Like Father, Like Daughter.

This begins with a synopsis, so be forewarned of.....  SPOILERS.

Cable has never not had a complicated life in the Marvel books.  After the events of A vs. X and X-Sanction, we find Cable with the techno-organic virus purged from his body.  As he grew up the virus had turned the eye and and arm on his left side into machinery, and it was his telepathy and telekinesis that kept the virus from creeping further through his physiology.  The combined abilities of his daughter, (Hope) and the Phoenix healed him.

As "Cable and X-Force"opens, Cable's uncle and the Uncanny Avengers were pursuing Cable and his new team because of a terrorist attack.  Since the viral Purge, Cable's life had gone through some changes.  Unburdened by fighting of a virus, Cable's psionic abilities are immensely powerful, though after years of disuse, his eye and arm have atrophied. The team's resident machinist, (Forge) is able to fit him with an eyepatch and a robotic arm that can be worn like an Air Cast brace.  On a more psychological note, we find through Dr. Nemesis' diagnosis that Cable's motivation is too prevent

tragedies he sees in precognitive visions, and the precognitive abilities are causing a swelling of the brain.  Over the course of this series by Dennis Hopeless and a variety of other creatives, the team roster comes to include Cable Forge, Dr. Nemesis, Colossus, Domino, and Hope, Blaquesmith, and Boom-Boom.  Many of these team have been close with Cable for a very long time.

In his compromised state, Cable must learn to trust members of his team to take different responsibilities, and the story starts including multiple concurrent  missions.  They destroy anti-mutant facilities, hijack alien spacecraft, battle demons, robots and cyborgs, and try avoiding the Avengers.    As Cable starts suffering severe seizures and brain hemorrhages, Hope and Blaquesmith go into the future to save his life.  The team comes out of this okay, but the reasons behind Cable's visions are pretty twisted.  Saving his life takes away his psionic abilities.

The whole series ends as Cable's X-Force book and Storm's X-Force book converge in a concluding crossover event.  The X-Man Bishop had hunted Cable and Hope through the time streams all of her life.  When the teams cross paths, Stryfe (an evil clone of Cable) tries persuading Hope into enacting vengeance upon a captured Bishop.  Hope comes close, and Bishop repents.  Hope isn't ready to completely forgive but finds it dishonorable to kill him under these circumstances.  Strife tries harder to act out against Cable and forces his limitless powers upon Hope, planning for an overload to cause mass destruction.  In the end it's Bishop who can help Hope safely vent this excess energy.  Absorption and expulsion of energy is his mutant ability.



I really enjoyed this series.  You can see how growing up the daughter of Cable in a survivalist lifestyle does to Hope and what it may lead to her doing in her future.  Like with X-23's relationship with Logan, Cable's fathering isn't an entirely a good thing for Hope.  Good thing they have time travel, right?

Another favorite part of the series is the chemistry between Forge and Dr. Nemesis.  Forge is a Cheyenne machinist also trained as a medicine man, so he brings mystical and and engineering strengths to the team.  Nemesis on the other hand is like television's Dr. Gregory House if House was also a cybernetically enhanced Nazi hunter who through time travel delivered his own birth, meeting his mother before she dies in labor.  You take these two complex characters and specialists in different field of science, and you get one heck of a rivalry. There's a scene where out of boredom they create a giant robot and a genetically modified scorpion to fight each other in a battle exhibition.  I really wish Marvel would give these two a series of their own.  They could be a balance of needing out and fighting crime.