WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Cable #1 by Gerry Duggan, Phil Noto, VC's Joe Sabino and Tom Muller, on sale now.
One of the more surprising solo comics to launch out of the X-Men's Dawn of X is Cable. So far Marvel has focused on X-Men team books, giving fans familiar titles like X-Men, X-Force and Excalibur, and X-Factor, Children of the Atom and Hellions are all due up next. The only other X-Man to get a solo comic is Wolverine, who may be the most popular member of the mutant franchise.
However, Cable isn't that far behind Logan in terms of popularity. His debut in the early '90s brought with it the New Mutants' transformation from students at the Xavier School to soldiers in Cable's militarized X-Force. A grizzled time-traveler from the future, Cable would later be revealed to be the son of Cyclops and Jean Grey's evil clone, Madelyne Pryor. Cable has led various iterations of X-Force, joined the X-Men and even spent time on the Avengers' Unity Squad in Uncanny Avengers.
And then in 2018, Cable was brutally murdered by... himself.
It all took place in the X-Men event series, Extermination, which dealt with the fallout of the original time-displaced X-Men -- Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman and Angel -- remaining in the present-day instead of returning to the past. This caused a ripple effect that resulted in a dystopian future where the X-Men were hunted and killed by Sentinels. In the present-day, a mysterious figure started picking off members of the Original Five, and Cable stepped in to protect them. Unfortunately, the cloaked character killed Cable and escaped with Iceman. The final page of Extermination #1 revealed that the attacker is a younger version of Cable from the dystopian alternate future.
The younger Cable, affectionately referred to as "Kid Cable," teams up with the X-Men to stop Ahab, which allows the original X-Men to return to the past and prevent Kid Cable's future from coming to pass. This Cable remained in the past to hunt Ahab, who had turned Cable's sister, Rachel Summers, into one of his hounds. This story arc played out in a relaunched X-Force, but the series came to an end with the remaining line of X-Men comics to make way for Jonathan Hickman's House of X and Powers of X.
With almost every mutant in the Marvel Universe migrating to the X-Men's island nation on Krakoa, Kid Cable now finds himself reunited with his parents, uncles and sister as one happy family, with their own living quarters set up at the Summers House in the Blue Area of the Moon. Instead of having the attitude of a grizzled war veteran like his older counterpart, Cable #1 shows Nathan Summers comfortable hanging out and flirting with the younger X-Men around his age.
Of course, the debut issue couldn't end without a cliffhanger, as Cable's life is about to get even more complicated with the apparent return of the original, older Cable.
Cable #1 ends by taking readers to another time and place, which features a barren world littered with skulls and creepy talking crabs with fire bursting out of their mouths and eyes. Just as it finishes talking trash and prepares to shoot a blast of fire to an unknown character off-screen, it's claws are blown off. The creature is finally put out of its misery when Old Man Cable steps onto the scene and disintegrates it with a shot from one of his signature blasters.
Old Man Cable appears just as fans always remember him to be, with his oversized shoulder pads and pouches strapped to his body. We're left to wonder if this is taking place in the future or in an alternate reality. However, a data page after Cable's reintroduction offers some possible clues as to what is taking place.
Titled "The Hunt," the data page appears to be the first entry in Cable's log detailing pertinent information on his mysterious hunt. Cable writes about rooting out the legion of demons on Earth and chasing them off-world. Also, the demons have taken hostages along with them, which are understandably Cable's top priority. But it is the final line in the log that immediately catches our attention.
"I suspect that the demons are attempting to replicate the old spell that caused Earth to nearly burn in an inferno of Hellfire," the passage reads. The words "inferno" and "Hellfire" may be clues for a return to the X-Men's "Inferno" crossover event. The 1989 story arc ran through the X-Men family of titles and centers on Madelyne Pryor's transformation into the Goblin Queen, as well as Limbo bleeding over into the Earth. It is also worth noting that one of the "Sinister Secrets" in Mister Sinister's The Red Diamond gossip column alluded to Madelyn Pryor, who will also return to wreak havoc in Hellions.
All signs point to Cable being stuck in an "Inferno" environment, but Old Man Cable could even be a future version of Kid Cable? We could be looking at history repeating itself if Old Man Cable decides it is time to hunt down his young counterpart, in a reversal of the events in Extermination.