Cable has always been a hard character to get right. No set of creators can ever seem to agree on what his whole deal is. Is he a big gun-having, blast-em ‘up future Punisher, or is he a spiritual castaway, the leader of a time-lost revolution? He’s been both messiah and father, emotional and gruff; he’s needlessly attacked the Avengers and ran an artistic and intellectual city-state. None of these things ever seems to remain as consistent aspects of his character, and they barely seem to affect his characterization or continuity.
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It would be impossible – and perhaps inadvisable – to attempt to reconcile all those differences, especially in a miniseries. David Pepose, Mike Henderson, and Arif Prianto’s Cable: Love and Chrome isn’t a thesis statement on the character, and it isn’t looking to reinvent or re-contextualize the character. It’s a straightforward story (well, as straightforward as any time-travel story) about a soldier doing soldier things in an alternate future. It’s a love story (kind of) and a revenge story (kind of), but while the book presents Cable as the gruff-and-gunny version, it also portrays him as someone with a little emotional depth.
Love and Chrome introduces yet another grim possible future with its own freedom-fighting revolution, adding yet one more bleak eventuality to Cable’s many; here, the people of the world have been infected with their own techno-organic virus, and an ill-defined societal imbalance means that these infected members are trying to overthrow some violent overlords. This is all just a sandbox for the main focus: Cable’s brief love affair with Avery, a woman we’re told overshadows even his long-dead wife, despite their very brief and shallow time together. Avery is the same sort of gruff, shares the same penchant for weaponry, and has the same ‘do and die’ mentality of conflict: dive in headfirst with no expectation of survival.
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There is little sign of Cable’s usual great sense of purpose: this new scenario feels diversionary at best, a timezone he landed in arbitrarily and that he got caught up in on a whim. This isn’t a heroic journey, and there seems to be no larger goal; this has no bearing on the larger X-Men narrative. It is a fun, self-contained time romp, the brusque story of a doomed love affair. This is Cable’s weekend off, killing time.
Ironically, this trade paperback collection ends with the one-shot Timeslide, which happens mid-Love and Chrome and which gives Cable exactly the sort of grand purpose that the main miniseries neglects. Paired with Bishop and directed by Tempus, Cable embarks on a brief adventure to save the time stream; while this issue misplaces Cable’s heart, it gives him back his heroic intentions and places his Avery-centric adventures firmly in comic book time: Love and Chrome happens exactly where Timeslide says it does, just after the fall of Krakoa. Without Timeslide, Love and Chrome would be free-floating, a perfectly encapsulated Cable adventure. Collecting both in the one volume gives the whole a great context, but it makes Love and Chrome feel weaker by comparison.
Ultimately, Love and Chrome does little to move the character in any one way or another. It doesn’t place him within the larger Marvel narrative, and it doesn’t attempt to redefine the sorts of run-and-gun stories he seems destined to play in. It’s a workhorse sort of book – it does what it sets out to do with a plodding but deliberate pace, and while it flirts with deeper characterization, it never quite moves the needle in terms of giving Cable the heart and soul he might deserve.
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