Cable #22 (August 1995)

Hey there X-Maniacs, a quick word from your magnanimous friend, the amazing X! Since this was a small week comic book-wise for yours truly, I've already finished up my new comic pile... So that means no new reviews until Wednesday and New Comic Day... But fear not, I may not have any new reviews, but I DO I have plenty of back issues laying around! And you know what that means... It's time for some Retro-Reviews!!! So for tonight and tomorrow I'll review a trio of loosely related comics... Tonight it's three Marvel books, all from the 90's, all second tier X-Men titles. Tomorrow it's three DC comics, and yes, like tonight's books, they'll be themed as well. That's tomorrow though, let's get back to tonight. Since I really have no preference on how to post these reviews, I'm going to post them in alphabetical order just for the hell of it. Oh yeah, for the record, I pulled all of the comic books that I'm reviewing tonight at random, the only thing I knew was what series I wanted to read... So without further ado, our first X-book of the night is......

Cable #22:

Summary: Cable, Domino and Shatterstar head to an airport to see Rictor(who was heading home to Mexico to spend some time with his family) off. Star is naturally upset that his BFF is leaving and tries to get him to reconsider, but Rictor feels some time away from X-Force and spent with his familia would be a good thing. As for Cable, he wants to make sure there are no hard feelings between him and Rictor since it was Cable's evil clone Stryfe who murdered Rictor's father. Rictor promises Cable that he'd return to the team before heading off. A short distance away, a plane from Genosha is landing, bringing many people who wanted to get away from that civil war-torn nation. One of these people, a bio-geneticist named Renee Majcomb, is headed to the US to talk to Prof. Xavier, and is being tracked by two high-level Genoshian agents who don't want to allow Renee to escape to the US. The two Genoshian agents create a riot between the pro and anti-Genoshian protesters at the airport and try to kidnap Renee, but luckily for her, Cable telepathically senses what they were up to and points the agents out to Domino and Shatterstar. Shatterstar, who was acting more reckless than usual with Rictor gone, launches himself at the agents and gets shot in the stomach for his troubles. That distraction gives Cable and Domino the chance to take down the agents, as well as save a security guard and give Renee the chance to escape. And that's basically it.

Thoughts: First off, knowing now how Rictor and Shatterstar's relationship turned out this was kind of a fun issue to read. I mean Jeph Loeb wasn't exactly hiding the fact that Shatterstar had an obvious attraction to Rictor here. It couldn't have been more glaring! Yeah, I guess it COULD have been that Star was upset that his bestest friend in the world was leaving, but it's fun to read between the lines sometimes, and after reading this issue, it makes it even clearer that Peter David made the most sensible move concerning Star and Rictor's relationship. As for the main story this issue, my response is a resounding meh. I've never been a fan of Genosha(I guess it was kind of interesting when Magneto took it over), and as such didn't really care for this story. I mean it was good, fun, “Cable from the 90's” action, but it's definitely not something I'd go out of my way to read again.

Score: 7 out of 10.Damn that Cable with his crumby timing!