"Broken Soldiers"May 1997
Writers: Todd Dezago with Brian Vaughn
Pencilers: Randy Green and Chap Yaep
Inker: Scott Hana
Letterer: Richard Starkings & Comicraft
Colorist: Mike Thomas
Editor: Mark Powers
Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras
Firsts and Other Notables
He goes unnamed in the issue, but the narrator of the "future" events preaching to the Askani acolytes is Ch'vayre, Apocalypse's one-time prelate in The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix and Stryfe's later guardian in Askani'son. Later stories will establish that he was sent to the past by Mother Sanctity in order to establish a present day Askani clan to help Cable kill Apocalypse then instead of having to fight him in the future.
At the end of Cable #43 is a two-page spread detailing various friends and foes of Cable, a sort of precursor to the inside cover "recap" pages that Marvel will soon adopt.
Creator Central
Early work from Brian K. Vaughn, of Runaways and Y the Last Man fame, co-writing this issue. He'll dabble a bit in the X-office around this time, and again in the early 00s.
A Work in Progress
Madelyne's resurrection over in X-Man is acknowledged in this series for the first time.
Human/Mutant Relations
In the present day sequence, "Creed lives" can be seen graffitied on a wall.
Austin's Analysis
Cable #43 marks the most concerted effort yet to explore the concept of Cable as a religious figure, thereby continuing the efforts begun by Jeph Loeb during his run on the series to give Cable a narrative purpose beyond "being mysterious" and "having big guns". As such, the issue works much better in the abstract as part that effort than as a standalone story. Randy Green does some interesting things with the layouts, putting the past and present events alongside each other in parallel. But there's little gained from the effort beyond the observation that it's happening — the parallel construction doesn't reveal anything new or cast events in either time period in a new light. Instead, Cable #43 is basically just two inoffensive but unexciting stories told in tandem because, why not?
Next Issue
Jubilee plays mind games with Bastion in Generation X #27!
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How would you say that future/past version of Cable matches up with the Cable we got in the Liefeld days?
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing (..."nice"...) about Liefeld's Cable is that the character is so thin - just a bunch of popular tropes — its relatively easy to reconcile later, more nuanced characterization onto that version of the character.
DeletePlus, you've got stuff like the conventions of the genre at the time that prevent Liefeld Cable from actually killing in cold blood all that often, even if he's got the general aura of someone who has no problem with it.
tl;dr = Do they match up perfectly? No. But not any worse than any other long-running character with lots of variable creative voices in the mix.
I think he went Rogue and shaved about 20 years off his age. The flowing locks on this issue’s cover, which I didn’t realize before reading the story inside signified his younger self, just reminded me of the contrast between Cable’s receding silver hairline under Liefeld and his more recent depictions — even before I came across a reply in this issue’s lettercol stating that “Nathan Dayspring is in his early thirties,” which despite the wording appears based on the reader’s question to apply to the present-day incarnation of the character.
Delete