I dunno.  I take a week off to go on holiday, and I come back to twelve X-books.  They're trying to cripple me, aren't they?  I reserve the right to be unusually concise with the ones that are still trudging their way through the middle of ongoing storylines.

We'll start off with Cable & Deadpool #7, which begins the book's second arc.  God only knows what's happening with this storyline.  The first few issues were solicited under the title "The Passion of the Cable", as a six-parter.  That's a great title, by the way.

It's now been renamed "The Burnt Offering" - still a religious label, but one that makes the Cable/Christ parallels slightly less blatant.  Mind you, the story itself still makes it blindingly obvious.  The December solicitations, however, seem downright confused.  They list issue #10 as "Passion of the Cable, part 4 of 6", then immediately go on to announce that the title's been changed to "The Burnt Offering" for legal reasons (yeah, I'll take that with a pinch of salt), and describing it as the conclusion to the storyline.  In which case it's been cut from six parts to four, but since the solicit-writer can't even keep the title of the storyline straight, god knows what I'm meant to make of it.

Anyway.  Cable is Jesus, only cooler, because he has guns.  If Jesus had had guns, Christianity would have been much better.  A semi-automatic assault weapon beats a tambourine every time.

In the manner of modern-day superheroes with world-changing aspirations, Cable is wandering the world doing liberal-type stuff.  Throwing loggers out of the Amazon, arresting the spread of AIDS, generally being a one-man version of the Authority.  Also in the usual way of things, the governments of the world aren't best pleased, but the public pretty much likes him.  This seems a bit over simplified, and it stretches credibility that the only actual wrongdoing that SHIELD can pin on him is consorting with a known villain (ie, Deadpool).  What about chucking all those loggers out of the Amazon - isn't that fairly illegal too?

Deadpool, meanwhile, is racing around trying to get the Macguffin Of The Week, which will enable him to defeat Cable.  He doesn't actually know whether he wants to beat Cable or not, but it would be nice to have the option.  In a rather surprising choice, the Cat (an old Master of Kung Fu villain) turns up to interfere with him.

Set-up, then, and the basic idea of a superhero going into world-changing mode and throwing his weight around is one that's been done repeatedly in recent years.  If you want a version with religious overtones, there's even Dan Jurgens' Thor as an example.  This makes for perfectly solid reading, and Deadpool's babbling is amusing as ever, but it's not clear at this stage whether Nicieza and Zircher have any novel take on the subject.

Still, it's an angle that makes sense for Cable's character, and it's entertaining enough.  A fairly good start to the storyline.

Rating: B

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