Cable (comics)

Cable (Nathan Christopher Summers) is a Marvel Comics superhero, associated with the X-Men and X-Force. He first appeared in The New Mutants #87 (March 1990). ^*

Introduction

A mysterious cyborg, Cable became the leader of the New Mutants, a junior X-Men team. After he developed the team into the harder-edged X-Force, Cable became one of the most popular superheroes of the 1990s and graduated to his own series in 1993.

However, many comic book fans criticized him as a gun-toting, anti-hero cliché. The writers of various X-books attempted to flesh out his mythos, revealing him to be the time traveling son of the X-Man Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor (clone of the X-Men's Jean Grey, so Grey is technically either his mother or an aunt, if one views Madelyne Pryor as Jean Grey's sister), a messianic figure, and a mutant with great telepathic and telekinetic powers.

His popularity has waned, despite a brief stint in the X-Men. His series was remodeled as Soldier X in 2002 to critical panning and cancelled in 2003. He is now featured in Cable and Deadpool, pairing him with another popular X-Force character.

Marvel currently credits The New Mutants writer Louise Simonson and The New Mutants and X-Force artist/co-writer Rob Liefeld as Cable's creators and the character is closely associated with Liefeld. Though Liefeld is responsible for his visual design and much of his personality, Cable was originally conceived as Commander X by Simonson and editor Bob Harras. Nathan Christopher Summers, the child who would become Cable, was created by writer Chris Claremont and first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #201 (January 1986). ^*

Character biography

Childhood

Cable was born Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, the child of Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Madelyne Pryor. Madelyne Pryor was later revealed to be a clone of Jean Grey (aka Phoenix of the X-Men, which would make Phoenix his biological mother, by proxy), created by Mister Sinister for the express purpose of mating her with Scott to create Cable. It was she who dubbed him "Nathan" in order to taunt Scott by reminding him of a childhood bully, as she prepared to sacrifice him before the X-Men and X-Factor saved the child. Sinister carefully orchestrated Cable's birth, planning to use him as a weapon against his hated master, Apocalypse. Unfortunately, Apocalypse learned of this treachery and infected the child with a techno-organic ("T-O") virus that would slowly kill him.

When Apocalypse was defeated on the Moon, a woman from the future appeared to Cyclops. Calling herself Askani, she told him that the only way to save his son would be for her to take him into the far future.

Future

In the future, Mother Askani, a time-displaced Rachel Summers, had the child cloned in case Nathan succumbed to the T-O virus. Minions of Apocalypse attacked and stole the clone, whom Apocalypse raised as his heir, Stryfe.

Using her chronoskimming power for the last time, Rachel pulled the minds of Scott and Jean into the future, where as "Slym" and "Redd," they raised Cable for twelve years. During their time together, the "family" prevented Apocalypse from transferring his essence into a new body, ending his reign of terror. These events took place in the acclaimed Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix miniseries.

The vacuum of power was filled by a group called the New Canaanites. Cable was arrested and learned from fellow inmate Blaquesmith where to find the last enclave of the Askani. Blaquesmith helped him escape and Cable joined the Askani resistance against the New Canaanites. Meanwhile, Stryfe, Nate's clone, also set up his own plans to defeat the New Canaanites and install himself as the world's ruler, as he considered himself the heir of Apocalypse.

Present

When Stryfe travelled to the past, Cable followed him with the aim of stopping Stryfe's plans as well as preventing Apocalypse's rise to power. Cable formed a group initially called the Wild Pack, but conflict with Silver Sable, who already had a group called the Wild Pack, forced him to change the name to the Six Pack. Cable travelled between the 1990s and his future with his ship Graymalkin, which contained a sentient computer program called Professor, the future version of the program built into X-Factor's Ship.

The Six Pack performed missions for "Mr. Tolliver," which put the group in direct conflict with Stryfe. In their last mission, Cable and the Pack confronted Stryfe but they refused to fight because they weren't getting paid. Cable did not listen and even when Stryfe threatened the lives of his comrades, Cable did not back down. He abandoned his team in an underground base in order to follow Stryfe, which resulted in Hammer becoming paralyzed from the neck down and Garrison Kane's limbs being ripped off.

