X-Men Monday #276 – David Pepose Talks ‘Cable: Love and Chrome’

Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!

Psst! Hey, X-Fans… I’ve got some gossippp. You know Cable? The time-travel dude with muscles and guns?

No, not Bishop.

Cable! Metal arm, glowing eye, other eye’s got some scars. Anyway… Cable’s in love. Like, IN love. I think her name’s Avery. She’s also from the future. Actually, I think she’s got a metal arm, too. OMG, they’re perfect for each other!!!

Anyway, I heard it all from this guy who knows both of them. David Pepose. He’s like, the writer of the upcoming Cable: Love and Chrome mini-series — on sale January 1, 2025. NBD. He’s got all the deets.

You know what? Here, just read our texts.

AIPT: Welcome to X-Men Monday, David! 

David Pepose: Thanks so much for having me!

AIPT: As this is your first time, I was wondering if you could share your first X-Men eXperience.

David: I was incredibly lucky to have my comic book coming of age in 1992, so my very first experience as an X-Men fan was watching my VHS tape of Pryde of the X-Men. And that cartoon just blew my mind, both in terms of showcasing how cool each of the X-Men were — I’d just read Wolverine in the pages of Infinity War #2, and already loved what a rebel he was — but especially about Nightcrawler’s character arc with Kitty Pryde about tolerance, heroism, and overcoming prejudice. 

Combine that with X-Men: The Animated Series coming out later that year, followed by “Fatal Attractions” in 1993, “Age of Apocalypse” in 1995, and the “Onslaught Saga” in 1996, and it was the perfect time to become a true X-Men lifer. Being able to play in Marvel’s mutant sandbox now is just a career highlight.

AIPT: Love it. OK, on to Cable: Love and Chrome. How did the opportunity to join the all-new, all-different X-Office and write this mini-series come about?

David: I’ve worked with my editor Tom Brevoort on most of my Marvel projects to date, and when the news came out last year that he would be taking over the X-Men office, he’d asked me if I had any interest in that corner of the Marvel Universe. As a fan of both Tom and the X-Men, I told him to absolutely count me in, and as the initial wave of X-titles were coming together, Tom asked if I had any interest in writing Cable. Given that I’d already written lots of action-packed titles like Savage Avengers, Punisher, and Moon Knight: City of the Dead, it felt like a natural evolution for me to tackle Marvel’s most extreme X-Man!

AIPT: What’s your elevator pitch for your Cable adventure?

David: For as long as he can remember, Cable’s been a time-traveler living on borrowed time, fighting a lonely war against the ravages of the Techno-Organic Virus. But when a mission to the future goes catastrophically awry, Cable finds himself stranded in the dystopian city of Salvation Bay… where he meets Commander Avery Ryder, a resistance leader battling for an entire populace infected with the Techno-Organic Virus. As they fight to liberate their people, Cable and Avery’s bond will form into a heart-rending romance, as they’re forced to confront their shared condition and their own impending mortality — and the impossible choices that come with love, death, and time travel.

Wait, how long is this elevator ride again…? Fine, the easy Tl;Dr logline is this: It’s Edge of Tomorrow meets The Fault In Our Stars… with the Techno-Organic Virus. [Laughs] It’s a fun, action-packed read, with genuine tragedy, humor, and heart — basically, all my favorite ingredients to tell a story.

AIPT: What past Cable stories influenced how you and artist Mike Henderson approached the story and visuals in this mini-series?

David: There are a ton of great Cable stories that I drew from for this series — my introduction to the character was the one-two punch of Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo’s X-Force run (particularly circa “Fatal Attractions”) and Scott Lobdell and Gene Ha’s superlative work on The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, which I think speaks to many of the themes that we’re tackling in this series. But I’m also a tremendous fan of Duane Swierczynski’s time-traveling run, and I think Al Ewing and Deniz Camp have been an astounding one-two punch in terms of Cable’s recent adventures. And I know my co-creator on this series, artist Mike Henderson, is a diehard Cable fan — I’m pretty sure he’s said Cable was a bucket-list character for him, and given how well he’s been drawing this series, it shows on every page. 

For me, I think the big goal was with so many amazing takes on this character, how do we set our Cable series apart? When Tom Brevoort and I first started talking about this book, the idea of bittersweet romance across time quickly came together, but the real X-factor for this series was when I started talking with my wife about it. Having not grown up with comics as I have, she’s often my compass towards making sure there’s an emotional, human core to what I’m writing — and as always, she was smart enough to ask me the important question: What sets Cable apart? And that question became the genesis of Cable: Love and Chrome — because I realized the X-Men have other “gun guys,” they have other telepaths, they even have other time-travelers. But before the Legacy Virus or M-Pox or R-LDS, Cable’s lifelong struggle with the Techno-Organic Virus was his unique element — it evokes real-life people living with chronic or terminal conditions ranging from cancer to leukemia to HIV to ALS. 

