In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.

NOTE: This one is a special one. Instead of listing five, like normal, I'm going to list four. You might be quite angry at that, but I just thought, "Dang, even FOUR times of this happening is an awful lot of times for this to happen," so I figured I should include it. I considered working in other instances when this happened outside of a major X-Men event, but then that seemed kind of meaningless. Lots of characters have died a bunch of times, ya know?

So here, today, we look at times that Cable has died in a major X-Men event.

I thought about it earlier today when I wrote about how the ongoing team-up series, Cable and Deadpool, had to deal with the sudden loss of Cable during one of these stories that I'm about to mention.

In the crossover, "X-Cutioner's Song," the villainous Stryfe impersonated Cable (since they look just like each other) and tried to assassinate Professor Xavier by shooting him with a techno-organic bullet. So this led to a big ol' crossover with the X-Men and X-Factor teaming up to hunt down X-Force (in the hopes that they could lead them to Cable) and also Stryfe kidnaps Cyclops, Havok and Jean Grey as it becomes clear that there is some sort of connection between all of them and Cable/Stryfe. Amusingly, the X-Office wasn't sure just yet if Cable was the actual son of Cyclops or if he was the clone of the son (the good clone) and Stryfe was the evil kid.

Anyhow, it all comes to a head in X-Force #18 (by Fabian Nicieza, Greg Capullo and Harry Candelario), where Cable blows up a time portal on the moon, seemingly killing himself and Stryfe...

Next up is the one I mentioned for the Cable and Deadpool series. X-Men #200 was the first part of a mini-crossover called "Endangered Species," which demonstrated that there definitely was no hope for any new mutants in the future. That led directly into, of course, a crossover called "Messiah Complex" when a new mutant baby was found!

Before the crossover officially began, though, Gambit and Sunfire, both working with Mystique and a version of the Marauder, attack Cable on Providence in X-Men #200 (by Mike Carey, Chris Bachalo and Tim Townsend)...

Cable then appears to blow himself (and Providence) up....

Cable turns up alive during "Messiah Complex" and he takes the mutant baby into the future with him to protect her.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='A Second Coming of Cable Dying!']

In "Second Coming," Cable and the baby, now a teenager named Hope, return to the present. The bad guys all want to kill Hope and come up with a plan that involves sending an unending amount of mutant-killing Nimrods from the future to attack the X-Men. The only way to stop them was to go into the future and cut off the supply. Cable and X-Force (the black ops version that Cyclops formed) went into the future and they succeeded in stopping the Nimrods, but Cable had to sacrifice himself to open up a time portal for everyone else to get back alive and so, in X-Force #28 (by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Mike Choi and Sonia Oback), Cable dies...

He comes back again, as is his wont, but most recently, in Extermination #1 (by Ed Brisson, Pepe Larrax and Marte Gracia), Cable is protecting the young version of Iceman when a mysterious stranger shows up and kills him...

As it turns out, it was a younger version of Cable himself, who wanted to make sure that the older version of himself didn't prevent the young X-Men from returning to the past and thus keeping our timeline intact.

Wow, Cable has some rough X-over luck!

If anyone has an idea for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!