The Cable comic books, published by Marvel Comics, are eponymously named for the main character, Cable. Cable's character page is here.
The character first fully appeared in "The New Mutants" #87 (January 1990), and was created by writer Louise Simonson and artist/co-writer Rob Liefeld.
Cable, or Nathan Christopher Charles Dayspring Askani'son Summers, is a time-traveling soldier from the future who is here to prevent his apocalyptic timeline from coming to pass. He is biologically the son of Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey) and Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops, and the stepson and genetic-proxy son of Jean Grey. As an infant, he first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #201 (October, 1985), though it took years for said infant and the time-traveling adult to be revealed as the same individual.
Thanks to the machinations of Mr. Sinister, he was born with a destiny—to kill Apocalypse. Not being an idiot, Apocalypse took steps to prevent this at an early stage by infecting Nathan with a special "techno-organic virus" which severely limited his powers and would have killed him if his loving father and step-mother hadn't sent him 2,000 years into the future to be raised by his alternate-universe sort-of-half-sister's all-female psychic cult. Once he had grown into a grizzled old veteran, Nathan came back in time to the present in order to kill Apocalypse before he could conquer the world.
Now that Cable has accomplished his mission (repeatedly), he has become a man without a purpose; the character has been bounced around through a variety of new concepts. He's been a member of the X-Men more than once, became a messiah figure and developed an Odd Friendship with a certain psychotic katana-wielding mercenary, then adopted and raised Hope, the first mutant born after the mass depowering, while traveling through time. His powers have fluctuated as well, regaining and losing both his techno-organic symbiote and his mutant powers.
In the aftermath of Extermination (2018), a younger version of Cable dubbed "Kid Cable" and who murdered the original, stars in a new X-Force series that reunites the surviving members of the original X-Force team. Kid Cable then joined the Fallen Angels alongside Psylocke (the second one) and X-23 before getting his own series. Old Cable was later resurrected to defeat Stryfe and Kid Cable had to return to the future.
Cable appears in:
Notable Comic Appearances
- New Mutants (first appearance as Cable)
- X-Force (1991)
- Cable Vol. 1 #1-108 (1993)
- The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (1994)
- Soldier X #1-12 (2002)
- Cable & Deadpool #1-50 (2004)
- Cable Vol. 2 (2008)
- Avengers: X-Sanction (2012)
- Cable and X-Force #1-19 (2013)
- X-Force #1-15 (2014)
- Cable Vol. 3 #1-5, renumbered to #150-158 (2017)
- Extermination (2018) (2018) (murdered and replaced by younger self)
- X-Force (2018)
- X-Men Vol. 5
- Fallen Angels (2019) #1-6
- Cable Vol. 4 (2020)
- Cable: Reloaded (2021)
- Cable Vol. 5 (2024)
Appearances in Other Media
- X-Men: The Animated Series, voiced by Lawrence Bayne (Japanese voice: Tesshō Genda)
- X-Men '97, voiced by Chris Potter
- Deadpool 2, played by Josh Brolin.
- Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
- Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
- Super Hero Squad Online
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
For tropes pertaining to the Cable character and those associated with him, see the character page
This page is for tropes applying to the series named Cable; tropes applying to the character go on the characters page.
The various Cable series contain examples of:
- Headbutting Heroes: In his 90s series, Cable frequently came into opposition with the X-Men. This was particularly the case with Cyclops, Jean Grey and Wolverine.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: The main theme of the David Tischman run was averting this trope, with Cable using his godlike powers to solve real-world problems like terrorism and ethnic conflicts (albeit with decidedly comic-booky twists like super-plagues and clones).
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Bridge's decision during "The Nemesis Contract" is to leak information to Irene Merryweather as to expose SHIELD's shady dealings in trying to capture Cable.
- Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: There's a storyline in Earth-80521 with a race of humanoid roaches; the Roach Soldiers, and they have their own president.
- Evil Counterpart: The 2008 series positions Bishop as one to Cable, being a time-travelling cyborg mutant from a post-apocalyptic future.
- Harmful to Minors: Poor Hope lives in constant danger of this.
- Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Hope Summers, with the frequent time skips in the 2008 series. In issue 1, she's a baby, by issue 24, she's a teenager.
- Covers Always Lie: The first issue of the "Newer Mutants" arc featured what seemed to be the cast on the cover, including Cable, X-23, Armor, Doop, Shatterstar, Longshot and the Age of Apocalypse's Blink. Most of these characters are in fact the protagonists... except Blink. Not only is she working for the villains, but it's not even the same Blink — the Blink present in the story is the mainstream Blink, while the Age of Apocalypse Blink is nowhere to be seen, and in fact returned later in a new Exiles series.
