Cable #11-12

Well, I never did get around to writing up two of last week's X-books. (Which probably tells you most of what you need to know right there.) But let's clear the decks by getting them out of the way quickly. These will be brief, but then frankly, there's not a huge amount to say about either book...

Cable #11-12
"Wasteland Blues"
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Framing sequence artist: Ariel Olivetti
Main story artist: Jamie McKelvie
Main story colouring: Guru eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Axel Alonso


This is an odd one - we don't get many two-part stories these days, and this looks suspiciously like something which has been slotted in for scheduling reasons to kill time before the "Messiah War" crossover starts with issue #13.

Cable is still stuck in the future with the mutant kid from "Messiah Complex", now aged about ten, and a time machine that will only go forwards. And this story, "Wasteland Blues", is two issues of Cable and Hope jumping forward in time through a post-apocalyptic wasteland hoping for civilisation to re-emerge. It's a two-hander, the basic point being that this is the first time we've seen Hope as an active character rather than a prop, and she gets to save Cable. And it's done well enough; Hope's a somewhat generic character, but McKelvie's good with his body language, and the details are handled well enough to make her work.

The pay-off is weirdly anticlimactic. Cable and Hope finally make it to the wreckage of the X-Men's mansion, where they find the message that Scott left for them a few issues ago. And... it doesn't say anything, really. It's just a message of encouragement. I was expecting something a bit more significant. Still, the scene does work in one respect, by giving Cable a few panels as a son rather than a parent, which is a nice inversion of his relationship with Hope. Overall, though, I can't help feeling we're just killing time here.