Review: ‘Cable’ #4 Gets Timey-Wimey
by Tony Thornley
When your main character is a time traveller, things can get complicated. However, the best stories involving superheroes and time travel are when our heroes get real clever about it. Does Cable #4 fall into that rabbit hole?
Cable and Esme Cuckoo literally have minutes to save the world. It’s a tough spot for any hero, but for a date night? Well it’s probably impossible, as Gerry Duggan, Phil Noto, Joe Sabino, and Tom Muller show us.
The Spaceknights have arrived on Earth. Cable and Esme now have mere moments to come up with a plan to stop them. Thankfully Cable has much more time than anyone realizes. It’s just one benefit of being a time traveller.
After the dip of last issue, Duggan and Noto bounce right back with this issue. The plotting is clever, the dialogue is fun, and overall the story is very engaging. It uses time travel in some very clever Doctor Who-style hijinks, which results in some incredibly funny moments outside the superheroics. The mythology that Duggan crafts for the Spaceknights feels like the best uses of old continuity as well, overall giving the issue a deep and impactful feel.
Noto continues to be a master storyteller. He experiments with the depth of a page and the figures in it to evoke different emotions, rendering the colors more he’s trying to make an impact with a page, or using watercolor-like colors for flashbacks that make them seem a bit like fairy tales. His figure work is great too, as the action is more cerebral and talkative in this issue. He makes Nathan and Esme emote more, as well as a largely wordless fantastic ending sequence between Nate and Emma Frost that was laugh-out-loud funny.
This series is establishing itself as one of the most fun but totally different reads in the entire X-Men line. It’s sweet, funny, and charming, and has done so much to make this lead character endearing.
Cable #4 is available now from Marvel Comics.
Rating: 8.5/10