New Mutants #88-89 (1990): Cable joins New Mutants

Picking up right where last issue left off, Cable is a prisoner of Freedom Force, who are trying to convince him that Rusty and Skids are criminals partnered with Mutant Liberation Front in an effort get him to cowboy up with them, but Cable isn’t having it.  During the interrogation, it becomes clear that Freedom Force know who Cable is, and that he’s an ex-government agent who changed sides and has been working to undermine government anti-mutant operations for quite a while.  So he’s given a back-story that we, the readers, aren’t in on yet.

Of course, he escapes custody—and heads straight for X-Factor/the New Mutants because he wants to form an alliance with them (since they are pro-Rusty and Skids).

These issues, like last time, are mostly about Cable. This is the reboot of the X-universe to one that centers around characters created in the 1990s.

And Wolverine. Of course lots of Wolverine.

The New Mutants are also kicked out of their own book by X-Factor–where Boom-Boom has a new costume and is showing a lot of leg.

Boom Boom is now happily being sexualized.  She’s apparently competing for male member attention with Rahne, who is still prim and proper and doesn’t even want any such attention.  In fact, she’s going to move back to Muir Island to be with Moira MacTaggert and the “new X-Men.”

Cable is chased across New York by Freedom Force, causes a ruckus, and eventually The New Mutants meet him.

And of course it’s a huge fight, which ends with Cable and The New Mutants returning to X-Factor base to team up.

At the base, Cable and Moira meet—and they’ve clearly met before, at a time when Cable wasn’t a cyborg.  Moira has an issue with Cable using the New Mutants as a “children army,” but she’s out there with Legion, she’s recruiting Rahne, and she’s a long-standing partner of Professor X.  Hypocrite much?

Actually, we will later learn that she’s possessed by Shadow King so it’s not really her fault.

Also not her fault she, too, is now wearing a miniskirt. Rahne can tell something is wrong.

Lots of changes going on.

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