36 years ago, Marvel Comics asked a 22-year-old artist to create a new leader for a flagging X-Men spin-off team. Although he wasn't the writer, he created a weathered cyborg soldier from the future carrying a secret from the past named Cable, with writer Louise Simonson. Cable quickly became one of the key pillars in the early '90s X-Men glow-up and one of the quickest comics-to-adaptation transitions, as within two years, he was a key part of X-Men: The Animated Series. And while he became more well-known for his other major Marvel creation in Deadpool, Liefeld has carried a Cable story in his head since his creation, intended to be the definitive Cable story. 

In this week's Marvel Matters, I dive into the complicated decades-long history of Cable's unpublished story as told by Rob Liefeld.

In 2000, Rob Liefeld got close to telling his Cable story with an announced series called Cable: First Contact. That project fell through; however, some illustrations from it were in a 2004 X-Force series with Fabien Nicieza, but Liefeld's definitive Cable story remained untold. In 2023, Marvel re-announced Cable: First Contact as part of a wave of new stories by Liefeld and Marvel.

"This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for 33 years," Liefeld wrote on Instagram in 2023. "I’m finally getting the chance to talk of Cable’s adventures in early mutant history!"

The Cable: First Contact cover released in 2023 as part of the announcement showed Cable standing with the original X-Men, seemingly intended to signal that the time-traveling mutant at one point traveled back to the origin of the X-Men team for an adventure creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby couldn't even dream of.

Over the years, Liefeld has shared several unpublished covers from the 2000 Cable: First Contact series that, among other things, show a younger Cable with billowing long hair, which, as a long-time Cable fan, has lived rent-free in my brain for decades (at the expense of many other memories, but I have no regrets). 

So... what happened to Rob Liefeld's definitive Cable story?

So, taking stock: at the beginning of 2024, Liefeld had three announced projects with Marvel in the works - Marvel Team-Up, Cable: First Contact, and a series called Time to Kill with Cable's son, Major X, and even a fourth teased by the artist/writer, titled Deadpool: Baddest Blood. The first happened, but the rest ended up a casualty of a very public falling out (public on Liefeld's side) that led him to publicly quit the company, and decry the company and its new boss, Kevin Feige, in the wake of the Deadpool & Wolverine movie.

And that Cable series? Again, dust. According to Liefeld, he also turned down a separate offer by Marvel to write a story for Cable's 35th anniversary in 2024, and even another Cable project intended to be released after Cable: First Contact.

"Here's the deal with Cable: I have said all I'm going to say," Liefeld said during a panel at the 2025 Comic-Con International: San Diego. "Last year at this time, Marvel was like, ‘Rob's going to do a [35th] Anniversary; Rob's going to do a Cable story.’ And I said, ‘No, I'm done, I'm done. I said all I'm going to say with Cable.’"

He also said that Marvel is mishandling the character. 

"Cable, he's in [Marvel’s] hands, I wish they would make him a little bit more of a priority," Liefeld said. "I wish they would treat him a little bit better. I wish they treated him like I wanted them to."

That being said, Liefeld has a history of publicly quitting Marvel and coming back later. It's possible that he and/or Marvel could compromise at some point, possibly on an anniversary, to one day bring this out. Liefeld has said his drawing skills are beginning to be stretched thin, but, in 2023, he called Cable: First Contact one of the projects he wanted to do before he is done with comics.

"So I’m just trying to bucket list everything I can," Liefeld told ComicBook.com in 2023. "So this one Cable story, I believe would be my last story." 

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