Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artist: Ariel Olivetti
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Review by: Ross S

Cable. He’s a bit like marmite. You love him or you hate him. Initially little more than a gun toating kewl cyborg, he has grown over the years into a fully formed character that forms a key part of the X-universe. That growth has by no means been without growing-pains. The characters history as the son of Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey, sent into the future as a baby, only to return to the past to save the future is not without a certain degree of convolution. Especially once you factor in his own clone, his power upgrade, his de-powering, that whole techno-organic virus thing and his kind of re-powering. As such dumping him out into the time stream at the end of Messiah Complex, where he can do his own thing without creating paradoxes every time he orders a beer, is probably one of the best things that could happen to the character. This new series, Cable’s third I guess if you include the late lamented Cable & Deadpool series, sees us catch up with Cable us he hops through the time stream protecting the ginger Messiah baby.

Duane Swieczynski is a writer I haven’t come across before, his past work has been predominantly crime writing, both fiction and non-fiction, and journalism. It’s hard to judge the quality of his writing from this issue, since an enormous amount of it is Cable’s internal monologue. I always preferred the warrior priest version of Cable rather than the grim mercenary, and the tone that Swieczynski gives Cable here is definitely one of war weary soldier, rather than wise sage. While that isn’t necessarily to my taste, it is a wholly accurate interpretation of the character, and fully in keeping with his recent trials and tribulations. The dialogue seems a touch ham-fisted at times, with a little too much stress on the fact that Cable is a rock hard uber-soldier, but that is softened by a little humour surrounding the baby, and in fairness I think that this first issue is really about setting the scene and the tone of the series, rather than deep characterisation.

The tone itself is almost like that of a spaghetti western, albeit transported to a near future apocalyptic New York, with Cable literally mosying into town and facing off the local hoods. There is a scene at the end where he walks into a diner to come face to face with Bishop, apparently hunting him and the baby through the timestream, which you could transport wholesale to a saloon. It’s so cute you almost wonder if it’s supposed to be ironic. As for Bishop, he is another character who seems to have been floating in limbo a while and who can only really benefit from being slung out of continuity. His journey from cop to baby killing machine seems almost complete here, and I found it fabulous that he has also had an arm replaced by a robotic one; the opposite to Cables. It’s a simple use of mirror images but it really works to enhance the similarities and differences between these two time-slipped, trained killers.

What Swieczynski might lack in terms of stellar dialogue he seems to very much make up for in panel direction. The flow of the story is spot on, a lot of cinematic perspectives and sudden angle changes are used to great effect, and the whole thing comes together very nicely. Olivetti’s art loses some detail at times, but it’s incredibly lush and fits the cinematic style of the piece almost entirely.

I’m in two minds about this first issue. On one hand, the dialogue was a little lacking, and the take on the character isn’t one I’m mad keen on. On the other hand as a piece of visually driven writing, and as a play on the theme of the Western it works incredibly well. In addition one thing it definitely has going for it is the possibility of surprise. There aren’t really limits on location, on new characters, on alternative versions of existing characters. I don’t really have any idea where they intend to take this or what they intend to do with it. That at least makes it exciting and fresh for the X-line. I’d definitely recommend you picking this up, it’s not likely to blow your mind and it’s going to be a slow burner, but I it won’t necessarily be what you expected I have a feeling that it might end up being rather good a little way down the road.