Yes, I'm a day late, but it's easter.  And besides, it's a very quiet week, with the X-books all in mid-storyline.

Cable & Deadpool #27 is the only one finishing a storyline this week.  "Born Again" is a two-part storyline billed, rather strangely, as a prologue to the "Blood of Apocalypse" storyline which is already nearly finished over in X-Men.  Really, though, it's more of an exercise in damage control.

Cable is in an unusual position among superheroes.  He's been set up for years with Apocalypse as his arch-enemy.  Whenever Apocalypse is around, Cable really ought to be focussing on getting rid of him.  That's why he travelled back to the present day in the first place.  It also means that Cable actually becomes a more interesting and flexible character when Apocalypse is out of the way, since then he can develop a new agenda.  Ever since Apocalypse was quietly kicked to the curb a few years back, that's how writers have approached Cable.  That's especially the case for Fabian Nicieza, who's built this title around Cable's new world-building aspirations.

So unlike most heroes, Cable hasn't floundered in the absence of his nemesis.  Instead, he's flourished without the burden of having to fight Apocalypse and worry about his convoluted back story.  But unfortunately for Cable, Apocalypse is also an A-list X-Men villain, and so he's back again anyway.  Curses.

Nicieza evidently has no desire to write Cable versus Apocalypse, round nineteen.  And so the point of this two-parter, from the look of it, is to address Apocalypse's return head on and tell us directly why Cable won't be bothering with him.  So we get a bit of blether about Apocalypse serving as a rallying figure for the remaining mutants to oppose, and a speech about how the important thing is to destroy what Apocalypse stands for, rather than Apocalypse himself.  Basically, though, it's a rationale for getting back to the story in progress.

To that end, I'm all in favour of it.  I don't want to see Cable fight Apocalypse again either.  The current direction of the book is much more interesting, and if Cable's argument in this issue doesn't really make sense, I'm quite inclined to let it pass.

But if I'm being honest, it doesn't make for a terribly good two-parter.  Invariably, it ends up being precisely the sort of story that the book is better off avoiding.  Flashbacks to early Apocalypse continuity, ranting villains... it's readable enough, I suppose, but the book could be doing much more interesting things, and usually does.  It's a necessary evil - a two-issue detour to explain why the book is otherwise sticking to its direction.

Rating: B-

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