to his former mentor’s status. The two overcame Sunfire and interrogated him. They learned that Sinister’s goal was to keep the X-Men off-balance and ignorant of a coming upheaval, one which Sunfire deemed the X-Men too feeble to handle. The White Queen, who in the interim had unlocked the failsafe in Kitty Pryde’s mind, directed the duo to the location of the real diaries in Flint, Michigan.
Mystique feigned surprise when Sinister alerted her that the diaries at the mansion, to which she had directed the Acolytes, were fakes. Using his telepathy in consortium with a simulacrum of Cerebra, Sinister adapted his strategy and began tracking Cannonball and Iceman, then en route to the diaries. His entire team of Marauders—Mystique, Gambit, Malice, Lady Mastermind, a repatriated Sunfire, Arclight, Scalphunter, Harpoon, Vertigo, Blockbuster, and Scrambler—confronted them upon reaching their destination. Cannonball and Iceman held their own against the Marauders, but they were severely beaten by Sinister himself. The two, along with Gambit, managed to destroy the diaries in a bid to prevent Sinister from obtaining them. Sinister tampered with Cannonball’s mind, but he and Iceman managed to escape with their lives.
After returning to his Antarctic base, Sinister kept Rogue alive with the hope of accessing the contents of Destiny’s diaries, which were etched upon her mind. Despite Mystique’s intimate knowledge of the diaries, Sinister did not press her to lift her psi-shields and grant him access to her own mind.
At the Xavier Institute, Cyclops began to mourn Cable. He reminisced about his and Jean Grey’s experience parenting Nathan in the future. Following the preceding battle, he and his X-Men could only ponder Sinister’s motives in targeting precogs and time travelers from alternate futures (X-MEN #s 201-204).
Sinister’s motives for wanting to obtain the new mutant, whose birth was just over the horizon, are also left to the imagination. Exodus and the Acolytes follow his lead because he promises them an extension to the longevity of their species, but astute readers will recall that all of Sinister’s former interests in mutants hinged upon creating the ultimate biological weapon capable of defeating Apocalypse. Carey and Yost seeded ENDANGERED SPECIES with a few reminders of the significance of the Grey and Summers’ bloodlines, remember, so a return to form for the geneticist is not out of the question. On the other hand, given what a relative non-event Apocalypse’s latest reappearance turned out to be, Sinister wouldn’t have much to fear from his creator, at least from a marketing point of view.
Cable returned from his unplanned trip to the future. Finding it different and darker than before, he almost died in that era. Now in the present, he knew what actions needed to be taken to save the future. Considering that so much of his former team had defected, he dared not trust or even contact the X-Men with what he planned to do next (X-FACTOR #27).
A new mutant manifested in Cooperstown, Alaska, spiking so far off the charts that it crashed Cerebra. As it exhibited its power signature for the first time, the destiny of all mutantkind shifted, and two alternate futures that had flatlined since M-Day registered new life. A resurfaced Cable, Sinister’s Marauders, and the mutant-hating zealots, the Purifiers, converged upon this new mutant in order to save, capture, or destroy it. The Purifiers had ascertained the moment and general location of the manifestation from the memory banks of the future-tech sentinel, Nimrod. Unable to pinpoint the mutant itself, but knowing it to be a child, they targeted and slaughtered every child in the town. While the Marauders and the Purifiers clashed in pursuit of their objectives, generating casualties with the deaths of Blockbuster and Prism, Cable escaped with the mutant—a newborn baby.
A half-hour too late, Xavier dispatched a field team consisting of Cyclops, the White Queen, Angel, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler. The X-Men discovered the hospital from which the baby was taken, but Wolverine was unable to place Cable’s scent or the direction in which he fled (X-MEN: MESSIAH COMPLEX, X-FACTOR #25).
Cyclops and Xavier had a falling out over the leadership of the X-Men in the midst of a critical situation, with Cyclops asserting dominance. Assuming that either the Marauders or the Purifiers possessed the baby, Cyclops sent the X-Men to uncover Sinister’s location via his ally Exodus’s soldiers, the Acolytes. On a second front, he sent Rictor, de-powered and human, to infiltrate the Purifiers (UNCANNY X-MEN #492).
