Comics in the '90s were ruled by the X-Men. X-Men comics were not only at the top of sales charts, but they yielded some of the best selling comics of all time. Creators who worked on the X-Men were the rock stars of the comic book industry. If you like Image Comics, thank the X-Men- four of the seven founders all became stars because of Marvel's Merry Mutants, and without their star power, there's a good chance the publisher would have never made it.
While Wolverine was the most popular, two mutants who debuted in the '90s made a huge splash- Gambit and Cable. They would quickly become two of the most popular comic characters around. The '90s would have been a very different place without them, but which one was more important? This list is going to take a look at that question.
10 Cable: Put Rob Liefeld On The Map
Rob Liefeld had been around for a few years before he created Cable in New Mutants #87, but he wasn't a star. He worked at DC a bit before coming over to Marvel. He would create Cable in his second issue of New Mutants and from that moment on, a star would be born.
Everyone has an opinion on Liefeld's work, but that's sort of the point- everyone knows about him. Love him or hate him, Liefeld will always be one of the most important voices in the comic industry.
9 Gambit: The Rebirth Of Cool
For a lot of '90s X-Men fans, Gambit was the coolest guy around. His devil may care attitude, that trenchcoat, and his way with the ladies set him apart from the rest of the team. Sure, Wolverine was awesome but no one wanted to hang out with Wolverine. Gambit was the guy the fans wanted to hang out with. Gambit was the guy the fans wanted to be.
The X-Men were popular but Gambit would make them cool again.
8 Cable: A New Aesthetic
Cable brought a whole new aesthetic to comics. Cable wasn't the first superhero that used guns- Punisher debuted way before him- but he was the first one to look the way he did. This look was revolutionary at the time.
The cybernetic arm. The glowing eye. The huge guns. The pouches. Fans ate it all up and artists all over the comic industry would start to ape this look. Cable started a trend for '90s characters.
7 Gambit: All-New Mysteries
Fans loved Wolverine and his mystery-shrouded origin, but it was getting a bit old. Creators like Barry Windsor-Smith and Larry Hama had begun to flesh out Wolverine's origin. Fans were getting answers, which meant they needed a new mystery man to get into. Well, along came Gambit and voila!
Gambit's origin wasn't exactly as mysterious as Wolverine's, but there were a lot of new mysteries to unpack with Gambit that would keep fans coming back for years to come.
6 Cable: X-Force
For fans nowadays X-Force has become just another staple of the X-Men line, the team that is willing to go to lengths that no other X-Men team is willing to go to protect mutantkind from their enemies. However, back when the team debuted they were revolutionary.
Cable transformed the New Mutants into soldiers in his war on evil and a whole new concept was born. The team created a whole new legacy, one which would come back time and again.
5 Gambit: The X-Traitor
Bishop was another big mutant introduced in the '90s and he immediately took a disliking to Gambit. That's a nice way of saying he went after the Cajun mutant immediately believing him to be the X-Traitor, the man responsible for the destruction of the X-Men in Bishop's future.
This plot thread would play through years of X-Men books, before being resolved during the Onslaught storyline. It would never have worked so well without someone as mysterious as Gambit at the center, as the character had just enough mysteries at his core to make it believable that he could one day betray his friends.
4 Cable: No Cable, No Deadpool
Cable was such a sensation that Marvel pretty much gave Rob Liefeld carte blanche to create whatever he wanted and this would lead to a character that would become one of the company's most popular of all time. You may have heard of him- Deadpool.
Although the Deadpool of New Mutants #98 and early issues of X-Force is very different from the character fans see today, without the success of Cable, Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza would have never created the Merc With A Mouth and the world would be a much less funny place.
3 Gambit: Mutant Massacre Retcon
The Mutant Massacre was a seminal event in X-Men history. Mister Sinister would send his Marauders into the sewers beneath New York to destroy the mutants known as Morlocks. The Morlocks were born with mutations that made it impossible for them to live with humanity and Sinister considered them evolutionary dead ends that need to be pruned from the mutant genome.
It would be revealed that Gambit played a huge role in the Mutant Massacre, gathering together the Marauders and leading them to the Morlocks. This would complicate Gambit's relationship with the X-Men, changing the group's dynamic and serving as fertile ground for future stories.
2 Cable: No Cable, No Image Comics
Cable's creation and popularity was a watershed moment for Rob Liefeld. It's impossible to downplay how important it was and how powerful it made Liefeld. Liefeld, along with Todd McFarlane, would get disgruntled with Marvel's compensation structure. They felt that they were creating things that were making the company millions and they deserved more. The two of them would be the ringleaders of the exodus from Marvel and the creation of Image Comics, a company which is putting some of the best books on the market today by the biggest talents in the industry and allowing those talents to actually own their work.
Could McFarlane have pulled the whole thing off himself? Possibly, but it was the two of them together that really got through to their fellow creators, convincing them to jump ship and take a huge risk that continues to pay off until this day for both creators and fans. It's weird to think that without Cable, there'd be no The Walking Dead, The Wicked + The Divine, Deadly Class, East Of West, Royal City, or countless others but it's definitely the case.
1 Gambit: A New Power Couple
The X-Men's main power couple for most of their existence was Cyclops and Jean Grey, but the introduction of Gambit would mean there would eventually be a new power couple, one a whole new generation of fans could watch from the beginning- Gambit and Rogue.
Their relationship would go through years of ups and downs and would be a completely different kind of romance than the one between Cyclops and Jean, giving fans something new.