TM & © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Deadpool (left) and Cable are antagonists in Deadpool 2. They began that way in the comics, too, before becoming uneasy allies.

 

Andrew A. Smith

Tribune Content Agency

May 17, 2018 -- If you’re not a regular reader of Marvel Comics, you might be confused as to who this Cable person is in Deadpool 2. And if you are … you still might be confused.

Cable is one of the most convoluted characters in X-Men history. That’s saying a lot, given that X-Men comics are notorious for complicated origins, mysterious pasts, time travel, parallel worlds, alternate timelines and genetic clones. And also because it seems the editorial decisions regarding Cable over the years have been so haphazard that it’s possible they were made by drunken monkeys.

When he was introduced in 1990, Cable was little more than a mysterious cyborg from the future – primarily because not even his creators had any idea who or what he was beyond “mysterious cyborg from the future.” Since then he’s had so many origins that he’s racked up more names and pseudonyms than a British royal: Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, Askani’Son, Nathan Dayspring, Soldier X, “The Chosen One” and even, for some reason, Nathan Winters.

All of those names represent different phases of Cable’s history, which keeps evolving. Currently he is (deep breath) the son of Scott Summers and a clone of Jean Grey, granting him formidable telepathy and telekinesis, who was sent to the future as a baby for a possible cure of an alien virus, but then raised by the time-traveling minds of  Scott and Jean in the bodies of future people and trained by the far-future Askani tribe in firearms and hand-to-hand combat, who also granted him time-traveling technology in his living robot arm, so that he could destroy the arch-villain Apocalypse in the past, before Apocalypse could enslave the Askani in the future, who are led by Cable’s timed-displaced, quasi-sister from a parallel world.

Let that sentence wash over you. Soak it in. This is why comics are so much fun.

And there’s more! I don’t want anyone’s head to explode, but if someone is inspired by Deadpool 2 to randomly pick up some comics or collections featuring Cable, even the above description would not suffice. So let’s stroll through the character’s strange, ever-mutating history, and bask in its craziness:

In the beginning, there was a baby.

It was 1985, and Cyclops was married to Madelyne Pryor, who gave birth to their son. At the time, Pryor was just an ordinary woman, albeit one who was a dead ringer for Jean Grey, the love of Scott’s life. When Scott and Maddie first met in 1983, Jean was conveniently dead – that happens to her with a regularity uncommon even for comic book characters – and nature took its course.

Which didn’t last. Scott left Maddie in 1986 to start a new team called X-Factor, which included a newly resurrected Jean Grey. That’s not terribly heroic, but then again, Pryor later became the supervillain Goblin Queen, and had an affair with Scott’s brother. This heel turn was in part due to Scott leaving her for Jean, and in part because she went bonkers when she found out she was Jean’s clone.

Oh yeah, that happened too. A 1989 story revealed that Madelyne was created from Jean’s DNA by Mister Sinister, a mad geneticist who was obsessed with Jean’s genes. (And Scott’s, too.) Sinister had determined that a child conceived by Cyclops and Phoenix would have the power to stop Apocalypse’s reign of terror in the future, because Sinister felt guilty for having revived Apocalypse in 1899. (That is not a typo. Just roll with it.)

Copyright Marvel Entertainment Inc.

Cable (foreground) is a time cop in his current ongoing series. And because nothing is simple in Cable-land, the character in the background is Cable’s sort-of brother Nate Grey, born of the same genetic material as Cable in a parallel universe. Cover art to Cable #157 is by Daniel Warren Johnson.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, the baby.

Back in 1986, Apocalypse – a dude so awful he even roughs up children – infected the newborn with a techno-organic virus from outer space, which would turn the child into a hive-mind, Borg-like robot thingy. “Moo hoo ha ha,” said Apocalypse. “Not so fast,” said Scott and Jean. (I’m paraphrasing.) The couple sent the baby into the future, where the heretofore unknown Askani tribe – who were battling Apocalypse’s aforementioned reign of terror – promised to cure him. They didn’t, but did teach him to use his telekinesis to hold the virus in check (even when he’s sleeping), and only Cable’s left arm, left eye and some other random parts are cyborg-ized.