A duplicate of the Multiple Man, along with Layla Miller, were sent to investigate one of the timelines that had reactivated, this one set 80 years in the future. Unknown to them, this was Bishop’s timeline of origin. The two discovered that mutants existed in this future, but that the species was greatly oppressed and detained in relocation camps, such as one they witnessed firsthand at Sheepshead Bay in New York.
The New X-Men, sidelined by Cyclops, refused to train under the insubordinate Charles Xavier. Unbeknownst to their teachers, they left the institute to independently pursue the Purifiers. In Washington, DC, they and Rictor ran afoul of Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers, who were working with the Purifiers out of fealty to the late Reverend William Stryker.
Based on intel provided by Amelia Voght, a squad of X-Men consisting of Storm, Angel, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus located and launched an assault upon Sinister’s Antarctic base (X-FACTOR #25, NEW X-MEN #44).
The White Queen imparted to the X-Men assault team a distinct upper hand by psi-shielding them against Sinister from a remote location at the institute. First striking at Vertigo and Scrambler, the X-Men next removed the major powerhouse from the battle by having Nightcrawler teleport Exodus into the frozen wasteland outside Sinister’s base. Distracted by the parallel plight of the New X-Men, who barely escaped the Reavers with their lives, the White Queen allowed Sinister to break through her psi-shielding. The Antarctic battle turned swiftly then, as Wolverine was nearly killed and Nightcrawler was severely wounded by gunshot. The assault team, like the New X-Men, almost failed to extract itself from the fray. Although both teams suffered casualties, what they learned collectively ruled out the Purifiers and the Marauders as the baby’s abductors. Furthermore, Wolverine gleaned from Gambit that Cable was the culprit.
When Bishop, paying a house call to the institute, learned that the X-Men had found a solid lead, he covertly initiated a nano-sentinel takeover of the mansion’s O*N*E* sentinel guard. The nannites reprogrammed the sentinels to destroy the X-Men at institute. Bishop somehow managed to down both Xavier and the White Queen, the two telepaths present (X-MEN #205).
The various teams gathered at the institute and warded off the sentinels, but not before witnessing the destruction of the mansion and the deaths of several students. Misled into believing that Cable engineered the attack, Cyclops assembled another strike team, X-Force, to locate him and retrieve the baby at all cost (UNCANNY X-MEN #493).
After X-Force’s departure, Cyclops completely shut Xavier out of the loop, telling him to keep out of his way. X-Force returned to Cooperstown to begin tracking Cable. Throughout the search, Wolverine doubted teammate Warpath’s commitment to taking down his former mentor. Using Caliban’s tracking ability, the team intercepted Cable as he was headed south through Alberta, Canada, and was already busy fending off the Reavers. Warpath was distracted in his pursuit when the Reavers killed Caliban. Cable outsmarted Wolverine and escaped with the baby aboard X-Force’s Blackbird One (X-FACTOR #26, NEW X-MEN #45).
The remainder of the X-Men and X-Factor retrieved X-Force in Canada, despairing that they had left to them no way to continue tracking Cable—especially given the psi-interference blocking out their telepaths. Thus they turned to repairing Cerebra while Cable pressed southward towards Forge’s Eagle Plaza in Texas, where he hoped to obtain the technology he needed to slip away into the timestream with the baby.
As he waited, Cyclops reminisced back to his abandonment of Nathan to the Askani. When Cerebra finally revealed his son’s location, he put out a general alert to all X-Men and headed for Dallas. Bishop responded to the alert and arrived first, gunning down Forge and Cable and preparing to kill the baby in an attempt to avert his hellish future of mutant oppression from being realized through the first of a new generation of mutants (X-MEN #206).
A group of Marauders, led by Gambit, followed closely behind Bishop and prevented the baby’s murder. They left with the baby, allowing Bishop to live in order to befuddle the X-Men when they arrived. As Cable had slipped away to further pursue his agenda, Cyclops could only hear Bishop’s version of what had occurred. Bishop convinced him that it was Cable who had attacked Forge.
The baby somehow blocked out Cerebra’s attempts to locate her, so the Stepford Cuckoos at the institute attempted to scan for the Marauders instead. Once Cerebra got a lock on Gambit, Cyclops sent X-Force, along with Bishop, to Muir Island to face the Marauders.
