{"id":5566,"date":"2020-09-02T21:53:11","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T20:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5566"},"modified":"2020-09-02T21:53:11","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T20:53:11","slug":"cable-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5566","title":{"rendered":"Cable #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"181\" height=\"279\" src=\"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Unknown.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5567\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>CABLE vol 4 #4<\/strong><br><strong>&#8220;The Big Bang&#8221;<\/strong><br><strong>by Gerry Duggan &amp; Phil Noto<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Cable and Esme fight the Spaceknights. This is bannered as a &#8220;Path to X of Swords&#8221; issue, presumably for sword-related reasons that would have applied to the whole series to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 2-5.<\/strong> <em>Esme recounts the history of the Spaceknights.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ve covered this before, but the Spaceknights form part of the back story of <em>Rom<\/em>, the 1980s licensed series. In <em>Rom<\/em>, the established back story saw the Galadorians coming under attack from the Dire Wraiths about two hundred years ago, and the Spaceknights such as Rom being volunteers who gave up their normal bodies to become cyborg warriors. (The basic set-up of most issues of <em>Rom <\/em>was that Rom kept showing up to kill Dire Wraiths disguised as ordinary humans, and people kept mistaking him from a murderous killer robot.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>This version of history is claiming that an earlier batch of Spaceknights had been created three thousand years previously, from dupes. The implication is that the technology was kept around in some form and dusted off in the Dire Wraith emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Spaceknights were always somewhat clunky in their visual design, to match the aesthetic of the Rom toy. The three we&#8217;ve seen so far &#8211; named here as Tarq, Brakk and Kron &#8211; are new characters for this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ILIaPluH4pc\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&#8220;While they slept, Galador was destroyed.&#8221;<\/strong> In <em>Infinity <\/em>#1. As previously mentioned, the recent <em>Yondu<\/em> miniseries reveals that the planet secretly survived, but there&#8217;s no reason for any of these characters to know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Recap and credits<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 8-10.<\/strong> <em>Cable replaces the time machine with a bomb and takes the Spaceknights to the desert.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The implication seems to be that Cable decides to get a message to his older self in the past, and successfully alters history in advance of actually acting on that intention. Or then again, maybe not, because he also explains later in the issue that the older Cable couldn&#8217;t use his time machine to escape in <em>Extermination<\/em> #1 because it wasn&#8217;t there any more. So really the big question is why the bomb <em>isn&#8217;t<\/em> there in the earlier panel &#8211; maybe it&#8217;s just an illusion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Purists will tell you that Marvel Universe time travel isn&#8217;t meant to work this way, but there have been so many counterexamples over the years that there are clearly ways of time travelling in which this sort of thing can work &#8211; albeit that it might be a very bad idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Time Variance Authority<\/strong> is a seemingly self-appointed body which monitors the integrity of the timeline. Sometimes it&#8217;s played more or less straight, sometimes it represents continuity-minded editors. If Cable keeps messing around with time like he does in this scene, we might see them for real later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arbor Magna<\/strong> is the resurrection chamber on Krakoa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 11-12.<\/strong> <em>Flashbacks to Cable swapping his arm, and then getting killed by the younger Cable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first page seems to show Cable <em>replacing<\/em> his normal time-machine arm with the bomb arm &#8211; and seemingly leaving the time machine just lying around in his safehouse. More generally, Duggan seems to be trying to explain the bizarre events of <em>Extermination<\/em> #1 by suggesting that the older, more experienced Cable was manipulating the young moron version all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 13-20.<\/strong> <em>The Spaceknights walk right into the trap.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaks for itself, really. The Spaceknights really do come across as suckers, but it looks like they&#8217;re only really here to set up a bigger threat for X of Swords, so whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&#8220;Tell Phoebe I&#8217;m excited to see her tomorrow.&#8221;<\/strong> Remember, Phoebe is the one who was seeing Kid Omega in <em>X-Force<\/em> #11, and seems significantly less interested in Cable than any of her sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGE 21.<\/strong> Data page. The dying Spaceknights&#8217; last message to the one remaining Spaceknight, largely just recapping the plot. None of the names are established characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGE 22.<\/strong> Another data page, with a message from the X-Desk to Molina and DiStefano. The X-Desk is presumably Delores Ramirez, same as ever. Molina and DiStefano are the two cops who were investigating the mutant baby theft in issue #2, and who were putting out feelers to make contact with the X-Men by the end of the issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Delores is pointing them in the direction of the Order of X. We know from the previous issue that these mutant-obsessed cultists did indeed steal the baby, and Delores presumably found out because their messages are being tapped. The leader of the Order (or at least this particular cell) is identified simply as &#8220;M&#8221;. It&#8217;s not at all clear why he&#8217;s so keen for Stinger&#8217;s dog to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 23-25.<\/strong> <em>Cable is persuaded to stick around for family dinner.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a rather heavy-handed &#8220;normal family dynamics but with Cable&#8221; scene. For some reason, the only characters at the family dinner are Cyclops, Cable, Prestige, Havok, Corsair and Marvel Girl &#8211; no Wolverine (who isn&#8217;t a blood relative), but also no Vulcan (which is harder to explain).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: X OF SWORDS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. CABLE vol 4 #4&#8220;The Big Bang&#8221;by Gerry Duggan &amp; Phil Noto COVER \/ PAGE 1. Cable and Esme fight the Spaceknights. This is bannered as a &#8220;Path to X of Swords&#8221; issue, presumably for sword-related reasons that would have applied to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5575,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions\/5575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}