CABLE: LOVE & CHROME #1: Time After Time…

I have to be honest, like most of the Summers clan, I can take or leave Nathan Christopher Charles Summers on any given day. He’s generally fine in ensemble for me but I’m not particularly invested in his personal exploits. However his solo during Krakoa by Gerry Duggan and his team up with Bishop in Deniz Camp’s Children of The Vault have made me warm up to him more than previously. So when it was solicited that Dave Pepose was getting a crack at him along with Mike Henderson (you should ALL be reading THE FORGED) I decided that it was too good a creative team to pass on.

And I wasn’t disappointed. The opener has the requisite time hopping Mad Max dystopian feel about it, opening in 3077 Cable’s ever-onward-forging time soldier. Never stopping, always moving forward. There’s a new villain called The Cicada which Pepose clearly hints knows Cable from somewhen. Pepose has Cable’s character and voice down perfect. He’s hard as rock on the outside, a perfect soldier but that hardness is balanced with Cable’s internal dialogue which is the highlight of issue one. It takes the time soldier trope and imbues it with emotional gravitas. It humanizes Cable from the get go, exposes fragilities which immediately makes the story more relatable.

After a confrontation gone awry, Nathan finds himself thrown across time in a place called Salvation Bay in the middle of a conflict he knows nothing about. Not exactly original fare, you could argue, but Pepose adds several dynamics that actually make the situation feel fresh. The first is that the people of Salvation Bay appear to also have all been infected with a technorganic virus of a similar nature to Cable himself, the second is the introduction of a character named Commander Avery Ryder. Cable is immediately smitten. The creative team get the almost immediate chemistry Cable has with her right without making it cheesy because Cable is a lot of things but cheesy isn’t one of them. Mayhem ensues when the villains of this place The Conclave attack and then the art team get to show off some heavy duty asskickery!

I’m a huge Mike Henderson fan, from Dead Man Logan to The Forged. I am familiar with Henderson’s ability to deliver exceptional gritty no holds barred action and he delivers several excellent hi-octane moments in this opener. There is action and explosions galore as the team go full throttle in the action sequences with letterer VC’s Joe Sabino getting to have a great deal of fun with combat sound effects throughout the issue. it’s a really well illustrated opener that sets the tone and mood nearly flawlessly.

Which brings us unfortunately to the one complaint I have about this issue. Arif Prianto is an excellent colorist so I do not know if this was poor communication or a mistake or something else but Avery has been shown very clearly to be a person of color but that doesn’t come through in the artwork of this issue at all. In fact if you compare her coloring in the sequential art to the preview of issue #2’s cover there’s clearly a disconnect here. Past that Prianto is excellent in all other coloring facets of the book but I have to question all the hands this passed through before final publication where someone could of said: Hey hold up, we should possibly correct this.

Lastly, it’s great to see Ian Churchill return to X-office with an absolutely incredible main cover too.