New Mutants/X-Force

Cable came into conflict with Stryfe's Mutant Liberation Front, the United States government and Freedom Force. The New Mutants intervened and Cable saw them as potential soldiers in his war against Stryfe. He became their new leader, outfitted them and renamed the team X-Force. New Mutants #87-100

Cable rescued Domino from a year of imprisonment and learned from Kane that Stryfe was apparently his identical twin. In return, Cable took Kane to the future and had him outfitted with bionics to restore his functionality.

Stryfe attacked Professor X while posing as Cable, initiating a series of momentous events, starting the X-Cutioner's Song crossover. When Cable returned from the future, he found that nearly every super-powered force on the planet was after him, including multiple X-teams. After convincing Wolverine and Bishop of his innocence, Cable battled Stryfe on the Moon, culminating in a temporal explosion that seemed to kill both.

Cable reappeared in the Clan Chosen future, with Stryfe's consciousness riding along in his mind. He destroyed the New Canaanites' time travel device and returned to the present to confront the consequences of the X-Cutioner's song and learned from Mister Sinister that Stryfe was his clone and not the other way around as Stryfe had told him.

Cable eventually fulfilled his destiny and killed Apocalypse using a "Psimitar". His purpose in life as Sinister had ordained it now completed, Cable rescued Rachel Summers from an alternate future where she had become trapped, then became a globe-traveling mercenary dubbed "Soldier X" for a short time.

The Underground

Cable, alerted by Domino to the "Neverland" concentration camp run by Malcolm Colcord's Weapon X Organization, then recruited Blaquesmith, Meltdown, and a new Maverick to lead an "Underground," who proceeded to capture the Weapon X agents and former Mutant Liberation Front members Wildside and Reaper, Cable attempted to interrogate them telepathically, but his malfuntioning powers caused him to accidentally lobotomise them, reducing them to drooling wrecks, before gaining any useful information.

However, an alternative subsequently presented itself in the form of, Agent Brent Jackson of Weapon X, who arrived at their base with several other Weapon X agents, offering the Underground a truce and requesting their help in deposing Colcord. Cable accepted suspiciously.

On their raid, they were surprised by his former friend Garrison Kane, now a cyborg agent of the Program. Furious at the intervention, Cable shut down Kane's mind, ran into the office of the unconscious Colcord, and probes his mind. When he discovers the truth of the mutant genocide, Cable tries to kill the Director, before being stopped by the brainwashed Madison Jeffries. Jeffries tries to destroy the underground with the help of "Boxbots" but is stopped with the help of Kane, who, released from Weapon X's mind control by Cable rebooting his systems, used his cyborg parts to "download" Jeffries' power and absorb the Boxbots, killing himself in the process.

Jackson then betrayed the Underground, captures them, and mindwipes them into forgettting Weapon X. Marrow, arriving to rescue the Underground, instead used the wider Underground as the basis for a new Gene Nation.

Savior

Cable then achieved the peak of his powers. Knowing this could not last long before he burned out as X-Man almost did at those power levels, he arranged for what he thought would be the best thing he could do in his last days. He recreated his long-destroyed spaceship Greymalkin as the airborne city of Providence. Although a mishap meant that the teleportation matrix on board registered Deadpool as him, meaning that he could not use it without taking Deadpool with him and Deadpool could trigger a "Bodyslide", he continued with his plan to espouse a philosophy of moderation and offering invitations to the world's top thinkers, scientists and philosophers to live on Providence. Delivering a stark message to the world's leaders, he deliberately set them all against him by threatening to throw all their missiles into the sun.

Meanwhile, the X-Men, including his father Cyclops, hired Deadpool to put together the pieces of a mini-teleporter that they could use to stop him without quite knowing what it was. After they mounted an attack on Providence, Cable confessed to Deadpool; after Deadpool had declined to play his role and disable him; that he'd wanted him to kill him. Expanding on this to Cyclops that he knew he was about to burn out, he wanted to set an example of how the world could work together, even if it was against him. However, the Silver Surfer, called by the Fantastic Four, saw his "passion" and disturbed by it, defeated him in battle and ripped the techno-organic tissue from his body, disabling him. As Providence, which had been supported by Cable's TK, prepared to crash into the ocean, Deadpool teleported to one of Cable's safehouses with him and at his prompting used the teleporter to lobotomize him to save him from burning out, giving him a few seconds to lower Providence gently into the ocean and give a final message to the world.

