By New Mutants #88, the comic book has Cabelmania running wild. Following up on the last issue, Cable has been captured by the Freedom Force.
Cable has been captured because the government assumes he’s part of the Mutant Liberation Front (afterall, his clone Stryfe is the group’s leader). Freedom Force has offered him his freedom (kind of ironic coming from that group) in exchange for helping them track down the MLF, whom they believe possesses some sort of atomic weaponry (which reminds us a lot of recent geopolitics). Instead, Cable decides that he’s going to break out. In hindsight, there are a couple of lines of dialogue about Cable that are sort of funny, one with government agents alluding to Cable being a legend in the American black ops community and the other about his cybernetic arm being a prosthetic instead of the techno organic virus wreaking havoc on his body. This issue was written by Louise Simonson and drawn by Rob Liefeld, and this part of the book was typical Liefeld.
The other storyline, on the other hand, was pure Simonson. And by that, I mean well written character interactions. The New Mutants return to X-Factor’s ship after an Asgardian adventure. There’s an interesting juxtaposition in how the New Mutants deal with their parents. Cannonball is more than happy to tell his mother about their latest happenings, while Sunspot explains how he goes out of his way to avoid his father. Sunspot’s family dynamic is pretty interesting, as his father’s death sets up a lot of the upcoming New Mutants (and later X-Force) subplots.
There’s another scene that is really funny in hindsight, as Boom Boom tries using a new skimpy dress to seduce Rictor, who in turn is more smitten with Wolfsbane. This is amusing, as almost twenty years later Rictor comes out as being gay. Poor Boom Boom.
Ridiculously Awesome 