Comic Book Review: Cable and X-Force #16

According to the cover, Cable is responsible for the entire fate of the Marvel Universe! According to the insides of this issue, a lot of evil things are prevented though at the time and place in the comic, none of it actually looks that evil. Sure, if they were allowed to spiral out of hand it would be the end of the world according to Cable’s prophetic visions. Between you and me true believers, I think this cover would have probably worked better for the first or second issue, but not this one.

As much as I’ve been loving this series I think my interest might be waning. My major guess is that I know that ‘X-Force’ is being relaunched next year and written by my favorite comic author at the moment. That announcement right now may have distracted me from putting too much interest in what Cable is up to when I want to know what he’ll be doing soon.

Still we are in the here so let’s focus on what is going on. Cable’s ‘X-Force’ is currently split into 3 teams and we follow all 3 of them in this comic. Cable and Hope are taking a weapon from the Reevers. Doctor Nemesis and Forge are trying to save Forge and finally Domino and Colossus are up against a new style Sentinel.

Honestly, the Hope and Cable scenes were almost feeling like a waste. Hope goes in and Cable saves her at the last moment. At that point his powers go in flux and she borrows them and comments how easy it must be for him if he can just do that all the time. If he wasn’t always distracted by a virus or having them being tampered, that would probably be true. Still, they win, boring fight, moving on.

Next up is Colossus and Domino against a giant Sentinel. This has some of the better moments in the book as we see Colossus doing what he does best (a lot of damage) and an actual use of Domino’s power where things just keep working out for her. Between one of the few times her powers have been used properly in a fight sequence, and some great humor mixed with romantic marks between the two, it was fun.

The pure gold of the issue though was Doctor Nemesis trying to save Forge. Not only was it well written (with ‘Star Trek’ references and all!) but the being controlling Forge’s body not only stems from his past but with how this is written, it can completely explain away Forge’s erratic behavior for the past few years. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprised me if a long term note on his character was written to add this in with how quickly and easily it explained it all. I don’t know if he lucked out by coming up with this or if this was an extremely long term plan for a lately unused character, but wow was I happily surprised to see how well it worked.

The only downside? The art on the book hasn’t been looking that great lately and this issue was no different. With Cable’s prophetic visions most likely neutered or perhaps even stopped after Hope’s tampering with the future I wonder what they are going to be up to once this current set of events is all straightened out?

All I know is the next issue’s goal will be to save Forge which will probably take up every page.