Getting Stoned With A Gargoyle: Reviewing ‘Cable’ #2

Cable’s whole deal is traveling back to stop terrible events of the present which cause his future to be terrible. The whole massacre of the mutant race and the destruction of Krakoan society apparently doesn’t count.

Cable and Cable’s battle against the Neocracy, a whole other threat, continues in Cable #2. An issue by Fabian Nicieza, Scott Eaton, Lan Medina, Cam Smith, Victor Nava, Java Tartaglia, and Joe Sabino carries the Fall Of The House Of X banner despite barely connecting.

All sarcasm aside (for now), this book is kind of boring.

Cable notoriously is a ‘carries a big gun and speaks few words’ type of character. He even calls that out in the issue because a moment calls for the opposite. Yet, the amount of caption thought words the man vomits at us in this issue is beyond egregious. Just pages of art covered by so much exposition you would swear you opened a prose novel on accident.

Nicieza has been writing Cable and various X-stuff for a long time. A lot of plots and characters left unsaid tend to find their way into things as older writers continue. We feel that here, thanks to the depths that are plumbed regarding some rarely used or barely remembered characters. Including a favorite toy of his, Black Womb.

He should compare notes with Steve Orlando on their shared like of digging through the deep Marvel toy box.

There was little to make me really want to care about this amorphous threat to the future. Especially when the books this story is supposedly tied to are literally filled with Cable’s fellow mutants in a life-or-death fight for their continued existence. Good thing the young and old gun-toting guy have time to gorge on pie. What is with these food scenes in this series?

Told you the sarcasm would come back.

Artistically, things are fine. A lot of action scenes with bold kinetic energy and smart framing choices keep the audience in the thick of it. It’s very clear though that this book, like so many in this crunched Krakoa era end, was rushed. Two artists are not a new thing in modern comics but most of the time it’s done in interesting ways. In this case, we just have whiplash as suddenly the very noticeably different two styles pick up in the same scene. Whatever editorial or corporate moves came about to rush Krakoa to its end has been most detrimental to the artists.

Eaton and Medina are fine artists, both fitting the superhero mold in many ways. The former is more of a photo-realistic sort of approach in a sense while the latter has a bit rougher whimsy to be found. Both are given some deeper weight thanks to the inks that Smith and Nava bring to the table. They are not jarring styles to pair together, except in a case like the sudden mid-scene change.

An even tone can be found in the colors, which skew towards the more natural sort. Tartaglia fills the pages with a toned-down palette, allowing the moments where more vibrant colors emerge to pop more. Superpowered battles feel just like glimpses into a world slightly different than our own. Which is often the whole point of these types of stories and why they keep connecting/existing.

There is no shortage of work for Sabino to do here, as mentioned above (word caption vomit beats). Boxes upon boxes rain across pages, as Sabino tries to make them all flow. Keeping them pretty plain and standard, fitting of Cable’s very (purposefully) bland personality. Not a ton of things to add flair or creative juices too, speaking to just how routine and closed this story sort of is at its core.

Cable #2 is now available from Marvel Comics.