Eighty years in the future, Madrox and Layla learned from a young Bishop that the mutant messiah—the baby—would save mutantkind before going rogue and killing a million humans. The messiah’s actions would catalyze the creation of the mutant relocation camps and directly cause Bishop’s circumstance, which he would lament for every day of his life. Having gathered this key information about the past, Layla Miller killed the duplicate Madrox stranded in the future with her, enabling his consciousness to shift backward in time to merge with that of the prime Madrox, located in the present at Forge’s aerie. Madrox awoke in the present to warn the X-Men against Bishop’s motives, but too late.
Alternatively, if we are to believe that the birth altered Bishop’s origin, and that this alteration goes so far as to change Bishop’s memory of events in the present, this would suggest that time-displaced characters residing in the present are no longer who they were before the birth. It would create a number of hopelessly confusing paradoxes, not unlike those Marvel are fond of creating in the Spider-verse using magical characters like Mephisto. Now, I care little for Bishop’s back story, but the implications of this approach would adversely affect Cable as well, especially since Cable hinted in X-FACTOR #27 that his future (and, therefore, his history/memories?) may have been altered, too. If this is indeed the case, then this current storyline will effectively have de-canonized this entire biography. If Marvel wishes to make alternate timelines from alternate futures, this would be interesting. It would be insane, however, to hold that these alterations should carry over to the displaced characters residing in the present. In addition to damaging its characters’ coherencies, it would also invalidate the past history of the Marvel Universe, as visitors from the future have been around for years, their actions coloring stories that have since formed the foundations for stories told and continuing to be told.
Wounded, Cable crawled back to his hijacked Blackbird. From there, he telepathically reached out to the only other unaffiliated mutant left to help him retrieve the baby—a sidelined Charles Xavier. Xavier came immediately. He interrogated Cable as he patched him up, all while en route to Muir Island.
As Gambit drew closer with the baby, Mystique killed Sinister by forcing him into skin contact with the unconscious Rogue. Gambit arrived and turned the baby over to her, over Sinister’s dead body. Mystique sought to fulfill Destiny’s prophecies by bringing the baby into physical contact with Rogue. The desperate gamble paid off, as the baby revived her, cured her of Strain 88, and dissipated the billion minds, memories, and powers that she had absorbed—both from the Hecatomb and over the course of her life. Remarkably, the baby survived her touch.
X-Force and Bishop arrived next at Muir Island, falling into a trap sprung by Lady Mastermind, who Wolverine promptly killed. Cyclops’s team, Cable and Professor Xavier, and the New X-Men arrived in succession, and in the course of their ensuing battle with the Marauders, Scrambler and Vertigo were killed.
Xavier obtained the baby from Gambit, who gave her over willingly after being revolted by Mystique’s actions. Xavier entrusted it in turn to Cable, who defended it against Predator X and another assault from Bishop (UNCANNY X-MEN #494, X-FACTOR #27, NEW X-MEN #46).
Cyclops confronted Cable and demanded the baby. Xavier finally advocated Cyclops in his role as leader of the X-Men and caretaker of the mutant species. He convinced Cable to hand over the baby. In considering the correct course of action, the leader of the X-Men again recalled the instances in which he was forced to part with his family—his son and his wife, Jean Grey. In order to secure for the baby a life of her own apart from those who would exploit her for their own motives, Cyclops turned her back over to Cable for safe-keeping in the future.
Gunning for the baby once again, Bishop instead shot Xavier in the head as Cable, using Forge’s chronal components, disappeared into the future with his precious cargo in tow (X-MEN #207).
MESSIAH COMPLEX can best be remembered as a fast-paced, carefully plotted, and largely successful epic crossover. However, it is largely derivative of crossovers from the past several decades. While writer Mike Carey, in an interview in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT, would identify its major influences as MUTANT MASSACRE and X-TINCTION AGENDA, I think it more clearly mirrors INFERNO and X-CUTIONER’S SONG. The role of Sinister and the focus on a baby of crucial importance relate to the former, while a colossal misunderstanding with Cable and the X-teams marks its similarity to the latter. Writer Peter David seems to share this view to some extent, as he references X-CUTIONER’S SONG in X-FACTOR #27.
