CABLE #22 – August 1995

Sanctuary

Credits: Jeph Loeb (writer), Ian Churchill (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Mike Thomas (colorist), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters)

Summary

Geneticist Renee Majcomb attempts to escape Genosha’s civil war by sneaking into America. At Kennedy Airport, Domino and Cable arrive to say goodbye to Rictor. Renee soon arrives at the same airport, with Genoshan agents Hawkshaw and Pipeline following her. Rictor and Shatterstar enter the airport and witness a demonstration against the mutants arriving from Genosha. Rictor is surprised to see Cable is at the airport and willing to say goodbye to him. They shake hands and make peace with each other. As Shatterstar leaves with Cable and Domino, they run into a mob scene. Cable uses his telepathy to discover that Hawkshaw and Pipeline are agitating the crowd to cover up their abduction of Renee Majcomb. Cable prevents Pipeline from teleporting Renee away, but Shatterstar is shot in the stomach by Hawkshaw. Cable quickly uses his telekinetic powers to knock him unconscious. As Domino and Cable leave to get Shatterstar medical treatment, Renee tells Cable to let Xavier know she’ll be contacting him soon. That night, Cable’s angered to learn Hawkshaw and Pipeline have claimed diplomatic immunity. After he goes to bed, Domino is distressed to see news footage of a paw print made by a killer “Bigfoot”.

Continuity Notes

Renee Majcomb is a human scientist who first appeared in X-Men #26 as part of the “Bipartisan Rebel Batallion”, a group of humans and Mutates who tried to stop the violence in Genosha.

Review

It’s another issue of Cable that falls under the category of “readable, but not particularly good”. I still remember almost nothing about this run, so I can’t say if the Genosha storyline that begins here has any payoff (I vaguely recall that it ties into Cable returning to his future in issue #25, but I could be wrong). Loeb does do a decent job of continuing Nicieza’s portrayal of a repentant Cable trying to make amends with his students, and his handle on the Cable/Domino relationship isn’t bad. Portraying Shatterstar as a devastated puppy dog after losing Rictor is way over the top though, especially when you consider that in Nicieza’s issues they were really just “buds”. (Whether or not they’re supposed to be gay is still debatable, since the narration compares Shatterstar’s feelings to the ones Cable felt on the battlefield after losing his friends). In one scene Cable saves an anti-mutant human from the Genoshan agents, which you would think would be a tired cliché at this point, but it’s something that rarely happens during this era. It’s an extremely obvious thing to do, but since no one else was doing it at the time, I can’t fault Loeb for going there. Unfortunately, like a lot of Loeb’s work here, the scene’s scripted in such a bland, predictable way it doesn’t have much of an impact. Ian Churchill debuts as the regular artist in this issue, turning in more subdued work than his previous issues. A lot of the scratchy, pointless lines have disappeared, so it’s aged better than his earlier work. Like the writing, the art doesn’t thrill me, but it is at least an improvement over his previous issues.