Just jumping in? Well yes Cable is back and Hope ‘mostly’ cured him during the AVX cycle. His powers are a bit off though and now he’s having post apocalyptic visions of a dark future that he once again must be the only one that can stop from coming to pass.
The first 4 issues of this story arc involved the current formation of X-Force stopping the a virus from turning humans into monsters that eat anything in their path. While they were able to succeed it was at the cost of quite a few innocent civilians and now the entire world is hunting Cable down as a terrorist.
Why does that seem familiar? I suppose with such a winning formula for Cable there really is no reason to change it. I’d like them to see another way to use his character when the current story line ends though I have a feeling it’ll continue being business as usual for him.
This time though his entire team is also being hunted down and they must keep one step ahead of the law in order to prevent a second set of visions that Cable has now had. Some form of alien threat is coming and as he has the visions he believes he must stop it.
Most of this issue isn’t too much build up. We’re actually able to see what X-Force is doing after the mission they just finished.
The round up is that Cable goes to see his daughter Hope and tells her to have a normal life. She shouldn’t follow down the path he’s going.
Domino tries to get Colossus drunk and take advantage of him. Fortunately for her she has the mutant power of being lucky so she’s able to get just that. Colossus though is haunted by his own demons of what he did as Juggernaut, what he did during the AVX cycle and finally believing that the blood of the innocent humans is on his hands.
The last set we see getting some relaxation time in are Doctor Nemesis and Forge who decide that the best way to blow off steam is to make two giant monsters and have them fight to the death. It completely looks and feels like these two should get their own spin-off at some point where they have mad inventions going at it.
As the comic closes we see two key things happen that will matter with what is going forward. The first of which is that Colossus turns himself in as a criminal for believing he needs to pay for his sins. The second is that Cable asks the rest of the team if they will help him with one last threat. They all agree aside from Doctor Nemesis who once it is mentioned they’ll need a spaceship jumps on becoming a member of the next X-Force.
This really felt like a filler comic between missions and I’m glad to see they did that. Too often in Marvel it’s one world ending event after another. Having some time to see what this cast does between the various ends of the world they have to resolve was amazingly refreshing.
Next issue? Colossus in chains and the beginnings of a trip into space? We’ll see. The cover of this issue hinted at a huge confrontation between Cable and Hope which turned out to be rather short.
Writer: Dennis Hopeless
Artist: Salvador Larroca
Colorist: Frank D’Armata