Cyclops sent X-Force on a mission to find and perhaps kill Bishop, who’d disappeared after the encounter. Bishop again attacked Forge and stole from him a nuclear-powered battle arm with time travel capabilities. Later, X-Force consulted with Forge and then tracked Bishop back to Muir Island, where he’d embarked the timestream in pursuit of Cable. Meanwhile, in the X-Men’s new San Francisco headquarters, Cyclops set Beast upon the task of finding a way to track Bishop via the homing beacon in the arm. Cyclops began to doubt his decision to trust Cable with the baby. Not having seen him for an update since he left, he wondered whether Cable might have some other grand agenda in mind. Nevertheless, he still held out hope. He built a crib for the baby to use upon her return and left a time capsule for his son in Westchester, along with a sentiment expressing his faith in him (CABLE v.2 #s 2, 6 & X-MEN: DIVIDED WE STAND #2).
Cable soon realized that the timestream did not offer respite from hazards like those he had just faced in the present. In addition to being grim, mutantless, and tyrannical, the future became the hunting grounds for Bishop, who followed Cable and the baby to New Jersey and the year 2043 (CABLE v.2 #1).
Equipped with his battle arm, Bishop took Cable by surprise and damaged his time mechanism in the skirmish (CABLE v.2 #2).
Distracted and captured by the Turnpike Authority, the corrupt law, Bishop let Cable and the baby slip through his enormous bionic fingers. While Cable was patched up by a local woman, Bishop executed his captors without hesitation, sure in his conviction that they would never have existed in the first place once he completed his objective (CABLE v.2 #3).
A much older Cannonball bought Cable more time to put distance between himself and his pursuer. This Cannonball last recalled seeing Cable and the baby when they first entered the timestream together (CABLE v.2 #4).
Cable traveled to Westchester and destroyed Cerebra to prevent Bishop from using it to track him. He co-opted a blackbird jet and, after confronting Bishop—again indecisively—and inspiring the local woman to take action to redress her time’s dilemma, he made a discovery. His time mechanism worked after all, but it could now only carry him forward in time, and further from his allies in the present (CABLE v.2 #5).
Bishop decided to close in on Cable by narrowing down his search. After confirming that Cable could no longer bodyslide with Graymalkin still dysfunctional at the bottom of the ocean, he consulted for clues Professor René Merryweather, a 26th Century biophysicist and Cable chronographer, like his forebear. Merryweather “aided” Bishop, in actuality sending him into a trap set by Cable—a cult which regarded Cable as its savior and which was coached to recognize and kill Bishop upon his arrival in their time. Bishop escaped and killed Merryweather for befuddling him. Next he ransacked his victim’s archives, which included Irene Merryweather’s journals. The journals were seeded with more false leads meant to confuse Bishop. One legitimate entry led him to the scene of Cable’s recorded “demise,” which was to have occurred at a point in time even further in the future than when Bishop had last encountered him. This helped Bishop piece together Cable’s plight, his inability to travel backward in time. Facing him again, Bishop inadvertently saved Cable and the child (now a toddler), who escaped. With his new knowledge, his pursuer began to concoct a plan to force Cable further down the line, where he could corner him and face him on his own terms (KING-SIZE CABLE #1).
Bishop began to gather six weapons of mass destruction in the present for his scorched earth approach for the future. By destroying a large part of the future Earth, he planned to contain Cable and move in for the kill. Tracking the beacon in Bishop’s arm to a government research facility, X-Force intercepted him, severed the arm, and transported him to Cyclops at X-Men headquarters. Through questioning and the White Queen’s probing, he learned that Cable had been running for years with no way to come back. A nanite virus released from Bishop’s severed arm gave him the opportunity to escape and steal from the X-Men another weapon to use against his quarry.
Two years after Bishop last found them, Cable and the now talkative child took refuge in the fabled New Liberty, a secluded, shielded paradise that was whispered about even in Cable’s time in the 40th Century. They settled into a simple lifestyle, and Cable took up residence with a wife for more than one year, burying the warrior vestiges of his past beneath his front yard. When insectile invaders from the outside world—a world Bishop had made nearly uninhabitable—took New Liberty, Cable and his family had no alternative but to run. At the child’s insistence, Cable unearthed his weapons and stood his ground long enough to rescue his captured wife. Faced with real danger, the child received her first lessons in strategy and war making. The three of them drew the invaders outside New Liberty’s borders so that its inhabitants could close its force field behind them (CABLE v.2 #s 7-9).