And beyond that, I think that struggle really speaks to Cable’s central inner conflict, and his entire posture as this big-attitude, larger-than-life character — if every day is a quiet struggle, wouldn’t you want to project strength and toughness? And if no one else in your life truly understood what you were going through, wouldn’t you at least want to convince yourself of your own self-reliance? And what happens when that loneliness suddenly becomes a struggle shared? Once I cracked all that, it really opened up Cable as a character for me — he’s obviously a super-fun character in terms of action and excitement, but he’s also got a lot of complexity and texture to explore.

AIPT: What can you share about when this story takes place? X-Fan Avery asked if it’s current, following Cable’s last appearance in X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse.

David: Yes, it’ll be set in current continuity — technically, this story takes place in the far future! But I’ve written this series to be as standalone as possible, so you don’t need to have read anything else for this to make sense. (That said, you will get to see a tease of Cable’s adventures in Salvation Bay in the pages of Steve Foxe and Ivan Fiorelli’s excellent Timeslide one-shot — I’ve read it and it’s such a spectacular adventure, so Cable fans should definitely pick that up as well!)

AIPT: X-Fan Matty said different writers have different opinions on how frequently Cable should use his mutant powers, with some writers relying more on his weaponry and leaving his powers to hold back his Techno-Organic Virus exclusively, and others using his powers when he needs them, oftentimes at the cost of letting the Virus spread and thus shortening his life. Where do you fall in terms of how Cable “makes things go boom” as his latest writer?

David: As a sequential aficionado of discriminating taste, I consider Cable to be a true renaissance man in making things go boom, and we’re going to utilize every available mechanism possible in his pursuit of doing so. Cable is a real Swiss Army knife of superheroes, between his big guns, his telekinesis and telepathy, his bodysliding and time-travel tech, his Techno-Organic parts, his artificial intelligence program Belle, his military and tactical training… and we’re going to be using all of it.

In terms of tone, I’ve likened Cable as “What if Mad Max had a time machine,” so we’ve been working overtime to deliver epic, larger-than-life Fury Road-style action sequences that lean on Cable’s heavy artillery and psionic powers in equal measure… as well as exploring the dire costs of doing so. Big guns, big action, big attitude… you can’t tell a great Cable story without them!

AIPT: What types of new or familiar threats will Cable encounter in Love and Chrome?

David: One of the most fun elements of this series for me has been coming up with a variety of different threats for Cable — some of which are physical, some of which are more existential. I’m really excited to be introducing a brand-new villain to the Cable mythos by the name of Cicada — he’s a cold-hearted killer with a serious mad-on for Cable, who is able to morph his body into various cybernetic weapons. Given all of Cable’s powers and hardware, it’s nice to introduce a dark reflection to all that, showing Cable that there’s always a leaner, meaner “living weapon” than him.

We’re also introducing the threat of the Prime Conclave, the oppressive ruling class of Salvation Bay. They’re sort of like the Empire from Star Wars, but with a eugenicist point of view, having fully segregated the Techno-Organic infectees of Salvation Bay into slums and work camps. They’ve got a variety of cool weapons and other obstacles that we’ll be seeing prominently in this series — particularly their answer for the Techno-Organic populace in Cable: Love and Chrome #2. 

But beyond all that, I’m really looking forward to throwing Cable even bigger threats than he can punch out — there are so many wrinkles to explore, particularly how his struggles with the Techno-Organic Virus might work as cross-purposes with his overarching mission as a protector of the timestream. The Virus has ultimately been Cable’s ultimate enemy — it’s insidious and without mercy, and it comes with massive complications at the worst possible moments. With all that in mind, Cable’s got some big choices ahead of him, and how he decides to tackle them might have far-reaching consequences.

AIPT: “Love and Chrome” is an awesome title that evokes memories of “Blood and Metal.” But it clearly hints at other aspects of the plot. Since X-Fan GambitsBoyfriend wanted to know more about Cable’s love life, can we also dig a little deeper into the “Love” side of the mini-series?

David: Yes on both counts! I dug back into a ton of classic Cable stories while I was developing this story, and I thought the title would be a nice homage to his original miniseries “Blood and Metal.” So good eye there! But to answer your bigger question, yes: Cable’s relationship with Avery will be a core component of this series, in the same way that Logan’s relationships with Mariko and Yukio were a core part of the original Chris Claremont and Frank Miller Wolverine mini-series. 

When Tom first approached me with this story, the idea of having Cable as a romantic hero felt interesting and different from what we’ve seen elsewhere — but given that Nathan has had such distinguished love interests as Domino, Esme Cuckoo, Jenskot, even Hope’s far-future namesake, I knew creating a new character whole-cloth meant there wasn’t nearly as much runway to draw upon. How could we give a character like Avery Ryder the weight she needed to stand out narratively? 

