It seems like the mutant heroes in Marvel Comics can’t go very long at all before they start fighting with each other. The X-Men have rarely had a moment where different factions didn’t go to war with each other, often because they refuse to open up to each other about the problems and reasons for the fighting. That is happening now with two different versions of X-Force. In Inglorious X-Force #8 by Tim Seeley and Luca Maresca, Cable has a new version of X-Force working together, and another version of the team has formed to fight back. However, what only Cable knows is that this war centers on one specific hero.
Cable and his team are fighting to save a future where Kamala Khan becomes the first mutant President of the United States, but his actions are clouding his goals, and his X-Force team looks more like the violent counterterrorist organization that it originally appeared to be when he first formed it.
This is the eighth issue of Inglorious X-Force, and it all started when Cable returned from the future after he was unable to save the U.S. President in the future, someone who supported both humans and mutants. However, when he arrived, he had holes in his memory and didn’t remember what he had to stop from happening. He sought out a new X-Force team to help him, recruiting Archangel, Hellverine, and Boom-Boom to start his team.
The first person the new X-Force saved was Kamala Khan, the teenage hero known as Ms. Marvel. That is when Cable revealed that he was there to save future U.S. President Kamala Khan. He told her that she would be the one person protecting the world from a war between humans and mutants. He then told Kamala that she now has access to X-Force and him for as long as necessary to protect her and the future of the world. Kamala actually agreed but said she would leave if things got too violent with Cable.
That opening issue also showed that one of these X-Force members was her assassin, and Cable didn’t know which one it was. This is leaving things open, as Cable sends X-Force onto missions and will send each of these three members into action to allow them to prove their innocence of a future crime. However, as Cable said, this also includes him, as he isn’t even sure he’s innocent of Kamala Khan’s murder. At the same time, he has led Kamala into the crosshairs in this series and is using her as bait.
This has led the team through some big moments, as the next person to show up was Domino, one of Cable’s earliest X-Force members and someone he has a long history with. In the fifth issue, Cable and Domino fought side by side against the Mutant Liberation Front, which was led by an internet mutant influencer named Kali, who Cable realized was leading a rebellion against relatable mutants like Kamala Khan. When Domino was helping him, Cable realized a sinister power was controlling him, so he mind-wiped Domino and sent her away. This led to her deciding something was wrong, and thanks to this mental attack from someone she once trusted, she realized she needed help. The first person to find her was Shatterstar.
In Inglorious X-Force #8, the two sides formed, and Ms. Marvel is likely to figure out that something is wrong sooner or later. For one thing, Kamala was able to convince one young man named Resonant to help them find the Mutant Liberation Front and promised to protect him if he did so. He did what he was told, but when the sinister force made Cable attempt to gain an AI from the Mutant Liberation Front’s computer setup, and Resonant walked in on him, something happened. X-Force and Kamala Khan raced in and saw Cable holding a dead Resonant, and Cable claimed he grabbed his gun and it “just went off.”
That is when Cable was taken back to the future and the war he was involved in there. However, Cable’s X-Force is about to find itself in a battle with a newly formed X-Force, as Domino and Shatterstar brought in Warpath, Rictor, and Pug Smasher to help them. While Cable tries to save the future and President Kamala Khan, two versions of X-Force are going to fight, and neither side knows what anyone is fighting for. This is what the mutant world has always been about.
