Cable & Deadpool
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Image:CABLEDP005l.jpg Cable & Deadpool is a comic book published by Marvel Comics beginning in 2004. The title characters, Cable and Deadpool, share the focus of the book. The series was launched following the cancellation of the characters' previous ongoing solo series.
Contents |
Summaries
If Looks Could Kill
Deadpool was hired by the One World Church, a group headed by a man named Anton Krutch, who planned to use Deadpool to steal the Façade Virus, a bioweapon they intended to use to turn everyone in the world blue for racial uniformity without genocide.
Meanwhile, Cable, whose powers were considerably enhanced by the events of Cable #100, recovered the unstable virus from a group of self-proclaimed anarchists calling themselves "The Scanners." They had stolen it from the developers and deliberately infected themselves to impersonate famous people, although two died, literally melted by the virus before Cable managed to save the third. Deadpool then proceeded to shoot Cable in the head and take the virus back to Krutch.
While Cable recovered in Switzerland (having managed to prevent the bullet from entering his skull, he'd still been concussed), Professor Charles Xavier visited him at his request. When he asked Cable what he planned, Cable said he was angry at himself for being capable of so much and doing so little, before proceeding to take his safehouse apart brick-by-brick, then rebuilt it again. Professor X warned him that being able to take the world apart was very different from having the judgement to put it back together, and that if he tried, there would be no shortage of people who would try to stop them.
Meanwhile, Deadpool was being used as a guinea pig, to see if his healing factor could counteract the fatal side effects of the virus. Cable infiltrated the OWC, and tried to remain hidden for several days. When the Church revealed they'd known he was there all along, they showed him their "Deliverance Device," an optical means of infection, and proceeded to infect Cable in such a way as to disable his powers, reactivating his techno-organic virus.
Deadpool fought Cable around the Church, before Cable was finally immobilised by his T-O virus and Deadpool started to melt from the Façade infection. Straining, Cable managed to make a TK burst to swallow the liquefied Deadpool, absorbing his healing factor and allowing him to purge them both of the Façade virus with his telekinesis, then regurgitated Deadpool, whose healing factor could now let him resolidify.
Cable immediately flew, under his own power, to Singapore in search of Krutch, with Deadpool following some time later on a plane. Cable proceeded to subvert the Deliverance Device - and Lightmaster, who had hired by Sunic to protect the virus but was actually a member of the One World Church, and who was key to the delivery - turning the world's population a shade of pink.
Two days later Cable used his control of the virus to return everybody to their normal colors, taking credit for this as a saviour.
Knowing that his enhanced powers could not last long before he burned out as X-Man almost did at those power levels, Cable arranged for what he thought would be the best thing he could do in his last days. He recreated his long-destroyed spaceship Greymalkin as the airborne city of Providence, although their earlier merger meant that the teleportation matrix on board registered Deadpool as him, meaning that he could not use it without taking Deadpool with him (and Deadpool could trigger a "Bodyslide" too), with messy results when he tried to "Bodyslide by One."
The Burnt Offering
Cable continued with his plan to espouse a philosophy of moderation, and offering invitations to the world's top thinkers, scientists and philosophers to live on Providence, in the face of a nervous S.H.I.E.L.D..
Delivering a stark message to the world's leaders, he deliberately set them all against him by threatening to throw all their missiles into the sun. Meanwhile, the X-Men, including his father Cyclops, hired Deadpool to put together the pieces of a mini-teleporter that they could use to stop him without quite knowing what it was. After they mounted an attack on Providence, Cable confessed to Deadpool, after DP had declined to play his role and disable him, that he'd wanted him to kill him, expanding on this to Cyclops that he knew he was about to burn out and wanted to set an example of how the world could work together, even if it was against him. However, the Silver Surfer, called by the Fantastic Four, saw his "passion" and, disturbed by it, defeated him in battle and ripped the techno-organic tissue from his body, disabling him. As Providence (supported by Cable's telekinesis) prepared to crash into the ocean, Deadpool teleported to one of Cable's safehouses with him and, at his prompting, used the teleporter to lobotomise him to save him from burning out, giving him a few seconds to lower Providence gently into the ocean and give a final message to the world.
Notes
The original title Passion of the Cable, intended as a reference to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, was changed to The Burnt Offering due to Marvel's lawyers not being sufficiently confident that they could defend a complaint (which isn't known to have occurred) by Gibson and/or Christian conservative groups [1]. This arc is famous for a sequence where Deadpool is dressed as Marvel Girl (Rachel Summers), to the X-Men's collective horror.
