Cable & Deadpool wraps up the four-part "Enema of the State", and if you can work out what the title actually had to do with anything in the story, you're a better man than I am.

By the way, this issue can lay claim to an odd historical footnote.  Since last issue was a House of M crossover, Cable & Deadpool is the first book to participate in the event and then come out the other side.  In other words, this issue is the first unequivocally post-House of M Marvel comic.  It would be nice to say that everything's completely changed, but actually, everything's exactly the same as ever. 

Of course, you could hardly expect them to give away all the big plot developments in an issue of Cable & Deadpool when the event itself is still running for another three issues, and the story is set on a remote island, which gives everyone a decent excuse for not noticing.  But it should be amusing to see how other books try to put off acknowledging any major changes.  (X-Men and Black Panther are going to have this problem with their upcoming crossover, and may have a bit more difficulty getting around it.)

Anyway, the story.  After jumping through various alternate dimensions, Deadpool finally returns to the real world with Cable, who was inexplicably reincarnated as a baby in the House of M continuum.  It's the sort of story where it's really best not to ask about that sort of thing and just run with it.  Cable starts to revert to normal (because, er...), and we get to do the whole "Shall I sacrifice my powers to save Deadpool's mind?" routine.

Seriously, I realise that a large part of the point of this exercise is to unscramble the mess left by the X-Force miniseries, which inconveniently killed Cable off.  And it follows that the reset button is going to be hit at some point.  But how many times have we done this routine where Cable ends up sacrificing or losing his powers?  It's getting a bit repetitive.

I'm not particularly wild about this storyline.  It's extremely bitty, and it really does require you to give a lot of leeway in terms of random events happening, as even the script acknowledges.  It gets by on the momentum generated by Deadpool himself as a loudmouthed anarchist who drives stories slightly crazy just by being there, and it's never less than good fun.  But it doesn't come together in the way that I might have hoped.

Rating: B

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