The multiple timelines of X-men’s Cable

Since Dawn of X’s launch, some X-fans may have been surprised to learn about one mutant is no longer the gritty cyber time-traveler they knew from comics and film and is instead a happy go lucky heavily armed cyber kid in the Summer family. With Cable’s new ongoing series written by Gerry Duggan and art by Phil Noto, it might be a good time to look back to how the 90’s mega mutant got to where we are now.

Baby Nathan

Before Cable’s first appearance in The New Mutants by Rob Leifeld and Louise Simonson in 1990, he first appeared as Nathan, a newborn babe from Scott Summer (Cyclops) and wife Madelyne Pryor in Uncanny X-Men in 1986.

Where’s Jean Grey during all this? Well, you’re looking at her: Madelyne Pryor! It turns out she’s Jean’s secret clone and that Scott Summers certainly has a type. After learning Jean Grey is alive, he eventually abandons Madelyne and babe, so Nathan’s life is already off to a bad start.

Things go sideways when Mister Sinister, who created Madelyne Pryor, kidnaps Nathan, and his mom doesn’t take it well. She becomes the Goblin Queen, and the X-Men have to rescue Nathan and stop his mom from turning New York into a permanent gateway for Limbo demons to take over.

Jean and Scott raise Nathan on their sentient ship while his mutant telekinetic abilities begin to develop. That is until he gets kidnapped again. Apocalypse infects him with a techno-organic virus that would have killed him, but the sentient ship merges with him to protect him, leaving him his current cyber-aesthetic.

Later, a couple of time travelers say they need Nathan to save Earth from a future Apocalypse. Also, they have a cure for the cyber virus. So Scott gives up his son again, this time for a good cause.

Fast Forward to the Future

The techno-organic virus is winning, and Clan Askani is worried he’ll die and not save the future after all. So they clone him and put into stasis. This fools Apocalypse, who takes the clone and raises him as Stryfe.

Nathan’s fine as it turns out. His sister Rachel Summers happened to be time-displaced somehow and was living as Mother Askani. She brings Jean Grey and Scott Summers’ minds to the future, and the three of them worked to get Nathan to control the virus by keep it contained through his telekinetic powers. 

After a battle with Apocalypse and Stryfe gravely wounded Rachel/Mother Askani, the connection to the future was lost, and Scott Summers abandoned Nathan for the third time.

Cable

Cable’s saga up to House of M is replete with time travel, team changes, battling his clone (both physically and psychically), virus battles, adventure with Deadpool, more teach changes, he was a key figure in the many epic X-men adventures.

House of M and Messiah Complex

Say hello to Baby Cable. Yes, the alternative reality that The Scarlet Witch created, we find Cable as an infant living on Mister Sinister’s farm. It’s there that Cable rescues him, and they manage to the farm by “body sliding” (a type of teleportation familiar to Cable and Deadpool) the same instant House of M gets reverted to the normal universe, leaving them unaffected by the reversion.

Thanks to Mister Sinister’s use of Deadpool’s DNA, Cable ages out of infanthood right away. So Cable resumes his many adventures with the Secret Avengers during Civil War, and then with the remaining X-men (see M-Day), where it seems as though he dies in a heroic explosion.

But fear not, he’s back. And with good company! Say hello to his little friend, Hope, the first mutant child born after M-Day. M-Day caused all but a few hundred mutants to lose their mutant powers and other comic book consequences for those not in the know. This child Hope represents the future for mutant-kind, and the X-Men, Marauders, X-Force, and Bishop are in a race to find her. In the end, Scott Summers agrees the best chance for Hope’s survival is to go with Bishop to the future.

After a series of cat and mouse chases between Cable, Hope, and Bishop through time, Cable and Hope return to the present to save the X-Men in San Francisco from the scheme Bastion (a Sentinel) came up with to kill the X-Men and the Messiah Child (aka Hope). Cable, along with the X-Force, and Sypher was able to stop Bastion but ended up sacrificing himself in the process.

X-Men (Time-Displaced)

You can’t keep a good Cable down. Even though at the end of the Second Coming X-Men event ended with Cable giving a heartfelt sacrifice, and leaves Hope with just the remains of his cyber arm, he managed to survive. He ended up jumping to the future where he eventually came back to the present for more X-men, Avengers, and Deadpool adventures.

By this point in the X-Men timeline, things aren’t going so well. Scott Summer killed Xavier due to a Phoenix Force invasion of several X-Men. Avengers built a Phoenix Cage to try and stop the Phoenix force to no avail. Beast is dying from new mutations. Iceman was still in the closet. All bad news all around.

Beast is convinced that if he brings the original X-Men back (Scott summers specifically), he can show them the perils of the future in the hopes that they will not repeat their mistakes. Sounds all well and good, but meanwhile, Kid Cable (Cable’s younger self) learns that the time-displaced X-men are damaging the timeline by not returning and sets out to correct it.

Kid Cable ends up killing Cable for trying to stop him from fixing the timeline, which understandably puts him at odds with the rest of the X-Men. But when they later learn how their actions will destroy the timeline by not returning, they agree to go back in time. Kid Cable stays in the present and even manages to resurrect his dad Cyclops using the Phoenix Cage.

Dawn of X

Now we are all caught up with the present-day Cable (Kid Cable that is). Thanks to the careful planning of Moira MacTaggert and Charles Xavier (he’s alive not by the way), the X-Men establishes a new status quo, a new sovereign country on a living mutant island, and the Summers family make a home for themselves on the moon.

Cable Vol. 4 is out now, written by Gerry Duggan and art by Phil Noto.