But that wrinkle wound up becoming the core concept of our entire series, as Avery is another person living on borrowed time — like Cable, she’s been infected with the Techno-Organic Virus, and the way she’s tackled with that condition makes for a really compelling counterpoint to Cable’s own internal struggles. For Nathan, loneliness has always been part of the package — he’s of course had loved ones who have supported him over the years, but the Virus has always felt like his own personal burden that no one else has ever truly understood. 

But meeting Avery changes all that for him, and I think that terminal disease is what sparks their whole relationship — unlike Cable, Avery’s had a whole community of people facing the same condition, and that’s allowed her to think about what she wants for her future in an entirely different way. Ultimately, Cable and Avery are going to challenge each other in all the best ways — not only will she keep up with him on the battlefield, but she’s going to force Cable to reflect on his deepest lifelong fears. Avery’s struggle is Cable’s struggle, in a real and visceral way.

AIPT: You’ve also got Cable legend Ian Churchill on covers. What would Young David Pepose think if you pulled a Cable and went back in time to tell him?

David: My first introduction to Ian Churchill’s work was when I was 11 years old, when I picked up a copy of Avengers #6 during Heroes Reborn. I am not ashamed to say that I drew and redrew Ian’s take on Iron Man from that issue multiple times — I think his work was my first introduction to what feels like the modern style of superhero artwork, so I’ve been a huge fan for many years. So you can imagine the feeling of my soul leaving my body in excitement when Tom sent me the first issue cover of this series. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to tell Ian this myself since then (and he couldn’t have been more gracious!), but like everything I’ve done at Marvel, this all feels like a full-circle moment for me. Between his incredible talent and his history with Cable in particular, having such a legendary artist like Ian doing covers for our book is such a tremendous honor. Honestly, Young David would probably have a heart attack if he knew what Future David was doing right now.

AIPT: Well, then we better leave Young David be. Finally, just before this mini-series was announced, I tweeted about wanting to see more unexplored stories from the period covered in The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix and you replied saying you did love that mini-series as a kid. Any chance we’ll see some nods or cameos in Love and Chrome?

David: Absolutely, 100 percent. I think if there’s any single Cable story that’s the biggest influence on this series, it’s The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, particularly the final issue. That’s the story that ultimately makes Cable make sense to me — that behind the guns and the powers and the attitude and the backstory, this is the story of a kid with a lifelong disease, who’s had to fight for his life every single day. That’s the kind of struggle that absolutely will shape a person’s entire personality — but I really love seeing that degree of vulnerability to Nathan as a kid, and that’s something that we don’t usually get to explore with Cable as an adult, given how he’s turned himself into this stoic, larger-than-life hero. 

But with Cable: Love and Chrome, we’re really able to have our cake and eat it, too — we get to explore what makes Cable tick as a human being, and to give him real, emotional stakes, without sacrificing any of the epic sci-fi action that’s made Nathan such an enduring character for over 30 years. Mike Henderson and Arif Prianto are doing the work of their careers on this book, making this world feel lived-in and gritty and exciting, and I think everything we’re doing together feels unlike any other Cable stories I’ve read before. This is a story that is simultaneously personal and intimate, while also far-reaching and bombastic — but ultimately, this is a story about not just how Nathan Summers fights to survive against impossible odds, but him discovering why he makes the effort in the first place. I couldn’t be prouder of this book, and I can’t wait for X-Fans to take this trip with us to Salvation Bay and beyond!

 AIPT: And after all that, I’m even more excited to read it! But on that note, thanks for stopping by X-Men Monday, David! Remember, X-Fans, Cable: Love and Chrome #1 goes on sale January 1, 2025. Final orders are due Monday (November 25, 2024), so pre-order to ensure you get a copy!

Now, you no doubt saw the five eXclusive unlettered pages sprinkled throughout the interview — in addition to Mike Henderson’s design for Avery Ryder. But one more eXclusive before we go: The solicitation and cover to February’s Cable: Love and Chrome #2.

CABLE: LOVE AND CHROME #2 (OF 5)

DAVID PEPOSE (W) • MIKE HENDERSON (A)

COVER BY IAN CHURCHILL

A HERO SHALL FALL!

For as long as he could remember, Cable thought he was alone in his struggles against the Techno-Organic virus. That is…until now. Stranded in the dystopian timeline of Salvation Bay, Cable now finds himself fighting to protect an entire city infected with the same disease – but as he battles side by side with Resistance leader Avery Ryder, Cable’s new cause will become personal in ways not even he could expect. With their own mortality staring them in the face, can Cable and Avery survive against the mutated horrors of the Prime Conclave? Or will these star-crossed soldiers discover that their borrowed time has just run out?

On Sale 2/12

Just a programming note — there’ll be no new edition of X-Men Monday this coming Monday, but we’ll be back in December. If you’re in the United States, I hope you have a relaxing Thanksgiving that’s heavier on stuffing than political discourse with your family. And if you’re not in the U.S. or have no interest in loading up on turkey, at the very least, read Uncanny X-Men #308 — a holiday classic.

Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!