I should mention here that Mother Askani, leader of the tribe, later turned out to be an older, time-displaced version of Rachel Grey. Rachel, currently a member of the X-Men, is the daughter of Scott and Jean from an alternate future where mutants are killed or herded into concentration camps. (Which, you can probably guess, isn’t much of a vacation spot.) That makes her Cable’s half-sister a million times removed, or something.

Wait, I’m getting too close to head-splodey territory. Back to our story.

Cable arrived in 1990, a mysterious cyborg from the future determined to stop Stryfe and the Mutant Liberation Front from creating an apocalyptic future. He conscripted the New Mutants as his soldiers, and in 1991 “New Mutants” was re-launched as “X-Force,” the first iteration of a team that would have many different rosters through the years. Through most of them, though, the purpose has been to field a team that is more violent and lethal than those bleeding-heart peaceniks the X-Men.

The years 1993 and 1994 were eventful ones for Cable – and by that I mean it appears this is when the drunken monkeys took over. Because we learned, in this order:

1) Cable is a clone of Stryfe.

2) Head fake! Cable is the original; Stryfe is the clone.

3) Cable’s real mission to the present is to stop the rise of supervillain Apocalypse, not Stryfe.

4) Cable is really Scott and Maddie’s baby, returned from the future where he was raised by the Askani.

5) Another head fake! Cable was not raised by the Askani, but by Scott and Jean, whose minds were brought to the future by Mother Askani (Cable’s sorta-sister, remember?) to inhabit the bodies of a couple named Slym and Redd Dayspring.  (“Slim” was Scott’s nickname in the early days of the X-Men; Jean is, of course, a redhead.)

At this point the drunken monkeys must have passed out, or re-thought their career choices, because they left Cable alone for a few years. The character’s quo remained status for almost a decade.

Then came the series the world didn’t know it needed: Cable & Deadpool. It was 2004, and the separate books Cable and Deadpool had just been canceled. The two characters had met back in the ‘80s – if Deadpool being hired to assassinate Cable counts as a meeting – so one of the monkeys must have woken up long enough to pair the two in a new series. Hey, it worked for Luke Cage and Iron Fist!

Cable & Deadpool saw the Askani’Son convinced he was a messiah, enforcing world peace by telepathically forcing everyone to play nice. This drew the ire of the Avengers, X-Men and various other super-types, who look askance at mutant mind control. Meanwhile, Deadpool did what he does best: stabbing, shooting and blabbing a non-stop stream of meta-commentary, juvenile jokes and perverse observations.

Copyright Marvel Entertainment Inc.

Cable (top) and Deadpool co-starred in a team-up title in 2003 and 2004. Cover to Cable & Deadpool #1 is by Rob Liefeld.

Cable & Deadpool was so successful that both characters were once again awarded their own solo books. The Merc with a Mouth went on stabbing, shooting and blabbing, but the Soldier with a Scowl had a new gig. A genuine mutant messiah had been born, who would blah blah future something something apocalypse more blah something. You’ve heard it all before. But Cable had to take this baby girl on the lam in the timestream to protect her from another time traveler named Bishop, who believed she was the opposite of a messiah, like Justin Bieber. Because, you know, blah apocalypse future something.

So instead of being a messiah, Cable had become the protector of one, whom he named Hope Summers. Like Jean Grey, Maddie Pryor and Rachel Grey, she grew up to be another gorgeous redhead with formidable mental powers. Boy, those monkeys sure love gingers!

All of which is now, thankfully, in the past. Cable has a new solo title these days, where he is simply a time cop who travels from one era to another to protect mutants and prevent all manner of unpleasant futures. Hope and Bishop are still supporting characters, and Cable still has too many names. But if you squint just right, you can simplify Cable’s concept to a manageable mess.

And if that fails, just go with “mysterious cyborg from the future.” That was working fine before the monkeys got into the liquor cabinet.

Find Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), on his website (captaincomics.ning.com), on Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or on Twitter (@CaptainComics).

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  • I'm just re-reading the original 70's Spider-Man story with the clone of Gwen Stacy and the Jackal. I blame that story for all of this somehow.

