Cable: Love and Chrome #3

History

The series was announced in September 2024, with writer David Pepose and artist Mike Henderson confirmed as the creative team; the book launched January 1, 2025, edited by Tom Brevoort with C.B. Cebulski as Editor-in-Chief. Pepose, whose pre-Marvel work on creator-owned titles like Spencer & Locke and The O.Z. won him a Ringo Award for Best Single Issue, approached the Cable assignment with a deliberate accessibility goal: strip the character's notoriously tangled continuity down to its two most emotionally resonant pillars — time-travel and the Techno-Organic Virus — while keeping Cable grounded in what Pepose called a 'Mad Max with a time machine' action framework. Henderson, whose Marvel interior work had been absent since Dead Man Logan wrapped in October 2019, returned to the House of Ideas for this project, with Arif Prianto providing colors and Joe Sabino lettering throughout; cover duties across the run fell to Ian Churchill, a pairing that gave the series a visual DNA rooted in Cable's 1990s heyday.

Trivia · 9 facts

• Issue title: 'The Last Call' (confirmed via Marvel Fandom wiki listing for the series).
• Released on-sale March 19, 2025; carries a May 2025 cover date.
• Written by David Pepose; interior art and inks by Mike Henderson; colors by Arif Prianto; letters by Joe Sabino; cover by Ian Churchill with colors by Morry Hollowell.
• Edited by Tom Brevoort; published under a Rated T+ designation at 25 story pages.
• Third chapter of a self-contained five-issue miniseries; serves as the narrative midpoint where Cable's struggle with the Techno-Organic Virus reaches a physical and psychological crisis point simultaneously with Avery Ryder's assault on the Prime Conclave's headquarters.
• Mike Henderson depicts Cable's internal battle against the virus as a mindscape sequence in which skeletal, Terminator-like machines pursue and attempt to 'assimilate' him — a visual metaphor for the virus overtaking his body — while an X-ray panel shows his bones being encased in metal in the real world.
• The issue reintroduces the antagonist Cicada, who reappears in a manner that raises unresolved questions about their origin, time-travel capability, and specific vendetta against Cable — threads set up for resolution in the final two issues.
• The complete miniseries (issues #1–5) was collected in a trade paperback released September 23, 2025, also incorporating the companion one-shot Cable: Timeslide.
• Two variant covers were published alongside the main Ian Churchill cover: an Adedotun Akande variant and a Matthew Waite April Fool's Day variant.