Writing: Todd Dezago
Art: Randy Green
What Went Down: In the Swiss Alps, a monk is visited by a projection of Sanctity, member of the Askani from the future. She tells him that he must ready the Askani’son, Cable. He must be prepared to either accept his role or be annihilated.
As for the main story, Cable is in the middle of a mosh pit for the first time in his life. He and Storm are undercover at a Lila Cheney concert—on the lookout for Callisto, who is planning to attack the event. Cable is perplexed by the ritual of moshing and worries about Storm’s claustrophobia in such a tight, dark place. Storm explains she is determined to fulfill her responsibility to the Morlocks when Calisto and Marrow appear.
Storm is surprised to see Marrow alive, since Storm ripped her heart out of her chest back in Uncanny #325, but such is the way of comics. Cable fights the Morlocks while the crowd panics. Storm is crushed against the crowd and starts to lose control, unleashing lightning outside. One of Lila’s disguised alien bodyguards grabs Cable, mistaking him for a troublemaker. Calisto and Marrow escape, and all the while Lila just keeps singing.
Storm and Cable leave out the back and go flying to catch their breaths; they discuss how the mutant Thornn tipped them off to Calisto’s activities. Meanwhile, Calisto and Marrow regroup outside as well. Calisto insists that she be the one to kill Storm and tells Marrow to give the people inside a warning before triggering the explosives they planted. She also explains how Marrow was able to survive Storm’s attack in Uncanny #325; it turns out that Marrow was born with two hearts. Of course, that makes perfect sense!
Outside on the roof of the club, Storm apologizes to Cable for freaking out. A guy trying to get into the concert is scared away by another of the alien guards as Cable reenters the club. On the roof, Calisto confronts Storm, calling her naive when the humans are preparing genocide for mutants. Storm counters that terrorism is for the weak and cowardly.
Back in the concert, Cable runs into Thornn, who came to help stop Calisto and Marrow. Marrow attacks Cable from behind. While Storm fights Calisto, she questions the Morlock about the location of the bomb. Inside, Cable gets in a knife fight with Marrow and tries to offer her a place where she’ll be accepted. Marrow rejects it and tells him that the explosives are rigged to blow when Lila hits a high note at the end of her song; she doesn’t know that Cable is a telepath and able to contact Lila mentally and tell her not to sing the note.
When there is no explosion, Storm announces that the heroes have won, but Calisto explains that the bomb will still go off ten seconds after the music stops. Storm warns Cable telepathically and Thornn locates the bomb. Cable throws it to Lila, who uses her teleportation powers to get rid of it. Afterwards, Cable worries back stage about how close they are to genetic war; since Cable is from the future, he remembers that important events are about to take place now from his history.
How It Was: This is a random one-off in Cable that actually sets up a lot of events in the X-Men books to come, so it’s worth taking a look at. This simple story has a lot of holes in its plot, starting with the antagonists themselves. Calisto and Marrow are back as the main villains, which is incredibly surprising considering last time we saw them, one of them was trying to help stop the murdering of innocent humans and the other had her heart ripped out. Even after coming up with a lazy reason for Marrow to not be dead, their evil scheme still doesn’t make any sense. Why would Calisto tell Marrow to warn the people before the bomb goes off? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose? And if the bomb was set to go off after the music stops, wouldn’t warning the crowd be a bad idea?
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t matter if Marrow warned the crowd or not, since this appears to be a very stupid crowd. Cable and the Morlocks supposedly cause a near riot with their fight, but later there are plenty of people still at the concert. Are they that oblivious? Shouldn’t they be running for their lives instead of standing around while two mutants have a kung fu knife fight? The plot itself feels very stock; I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the bomb set off by a certain note in a number of cartoons like Inspector Gadget over the years. Ignoring the silliness of it, the way it plays out still doesn’t make a lot of sense.
So what does work? Well the prologue is pretty interesting with its cryptic foreshadowing of Nathan’s future role in the war against Apocalypse. That is until you learn that Nate’s role is actually nonexistent in that “final battle,” but don’t worry, that isn’t for years to come.
Also, Storm and Cable both work well together; the X-offices had been vaguely hinting at a romance between the two for a while, and it actually seems like it might work here. Storm does come off as a little weak and dumb by putting herself in such a situation in the first place, but her guilt over the Morlocks is a convincing enough motivation for her presence. Cable’s not exactly a standout solo hero; while he’s obviously tough, there’s just nothing to really set him apart, like a sense of humor or unique powers. Then again, he does have some fun moments in the mosh pit, and the writer seems to be slowly building up his significance as a time traveler/savior.
The art is decent, especially when it comes to the design of the alien bodyguard or the action and lighting of the mosh pit. The action isn’t anything to write home about, and the plot is a little incoherent, but it does do an average job of setting up the X-Men’s struggle to keep human relations from devolving any further.
C
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