The X-Men have had several members over the years, but 36 years ago, a shocking mutant arrived for the first time and changed everything that the mutants knew about themselves. The X-Men debuted in X-Men #1 in 1963, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to represent the ideas of racism, prejudice, and hatred for people simply based on how they were born. In 1982, Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod created a new team called the New Mutants in Marvel Graphic Novel 4. Bringing in teenage mutants to replace the missing X-Men, it offered up a big change for the world of mutants.
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It was in the pages of New Mutants #86 that a new mutant was teased, and Cable finally made his first full appearance in the next issue, created by the team of Louise Simonson and Rob Liefeld. Cable changed everything about the world of the X-Men, and nothing has ever been the same.
Cable Makes Debut In New Mutants #87 In 1990
Of course, this wasn’t Nathan Summers’ first appearance in Marvel Comics. He first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #201 as the baby of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor. However, after developing the techo-organic virus, Scott sent his son into the future, where there was a cure, and the baby could survive. However, when Cable returned, he had no idea of his heritage and place in the world, but he did know that Sam Guthrie (Cannonball) was one of the possible immortal mutants forming in the world.
All these things began to play out in his first full appearance as Cable in New Mutants #87, which was released on January 9, 1990. Cable showed up as a force of nature, displayed as a black-ops mutant soldier working with a group called Wild Pack. However, Stryfe also showed up in the same issue (although his status as Cable’s clone remained a secret for a long time), and it seemed that these two were headed into a war with the New Mutants stuck in the middle of the mess. It didn’t take long for Cable to win over the New Mutants, become their new leader, and then, only 13 issues later, that comic book ended.
Marvel ended the New Mutants and replaced it with X-Force, and Cable turned the former teenage students at the Xavier Institute into his own paramilitary mutant team that were more soldiers than heroes. It also led to a huge conflict between X-Force and the other teams, including the X-Men and X-Factor, especially when Stryfe framed Cable for attempted murder, and before anyone knew he was Cable’s clone.
There had been nothing like Cable before this in the X-Men comics, and this was a change for the better. While there were some over-the-top moments thanks to Rob Liefeld’s tendencies, Cable made the New Mutants better, and X-Force was something bigger and grander than anything these teenage heroes had done before. Now, after 36 years, Cable remains one of the most iconic mutants in Marvel Comics, and it all started in this X-Men spinoff series.
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