Thirty Pieces
Cable was left in a coma (bringing along G.W. Bridge's Six Pack with him), and with many people around the globe now referring to him as "the Saviour" and applications to immigrate to Providence going through the roof, Deadpool hired the Fixer to bond a benign techno-organic mesh (recovered from MODOK) to Cable, saving him, although he remains hugely depowered. Agent X was hired by an unknown organization to stop Deadpool, but gave up that mission when Deadpool presented him with a better offer.
Non-story notes
The recap page format changed as of issue 11 to an art page unrelated to the story, although issue 12's page was a copy of those from the late Agent X series, a diary entry penned "by" Agent X.
A Murder in Paradise
The murder of Haji Bin Barat (a thinly-disguised Osama bin Laden) on Providence starts a whodunnit mystery, with Deadpool insisting on aiding the investigation. However, eventually Deadpool realises that he committed the murder, but can't remember doing so, and a fight with Prestor John ensues as the others investigating realise this too. Cable ends the fight and asks why Deadpool killed Haji Bin Barat, Deadpool is unsure. Cable offers to help him remember, but first needs to go on a mission with X-Force. Cable asks Deadpool to leave Providence until the X-Force mission is complete. Deadpool decides to turn to the Black Box, an information broker for supervillains, for help.
Non-story notes
This story ran through issues 13 and 14. Issue 13 was the introduction of the C&DP letters page "Dear Deadpool", which saw readers letters answered "by" Deadpool.
Both recap pages featured Deadpool sitting on a stool under a naked light bulb, in a homage to noir detective movies.
Enema of the State
At the end of the X-Force miniseries, Cable vanished in killing a mutant-hunting beast called the Skornn at the head of a reformed X-Force. When Deadpool, having been brainwashed by a supervillain information broker called the Black Box to kill the "Greatest Threat to Mankind" teleported to Providence to find and kill Cable, who he perceived as the greatest superhuman threat, he therefore found only Cannonball, Siryn and Forge, who were unable to find any trace of Cable, and whether he survived. After Cannonball and Siryn had calmed Deadpool somewhat, he suggested they use his teleportation-link with Cable to find him, and Forge constructed a harness to allow the two X-Force members to follow him.
They then proceeded to travel through three alternate worlds, one where Cable had become War, a horseman of Apocalypse, one where Cable had succeeded in his messiah-like mission and had become a benevolent dictator, where even mild indigestion was immediately dealt with through outside help, and one where Cable had become the central consciousness of a Phalanx infestation of Earth. Finally, they landed in the House of M reality and found an infant Cable being raised by the marginalised Mister Sinister on a farm. Sinister used an extract from Deadpool's immune system to trigger Cable's powers and would shortly begin to rapidly age him, before Deadpool grabbed the baby and teleported home seconds before the world reverted to normal.
There, when Forge ran tests and discerned that the child was, in fact, the real Cable, Deadpool's brainwashing kicked in once more and he attempted to kill Cable. Siryn and Cannonball delayed him until Deadpool shot himself in the head. As Cable rapidly aged back into mid-childhood, he read Deadpool's mind and found who had brainwashed him. As X-Force went to confront the Black Box, Cable decided that to he wanted to have his memory restored, and to cure Deadpool's brain damage, even though it would once more cost him his powers. He succeeded, although X-Force found only a LMD Black Box at his base, and took the now-teenage Cable, who resembled X-Man, to Intercourse, Pennsylvania, believing the name to refer to sexual intercourse.
Non-story notes
The title of the arc, and the cover to its first issue, are direct parodies of the contemporary Wolverine arc "Enemy of the State," which involved Wolverine being brainwashed by HYDRA.
Issue 18 did not feature a letters page, but 15-17 did, in the same format as those published in #13 and #14.
Why, when I was your age
Picking up directly from the end of "Enema of the State", Cable - still a teenager - and Deadpool are in a bar in Intercourse, discussing their teenage years. Deadpool discusses the death of his father, an army general, making it sound like he killed him when in fact he tried to save him; while Cable discusses a mission from his teenage years when he was forced to kill a friend to save his other fellow soldiers.
The issue ends with Cable, back to his normal age, and Deadpool asking for the truth from each other, and leaving Intercourse in a mirror of the last panel of #18.
Non-story notes
The issue is labelled both as an epilogue to "Enema of the State" and a prologue to "Bosom Buddies", the following arc.
The teenage Cable is, apart from the scar over his right eye and metal arm, drawn and coloured to resemble X-Man, and he is shown in X-Man's original costume on the cover.
The issue features a letters page, again with replies in-character as Deadpool.
Bibliography
- Cable & Deadpool #1 - present (May 2004 - present, Marvel Comics)