While he was left in a coma and with many people around the globe now referring to him as "the Savior" and applications to immigrate to Providence going through the roof, Deadpool hired the Fixer to bond benign techno-organic mesh to Cable, saving him although he remains hugely depowered.

Second Childhood

Shortly thereafter, Cable vanished in killing a mutant-hunting beast called the Skornn at the head of a reformed X-Force. Cannonball and Siryn then travelled to Providence with Forge in tow to try and find any trace of him, and whether he survived. At roughly the same time, Deadpool, having been brainwashed by a supervillain information broker called the Black Box to kill the "Greatest Threat to Mankind", teleported to Providence to find and kill Cable, who he perceived as the greatest superhuman threat. After Cannonball and Siryn had calmed him, he suggested they use his teleportation-link with Cable to find him and Forge constructed a harness to allow the two X-Force members to follow him.

They then proceeded to travel through three alternate worlds, one where Cable had become War; a horseman of Apocalypse, one where Cable had succeeded in his messiah-like mission and had become a benevolent dictator (where even mild indigestion was immediately dealt with through outside help), and one where Cable had become the central consciousness of a Phalanx infestation of Earth. Finally, they landed in the House of M reality and found an infant Cable being raised by the marginalized Mister Sinister on a farm. Sinister used an extract from Deadpool's immune system to accellerate Cable's physical development; however, this also caused Cable's powers to almost immediately manifest, and the infant Cable lashed out indiscriminately with his newfound telekinesis. Before Sinister could regain control over Cable, Deadpool grabbed the baby and teleported seconds before the world reverted from the House of M reality to the normal Marvel universe. Since the pair were in transit when the reversion occurred, Cable was unaffected and thus was still a child as Deadpool returned with him to Providence.

There, when Forge ran tests and discerned that the child was, in fact, the real Cable, Deadpool's brainwashing kicked in once more and he attempted to kill Cable. Siryn and Cannonball delayed him until Deadpool shot himself in the head. As Cable rapidly aged back into mid-childhood, he read Deadpool's mind and found who had brainwashed him. As X-Force went to confront the Black Box, Cable decided that he wanted to have his memory restored and cure Deadpool's brain damage, even though it would once more cost him his powers. He succeeded, although X-Force found only a LMD Black Box at his base and he soon returned to his original age, whereupon his accelerated aging stopped.

In Cable & Deadpool #27, it is revealed that a younger time-traveling Cable (then known as "The Traveler") was accidentally responsible for infecting En Sabah Nur with the Techno-organic Virus (that Apocalypse would one day infect Nathan Summers with) during a battle thousands of years ago.

Cable also revealed that he was the one responsible for Apocalypse's post House of M revival, stating that the Mutant community needed a powerful threat to Rally against. Believing that The X-Men would inevitably defeat Apocalypse yet again bringing the remaining Mutant community together, Cable judged "the risks worth the rewards."

Cable is slated to rejoin the X-Men this summer as part of a new team that will consist of Rogue, Iceman, Cannonball, Sabretooth, and Mystique. Also, Cable has chosen Captain America's side during the Civil War event, in which certain heroes battle against the registration act and operate from SHIELD safe-house number 23.

Powers and abilities

Cable formerly possessed high-level telepathy and telekinesis, though these were highly limited by his need to constantly recharge his techno-organic infection. As his powers grew, he was able to use his powers to perform greater and greater feats, without fear of losing control over his T.O. virus. His telepathy increased to where he could read minds, broadcast his thoughts to either communicate with others or control minds, and fire mind-shattering psychic blasts. His telekinesis increased even further to where he could lift heavy objects with his mind, fire psionic blasts of destructive force, create protective force shields that could deflect even the most powerful of attacks (even filter bacteria from the air). By telekinetically levitating himself, Cable could fly short distances. With the aid of his mother, Phoenix, Cable could telekinetically rearrange the molecular structure of matter, such as his clothes. Currently, after his lobotomy and replacement of the T-O-infected tissue with benign techno-organic tissue, Cable possesses very limited telepathy and telekinesis.

