THE CREATORS: Written by Fabian Nicieza.  Reilly Brown provides most of the art, with the odd fill-in issue by Ron Lim.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2007: With Cable out of the picture, Deadpool tries to re-establish his mercenary career, hooks up with an inept HYDRA agent called Bob, and ends up appearing in a team-up book.

Cable & Deadpool went off the rails in 2007, through no fault of writer Fabian Nicieza.  It's now coasting its way to cancellation with issue #50 in February.

Although sales on this title have always been modest, they've also been fairly steady.  When you bear in mind its history, it's actually done remarkably well.  It followed on the heels of Agent X and Soldier X, two very shortlived titles.  With the lead characters merged into a single book, Nicieza faced an uphill struggle.  The characters had very little in common other than the fact that they had been created by Rob Liefeld; and neither of them had much of a fanbase left.

Nicieza's solution was to write an odd-couple title, in which a lot of effort was spent on explaining why the characters were stuck with one another in the first place - or, at least, why their paths kept crossing.  At the heart of the series was the island of Providence, Cable's attempt to build a liberal utopia and influence the future.  The key question was how much we could trust Cable, both in terms of his honesty and his judgment.  As for Deadpool, he acted as an outside perspective on Cable, a sometime acolyte, and a source of comic relief.

This worked remarkably well, and four years later, we're still here.  But Marvel have a big new idea for Cable, which involves yanking him out of this series, putting him in the X-Men, using him in "Messiah Complex", and then giving him a whole new title of his own.  Not only did this leave Cable & Deadpool without one of its title characters, it also ripped out the central premise which had made the series work.

So, in 2007, Cable & Deadpool was effectively re-tooled as Deadpool Team-Up.  Deadpool meeting various heroes and returning to his personal redemption schtick.  Some of these issues were genuinely quite funny, but the book simply wasn't as satisfying without Cable there to provide a balance.  Deadpool's erratic attempts to become a hero have been the focus of many stories in the past, and there's a limited amount to be done with that theme.  The contrived nature of team-up books has also contributed to some very awkward plots.

The series also devoted a lot of space to Bob, Agent of HYDRA, an ineffectual junior HYDRA agent kidnaped by Deadpool and kept as a sidekick.  The dynamic with those characters doesn't really work; the last thing Deadpool needs is a comedy sidekick.  If anything, he needs stable characters to bring him down to earth and anchor the series.  That said, artist Reilly Brown has been doing some very good work this year, and has shown an ability to balance superhero action with silly comedy in the same scene.

It's a shame that the series has been derailed in its way, because Nicieza had found an unexpectedly successful formula.  That's gone now.  There are still plenty of enjoyable moments in this series, but the loss of Cable has really done it enormous damage.

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