Cable vol. 4: Homecoming

Does the last volume of “Cable” provide a strong enough justification for the past 25 issues and change of Cable and Hope’s time-travelling odyssey?  Nope.  In fact, the “A Girl Called Hope” backup strips by regular series writer Duane Swierczynski and artist Steve Dillon provide a pretty good summation and encapsulation of the two characters’ arcs.  After reading all of this, I’m now of the opinion that it would’ve been better to have Cable and Hope just disappear from the X-titles before suddenly reappearing to kick off the “Second Coming” crossover.  Then you could have Swierczynski and Dillon tell the story of what happened to the two in a six-issue mini-series to follow at a later date.  It’s all a moot point now, and unless you’re a die-hard “X-Men” or Cable fan then these four volumes are eminently skippable.

That is to say that while they really don’t mean much in the current X-narrative, they’re not outright bad comics.  This particular volume even manages to shake up the well-worn formula of having Cable and Hope narrowly escape Bishop’s pursuit by travelling through time and/or space.  After Cable gets the necessary components to fix his time machine, he and his young ward are finally able to start travelling back in time… all the way to the 1600’s.  So we get a few issues where the two parties slingshot back and forth through the timestream before they finally shake Bishop and gear up for the crossover.  Then we get a final issue flashing back to the time of the “Messiah Complex” crossover to show how Deadpool helped Cable get Hope out of Cooperstown before all hell broke loose.  Deadpool’s presence adds some much needed levity to the story, and I’ll even admit that bringing the story full-circle like this is a nice way to end the series.

It doesn’t change the fact that none of these stories really mattered or were all that entertaining.  Swierczynski has done good work on other Marvel titles, but not so much here.  I get the feeling that writing science fiction (such as it is) isn’t the man’s strong point since a lot of the futures that Cable and Hope visited came straight out of the genre’s guidebook (though I will give him credit for the patriotic humanoid cockroaches — those were pretty memorable).  He’s done better work with street-level superheroes on “The Punisher” and “The Immortal Iron Fist” and you’d be better off picking up one of those volumes rather than any of “Cable.”