He also had the potential for astral time-travel, much as Rachel Summers had. However, he has only used this once and then under great strain and with help. Whether or not he retains this after recent experiences is unknown.

Due to the events of the "Bosom Buddies" storyline, Cable now has a technological link to the "Infonet," which acts as a surrogate for his telepathy - instead of reading minds, he is now a cyberpath, able to "read" digital information and broadcasts. In the next story arc, "Living Legends," he altered a prototype forcefield known as "The Cone of Silence" to simulate his lost telekinesis. He also displayed the ability to forcefully link other minds to the Infonet (as he demonstrated against Captain America. In effect, he has replaced his lost mutant powers via technological means.

His left eye glows, for some reason related to his mutant powers, quite possibly as a vestigal result of his father's genes. It is evidently unrelated to his original telekinetic and telepathic powers, as the eye still glows with his new cyberpath powers. Nate Grey (X-Man) shares this feature.

Cable also had several superhuman powers as the result of his techno-organic infection. His techno-organic bodyparts possessed minor superhuman strength and durability. He could change their appearance from metal to synthetic flesh, though he preferred the metal appearance. His techno-organic eye gave him enhanced eyesight, allowing him to see further than a normal human and in the infrared spectrum. He could interface his techno-organic bodyparts with machinery, using them to hack into computers and open electronic locks. It is unknown whether his new techno-organic bodyparts give him similar abilities.

Cable is trained in the use of many futuristic and conventional firearms, unarmed combat and guerrilla tactics. When his powers were temporarily reduced, he used a weapon from his own timeline, known as a "Psimitar". The Psimitar, which resembles a spear or a staff (depending on the artist) that has the ability to focus and increase his telepathic and telekinetic powers..

Other versions of Cable

2099 World Of Tomorrow

During the Marvel Comics brief relaunch of the 2099 series (which never went beyond the mini-series) Cable appeared in a short storyline featuring the X-Men of 2099. The X-Men of 2099 were becoming leaderless and directionless. With that, Cable came to the Mutant City and attempted to band the Mutants together and forge a new peaceful era for Humans and Mutants alike.

Cable finally admits why he never joined the X-Men in the 2099 World Of Tomorrow mini-series. Stating that he was too scared to fight alongside people with such vision for a brighter tomorrow when he couldn't see past the hatred of today. That statement is ironic since Cable is due to join the X-Men following summer 2006.

Ultimate Universe

A version of Cable will be appearing in Ultimate X-Men. "The Ultimate version of Cable will be very different from his Marvel Universe version, and his appearance and influence will move the team of mutants in a new direction."^*

Appearances in other media

Cable made a regular appearance in the X-Men animated series. His first two appearances were in 'Slave Island' and 'The Cure', however there was no explanation or backstory given for how he time-traveled into the past, although his mission involved stopping the production of collars that could inhibit mutant powers. In the two-part episode 'Time Fugitives', where Cable travels back in time to stop Bishop from stopping the outbreak of Apocalypse's technovirus. 'Time Fugitives' established Cable's backstory as waging a war along with his comrades against Apocalypse in a dystopian future.

He's also a character in the video game Marvel vs. Capcom 2. He is somewhat infamous due to his super move, the Hyper Viper Beam, that can be directed to cover the ground in front of him instantaneously. A familiar combo is Cable doing his Air Hyper Viper Beam three times in a row. He is also one of the characters who is able to use his hyper to score massive amounts of hits on the final form of Abyss.
Cable has made his second video game appearance as an exclusive hidden character in the PSP version of the role-playing game Rise of Apocalypse.
Cable was also seen in the video game for the GBA called Reign of Apocalypse. There, an alternate version of Cable appeared, who fought and lost from the X-Men.

Awards

Issues 34 and 35 of the Cable series were part of the Onslaught storyline which was a top vote getter for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Comic-Book Story for 1997.

External links

Cable - Marvel Database Project
Spotlight On... Cable at UncannyXmen.Net
X-Pressions: The Secret Origin of Cable Rob Liefeld's original vision for the character
Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards

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