  • Captain Comics said:

    When he was introduced in 1990, Cable was little more than a mysterious cyborg from the future – primarily because not even his creators had any idea who or what he was beyond “mysterious cyborg from the future.” Since then he’s had so many origins that he’s racked up more names and pseudonyms than a British royal: Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, Askani’Son, Nathan Dayspring, Soldier X, “The Chosen One” and even, for some reason, Nathan Winters.

    All of those names represent different phases of Cable’s history, which keeps evolving. Currently he is (deep breath) the son of Scott Summers and a clone of Jean Grey, granting him formidable telepathy and telekinesis, who was sent to the future as a baby for a possible cure of an alien virus, but then raised by the time-traveling minds of  Scott and Jean in the bodies of future people and trained by the far-future Askani tribe in firearms and hand-to-hand combat, who also granted him time-traveling technology in his living robot arm, so that he could destroy the arch-villain Apocalypse in the past, before Apocalypse could enslave the Askani in the future, who are led by Cable’s timed-displaced, quasi-sister from a parallel world.

    My head hurts.

  • When he was introduced in 1990, Cable was little more than a mysterious cyborg from the future – primarily because not even his creators had any idea who or what he was beyond “mysterious cyborg from the future.” Since then he’s had so many origins that he’s racked up more names and pseudonyms than a British royal: Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, Askani’Son, Nathan Dayspring, Soldier X, “The Chosen One” and even, for some reason, Nathan Winters.

    All of those names represent different phases of Cable’s history, which keeps evolving. Currently he is (deep breath) the son of Scott Summers and a clone of Jean Grey, granting him formidable telepathy and telekinesis, who was sent to the future as a baby for a possible cure of an alien virus, but then raised by the time-traveling minds of  Scott and Jean in the bodies of future people and trained by the far-future Askani tribe in firearms and hand-to-hand combat, who also granted him time-traveling technology in his living robot arm, so that he could destroy the arch-villain Apocalypse in the past, before Apocalypse could enslave the Askani in the future, who are led by Cable’s timed-displaced, quasi-sister from a parallel world.

    My head hurts.

    Meanwhile, the Punisher and the Russian...

  • So, are we discussing this movie anywhere? I don't see a thread, so I'll say here that I enjoyed the movie.

    Weirdly, Deadpool showed character growth, which he doesn't in the comics. I guess it's necessary, or maybe just possible, for a movie series that's not going to continue indefinitely, like the comics character.

    I didn't care for the fridging of Morena Baccarin. I was glad to see it undone, but still didn't care for a woman's death as motivation for a male character again. That tired (and insulting) idea needs to go away.

    I loved the fate of X-Force. Loved, loved, loved it. Hilarious. I don't care if they make an X-Force movie or not, so I wasn't horrified to see familiar characters expunged. Maybe you were. But they can always say Deadpool went back in time and saved them, so none of them may remain dead. Still, I hope Shatterstar does, because I've always hated that character.

    Loved Domino. Never was much of a fan of the comics character, but I loved how Zazie Beetsz (sp?) played her. Just the right amount of sass to make her memorable, without being unlikeable. And, seriously, someone whose power is good luck really would be a little cocky. Also, at the risk of being a lout, Ms. Beetz is a knockout.

    A fat character! Who knew that Deadpool 2 would be the most progressive movie of 2018?

    Josh Brolin was an outstanding Cable. There's another character I never much cared for, but Brolin made me like him. Every once in a while, a little snark would slip through that impassive mask of granite of a face to let you know there was someone in there who was having a good time.

    I even liked Yukio, even if she wasn't the Yukio of the comics (a thief in Madripoor). I can't find any character she resembles in the comics, and can't even tell what her X-power was. (Electrified whips, or something?) But I loved how she seemed so unspoiled in the movie, so much so that Deadpool always responded to her on that level. It was ... dare I say it? Cute.

    I liked the cameos, like the X-Men hiding from Deadpool and Brad Pitt as The Vanisher (who was just invisible in this movie, not a teleporter). Laughed out loud on both.

    The "stinger" scenes in mid-credits were terrific. Well-crafted and a big ol' Reset Button if needed.

    And to think I used to not like Deadpool as a character! Kudos to Ryan Reynolds for bringing the exuberant fun of the character to the fore, something I didn't understand for years.

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