For those of you who read the book, or our spoilers for what happened, you know by now that Nathan Christopher Summers, the man known as Cable, was the most recent casualty of Second Coming. And for those of you who didn’t know? Well, did you really expect a post with “The Death In X-Force #28” as part of the title to not say who it was?
So anyway, X-Force co-writer Christopher Yost released a statement about Cable earlier, and here it is!
“Craig and I were there for Cable’s first appearance in New Mutants back in the day, and we’ve been lucky enough to write him on a few occasions… and this. For us, Cable was always a character whose death was something the character himself would put forward — if that’s what it took to complete his mission, he wouldn’t think twice about it.
Cable was something different, something we (as readers) hadn’t seen before. Someone with military training that followed Xavier’s dream by going out there and kicking the *%#$ out of anyone who might mess with mutantkind. Cable elevated Cannonball and the New Mutants, created X-Force, brought in characters like Domino and Deadpool to the mix … you could always count on him to do something unexpected, usually while carrying a gun the size of a building.
Cable’s been a lot of things … man of mystery, mercenary, freedom fighter, teacher … but now, he’d taken on the role of protector, and finally that of a father to Hope. The soldier became a man who believed in something, believed in her. And he’d do anything to protect her, even if it meant giving his own life. He’d do it with a smile on his face.
And when he sacrificed himself saving X-Force — saving all of mutantkind — the last thing he saw was that Hope had survived … and he could finally let go, mission accomplished.”
That actually all syncs up rather nicely with my own personal views on Cable, and if anything makes me wish that Kyle and Yost had been given an extended opportunity to tackle the character outside of crossovers.
