CABLE #24 – October 1995

Lost Souls

Credits: Jeph Loeb (writer), Sal Larroca (penciler), Bud LaRosa w/Al Milgrom & Bob McLeod (inkers), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering), Mike Thomas (colors)

Summary

Cable brings Jenskot’s unconscious body back to Blaquesmith. When she awakens, she doesn’t recognize Cable as her husband. She claims that she’s been sent to take him to the future to save Nathan Dayspring. Later, Cable expresses his disbelief to Blaquesmith. He’s convinced that Jenskot never time traveled and can’t believe he’s seeing her again. Jenskot approaches him, now recognizing Cable as her future husband. She tells him that his younger self is suffering from a sudden illness and is close to death. The Clan Chosen’s elders claim that Cable is the key to saving young Nathan. Cable agrees to go, and Blaquesmith uses a meditation technique to send Cable and Jenskot into the future. Meanwhile, Domino faces a brainwashed Grizzly. After a long fight, she’s finally forced to kill him in order to save her life. In his final words, Grizzly tells her that Cable’s son, Tyler, did this to him. Domino suddenly senses Blaquesmith inside her mind and then disappears.

Continuity Note

Jenskot’s real name is revealed as Aliya. The narration claims that she took the “battle-name” Jenskot out of reverence for the “First Ones” (Jean Grey and Scott Summers, of course). She explains that she didn’t recognize Cable earlier because “the temporal change was so draining”.

Review

Jeph Loeb tries to do something with the backstory established in the early issues of this series by reviving Jenskot, Cable’s oft-forgotten wife. The first few issues of this title that were set in the future were particularly rough, as Nicieza introduced a slew of new characters from Cable’s past and did little to give any of them a personality (which is odd, since that tends to be one of his strengths as a writer). If you are going to do solo stories about Cable, the fact that he’s a widower is something that should at least occasionally be addressed, so I don’t fault Loeb for trying to do something with his wife. Cable is pretty sympathetic in this issue, and Loeb is able to have his conflicted feelings about his wife’s return tie in naturally with the ongoing subplot about Cable returning to Askani philosophy for guidance. The majority of this issue is actually dedicated to Domino’s fight with Grizzly, which is an excessively long fight scene filled with a lot of large panels and splash pages. Larroca’s storytelling is still relatively uneven at this point, so the climax of the fight, which has Domino forced to kill Grizzly, is extremely confusing. Instead of showing what’s going on, we only get a close-up of Grizzly’s hand, and then a close-up of Domino pulling the trigger. There’s an added narrative caption that says, “his hand forces hers”, which doesn’t help matters. Grizzly has been begging Domino to kill him, so I can’t tell if that means that he physically forced her hand into pulling the trigger, or if he metaphorically forced her to do it by striking at her. At any rate, the fight is never that exciting and Grizzly is such a minor character, who had already been mostly forgotten at this point, that his death really has no impact.