Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artists: Humberto Ramos, Lan Medina, Paul Gulacy
Cover: Marko Djurdjevic
“Homecoming“: For many issues now, Cable has been time hopping with Hope, who will either be the savior of Mutant kind or responsible for its ultimate destruction, depending on who you ask. Well former X-Man Bishop is in the latter group, and he’s been one determined assassin, going through extreme lengths to kill Hope and make sure that the timeline he grew up in never comes to pass. Marvel started this arc off pretty well, and the set up had a lot of potential, however it fell flat with several issues going nowhere, and it seemed like it was being dragged out. Well last issue Cable and Hope barely escaped the Brood and Bishop, with a little help from a young man named Emil who was in love with Hope. Bishop ended up in an Acanti, a giant alien whale-like creature that attaches itself to his brain, and is now in pursuit of his intended targets who are in stasis pods rocketing through space.
Now in this issue, Bishop’s desire to kill Hope is transferred to the Acanti, and the giant space whale is right behind the pods. Cable has a connection with Bishop and can feel him close even in his half sleep state. After an attack from Cable, an explosion ends up knocking the pods off of their flight path and they are caught in Earth’s gravitational pull. Hope wakes up to the sound of Emil’s uploaded voice shouting a warning that they are going to crash. It’s a pretty big explosion, but of course Hope and Cable make it. It’s during that night of eating rat on a stick that Hope looks at Cable and says, “I’m ready.” She wants to go back and be with the X-Men, and so Cable and Hope track down the Acanti who has crashed in New York City as well, and they blow it up only to find that Bishop isn’t inside; but Hope begins to feel him close by. Bishop gets the drop on them, slits Cable’s throat, and fires his gun at Hope at point blank range. It’s now that Bishop realizes he’s too late, as the bullet stops just inches from her face and falls harmlessly to the ground, then she lashes out at Bishop himself. And just when she is about to deliver the killing blow, she is stopped by Cable. They end up stealing his time traveling component and leaving him stranded in the future…maybe.
With everything that’s been happening in the other X books that seem to tie into what or who Hope is, I’m almost excited about this new arc. So I’m hoping the momentum provided in those stories will get the ball rolling and give Swierczynski something to work with here in Cable. I was getting the feeling that Marvel just told him to keep Hope and Cable bouncing around until they were ready for her to come back. The problem with that is, when you drag out a story just for the sake of buying time, it shows no matter how good the writer is.
I would have been a lot happier if Ramos could have been the only artist on the book since I’m a big fan of his work. Lan Medina did a fine job in the second chapter, and the page where Bishop slits Cable’s throat is great. Not in a the big splash page type great, but more subtle where all the emotion was in the eyes of Hope, Cable, and Bishop. Plus he had Bishop envision Hope not as a young teenager but as a baby when he pulled the trigger, illustrating that he is locked in the idea that the baby will bring the end of the world. Paul Gulacy’s work has had me on the fence since the first time I saw it. I like it and I don’t all at the same time, and I know part of it is the proportions of the characters in some of the panels; they go from buff to a smaller build or vice versa. His page where Cable picks up Hope right before they teleport is one of my favorites in the book; it’s simple, and he captured a brief moment of levity between the two.
So all in all this is one of the better books in what’s become 21 issues of Hope’s origin. I’m hoping for a peek of what she can do before X-Men: Second Coming, but for right now the question still remains…. Who is Hope, and is she here to destroy or help?
Infinite Speech
infintiespeech@comicattack.net
I would have like Ramos or Medina solely on this issue, but not 3 different artists with 3 different styles.
I think Hope is…Lucille Ball. Hey, they both have red hair.
@Jeff-It’s like changing the channel during your favorite movie to see that there is a B-Movie version of the same thing on the ScyFy channel lol But seriously the mood of the book changes and for this it didn’t work too well and thats why i’m not a big fan of this happening. Maybe if it were three seperate stories then it would have been fine but not here.
@Billy-or Molly Ringwold (sp?) lol
Does this Hope chick LOOK like Jean Grey? I mean, we all know what Jean looks like, right? If she looks exactly like Jean Grey, then it’s her.
Or am I missing something?
I was thinking that too Bill but all the time Cable has been with her its never come up which hasnt made any sense at all
It’s reasons like this that I stopped reading the X-Men a decade ago!
I didn’t like the first arc of this title that much, but since Messiah War, I’ve been loving this series!!
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