Section 33: Apocalypse Repositioned
Section 34: Meddling in the Superhuman Civil War
Section 35: A Second Affiliation With the X-Men
Section 36: New Mutant Manifestation
Section 32: Entrenchment Along the Banks of a Better Tomorrow
Having been dispersed across a number of alternate realities following his seemingly fatal encounter with the Skornn, Cable was finally tracked down by former X-Force compatriots Cannonball and Siryn. They located him within the Scarlet Witch’s custom-made reality, finding him in the form of an infant under the care of Mister Sinister. Because they evacuated him at the very moment that that reality realigned itself back to the original, Cable remained an infant when he returned home.
Section 33: Apocalypse Repositioned
Ozymandias, ever and unwillingly bound to serve his dark lord, oversaw the finishing stages of Apocalypse’s rebirth, which Ozymandias had set in motion using the blood he had salvaged following his last defeat in Section 26.
Section 34: Meddling in the Superhuman Civil War
As president pro tempore of a European nation, Cable led the citizens of Rumekistan through a peaceful transition of power following the downfall of Flag-Smasher’s regime. Domino, active as a mercenary in the area, struggled to determine whether Cable presented a new hope for the country or a threat to freedom worse than Flag-Smasher. She decided that he was a threat, and she walked out on an invitation to join him (CABLE & DEADPOOL #29).
Section 35: A Second Affiliation With the X-Men
In a bleak and desperate attempt to reverse the effects of M-Day, Beast consulted with an array of unethical geneticists. Mister Sinister refused to assist, apparently out of pride and a lack of confidence in Beast’s abilities and direction. On Wundagore Mountain, the High Evolutionary likewise expressed doubt in discovering a scientific solution to an issue raised by magic. Further, he saw no need to remedy the plight of the mutant species. Beast uncovered the decommissioned site of Neverland, but the records once contained there had been expunged. Failing at a breakthrough, he nonetheless crossed paths with his alternate, the Dark Beast. Beast accepted Dark Beast as a colleague in the search for a cure, and he confided in him information regarding one of Jean Grey’s more recent deaths, as well as the elemental dispersal of the alternate, Nate Grey. He, like this and the alternate Sinister with whom he was most familiar, took an especial interest in the genetic possibilities inherent in the Grey bloodline.
1.) Nicieza, using Cable as his mouthpiece, complained about the recovery of Cable’s psi-powers, which Nicieza asserts Cable would not have desired, not even if he had the chance to regain them. This is something of a moot point, because Carey’s storyline in any event only intended to restore his powers temporarily.
2.) Nicieza literally sent Cable’s supporting cast out to sea aboard ferries, minus Black Box, who he outright disposed of at the hands of Sabretooth.
3.) Importantly, Nicieza destroyed Providence, not Carey. Recall that the Hecatomb could only steal minds, not cause any structural damage. It was Cable who tore the island apart to remove his people from harm’s way. Looking at it one way, the true Providence—that is, its citizens—were destroyed by Hecatomb…but not all of them, as Cable evacuated that part of the island containing the bulk of them by air (thereby performing his final messianic act). Cable did eventually detonate the rump of the island to prevent Gambit and Sunfire from obtaining his data, but this was shown in CABLE & DEADPOOL #42, not X-MEN #200, which only showed the chamber that Cable had retreated to exploding. Further, it seems that Carey did not expect the island to disappear, as Lady Mastermind believed Cable to be rebuilding Providence when the X-Men left, not downloading its data before it sank. Strangely, there is even a bit of confusion within Nicieza’s own issues as to whether Cable’s intention was to download, encrypt, or delete his files.
4.) Obviously, Carey (and the Professor) did not mention Deadpool or Senyaka’s presence on the island, aspects of the plot that naturally belonged to Nicieza’s issues. Carey did not even mention Sunfire’s presence, which did belong to his part of the story, but this might be attributed either to teleportation or Sunfire’s being out of the Professor’s range of detection in the air.
5.) Lastly, Nicieza defiantly ignored the larger parts of Carey’s plot, such as the peculiar phrase which Gambit uttered when in battle with Cable, which, in Nicieza’s version, Cable doesn’t even bother to hear, but which in Carey’s may be essential to the plot.Section 36: New Mutant Manifestation
