{"id":5904,"date":"2020-11-20T20:48:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T20:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5904"},"modified":"2020-11-20T20:48:10","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T20:48:10","slug":"cable-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5904","title":{"rendered":"Cable #6 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

CABLE vol 4 #6<\/strong>
“X of Swords, Chapter 19”<\/strong>
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1<\/strong>. <\/strong>Generic pin-up of Cable and other characters from “X of Swords” (including Betsy, who’s been absent from the plot for several chapters now).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Epigraph from Cyclops. The point here, of course, is that generally Scott is giving teen Cable fairly conventional advice, but in this issue Cable is fretting that the older, more experienced Cable that he forcibly replaced would have been much better suited to the occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 3-6.<\/strong> Mister Sinister reports to the Quiet Council.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Quiet Council<\/strong> members present here are Professor X, Magneto, Mister Sinister, Exodus, Mystique, Nightcrawler, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw and Kate Pryde. Apocalypse and Storm are absent because they’re in Otherworld for the contest. The final Council member, Marvel Girl, is <\/em>on the island – we see her later – and our attention is drawn to the fact that she’s not answering. Presumably the idea is that she needs to be by the portal in order to maintain her psychic link to Cable, and she’s not willing to move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mister Sinister<\/strong> is claiming to have returned from the Hellions’ mission to Arakko, as shown in Hellions<\/em> #5-6. In fact, he apparently sent a clone in his place, and wiped out the Hellions on their return, in order to stop them reporting what he’d done. His actual agenda was to recover a bunch of DNA samples, but the rest of the Quiet Council don’t know that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this Mister Sinister hasn’t actually been to Arakko and presumably shouldn’t know anything about what’s going on there – though he is<\/em> a telepath, and he could have read the minds of the returning Hellions before he killed them. Besides, what he reports here is all pretty generic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I needed to stop and fetch a cape.”<\/strong> At the end of Hellions<\/em> #6, Sinister deliberately tears his costume as part of his ruse. If it’s been that <\/em>long that everyone’s been waiting for him, it’s hardly surprising that he got changed. Sinister was also rather obsessed with his cape in Hellions<\/em> #5-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate’s costume.<\/strong> Sinister seems to be alluding to the fact that before Marauders<\/em>, Kitty Pryde had spent some time wearing generic X-Men outfits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You should see what they did to the poor fish-people.”<\/strong> Referring to the attack on Dryador in X of Swords: Creation<\/em> (which this Sinister could plausibly know about to some extent from the previous raiding party that returned to Krakoa in Creation<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The External Gate <\/strong>remains open, and Krakoa continues to veto any suggestion that it be closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-8. <\/strong>Credits and recap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-13.<\/strong> Cable fights Bei.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is actually a straight sword fight “to the death” of the sort that readers would initially have been expecting. Bei “married” Cypher in Excalibur<\/em> #14 as part of the increasingly surreal contest, and the two do seem to have at least some<\/em> attachment. Cable nearly wins, but hesitates to kill Bei in Cypher’s presence. For her part, Bei stops when Cypher steps in… and Saturnyne decides that this is a sufficiently crushing humiliation that she’ll count it as a death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 14-16.<\/strong> Cable reports telepathically to Cyclops and Marvel Girl.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cable’s report of the plot is all basically accurate, and this is where we really hammer the point that Cable feels the original would have done better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I can’t lose him again, Jean.”<\/strong> Cyclops is referring to Cable’s convoluted back story in which he’s sent to the far future and grows up there (and then Cyclops and Jean join him there for a bit…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 17-23.<\/strong> Gorgon fights the White Sword… kind of.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White Sword decides to make Gorgon fight all one hundred of his soldiers first, though he rather sportingly starts by sending them in small groups. In the grand scheme of things, this is remarkably unhelpful to Arakko – because Saturnyne counts each soldier killed as a point for Krakoa, and so Gorgon singlehandedly draws level for Krakoa. Quite why it suited Saturnyne better to do it this way is unclear, but that’s arbitrary magic-based stories for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the White Sword, bear in mind that he doesn’t really like the rest of his team at all. He spent centuries obsessively fighting against<\/em> the Amenthi who now run Arakko. So it’s entirely possible that he’s trying to throw the fight, or at least hand Krakoa a bunch of points. He only steps in when the Horsemen twig to the fact that their lead is evaporating, and he specifically says “I was just waiting for you to grovel.” Saturnyne, in turn, only flags the point to the Horsemen once Krakoa has caught up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gorgon<\/strong> uses his rarely-seen power to petrify opponents here, rarely-seen because it’s usually a plot-wrecker. He’s a career villain but he does go down fighting. Note that he dies in Otherworld, so while he can<\/em> be resurrected, he’ll be unpredictably altered as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 24-25.<\/strong> Apocalypse and Annihilation prepare to fight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither Apocalypse nor Annihilation have featured in any of the previous contests, so it’s logical that they would be in the final battle. But quite why they’re assuming that the plot of this issue is going to be logical…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 26.<\/strong> Data page. This is a recap of the 24 contests to date, and a confirmation that the 25th will be the last. It sheds a bit more light on the montage sequence from this week’s X-Force<\/em>, but I already covered that in the X-Force<\/em> annotations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of slightly more note, the White Sword\/Gorgon contest is actually described <\/em>as “One Hundred to One”, which suggests that White Sword may indeed have been aware of the rules and of what he was doing. Note also that while Bei and Cable’s battle is listed as “Battle to the Death”, Isca and Captain Britain’s is “Battle to First Kill”. Is the plot twist here going to be that Annihilation wins the 25th contest, but Betsy turns up alive so Arakko forfeit their first point, and it turns out to be a draw?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 27.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan text reads NEXT: ASUNDER.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. CABLE vol 4 #6“X of Swords, Chapter 19”by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto COVER \/ PAGE 1. Generic pin-up of Cable and other characters from “X of Swords” (including Betsy, who’s been absent from the plot for several chapters now). PAGE […]<\/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-5904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5904","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=5904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5907,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5904\/revisions\/5907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}