With Cable still captured and his new X-Force spread out doing their own assigned missions, we’ve been focusing quite a bit on the missions themselves in the last few issues. In fact it wasn’t until last issue that we, ahem, found out, ahem, that Lady Stryfe in the future was actually Hope. (Seriously who didn’t see that coming?)

With last issue’s big reveal, most of this one was spent with the two Hopes talking. That wasn’t it, as we get a bit of action from the X-Force teams out there and Cable. Primarily though, our focus was on Hope, or should I say Hopes – both of them.

We follow through as the older Hope tries to convince the younger version of herself that she’s doing the right thing. That every vision Cable has is making her world a better place. Not only that, but she’s created a chance for Cable and younger Hope to work together to save the future. We also find out that older Hope is wearing the Stryfe armor for it’s Paradox engines so that any changes made in the past won’t effect her directly. When she eventually does take it off, her timeline will be completely gone and she’ll cease to exist.

Younger Hope? She’s not buying it. This entire setup smacks her of a woman who just wanted to create a world where she could spend more time with her father and in doing so, has not only marked him for death but has failed to deliver her into a position to actually help Cable.

After a long drawn out debate throughout this issue, Hope seems to convince her older self that what is being done is wrong and they have to fix things somehow. Whatever is meant to fix this mistake is extremely vague, though older Hope does give her younger self the psimitar at the end of the issue as a weapon to use. Long time X-Force readers will recognize the psimitar as one of Cable’s old weapons that was able to fit perfectly with his telekinetic and telepathic skill set. I’m assuming this will somehow be used to control his new powers (or revert them) in order to save Cable’s life.

I did mention that Cable and the rest of the team were in this issue, right? After Forge and Nemesis completely fail to take down a giant monster at the beginning of the book, we see Domino and Colossus show up from their mission in the last issue and take down the Cthulhu styled creature they are fighting. All in all I really felt that Forge and Nemesis should have been able to take it down with their witty banter alone. I guess they were too busy talking to invent anything.

Cable also has a chance to shine here and shows off what he sees to Havok. Even with his dire predictions about the future, Havok refuses to let him go, but that’s all right. The issue closes with The Avengers being attacked by X-Force in order to save Cable so I’m sure he’ll be out just in time for the next issue to end.

I am so happy to see Cable and his team finally get back together as that’s the one thing that annoys the hell out of me in the other X-Force title out right now. If I wanted a solo comic, I wouldn’t continuously picking up a team one!

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‘CABLE AND X-FORCE’ #13
Writer: Dennis Hopeless
Artist: Salvador Larroca