CABLE 91 SPLASH PAGE 12 BY MICHAEL RYAN & TED PERTZBORN

Here is a splash that escaped me several times before the stars aligned (not that I pursued it aggressively either). In that it was travelling a lot over the years it seemed from sellers to auction houses before nothing else was in the way of me buying it (as it was never a priority before).

It comes from the Robert Weinberg run on Cable that generated quite the little buzz back when. I never read that run, having stopped reading the title after that great Joe Casey/Ladronn run (and several Pruett issues after that), likely due to too many titles on my pull list.

(Should someone recommend it, I may have to seek the collection that collects it all.)

Weinberg was mostly paired with a Wildstorm alumni in Michael Ryan whose work I liked when he produced for that studio. Always solid work, well in line with what Jim Lee and the 90s expected. Despite the qualities his art offered, he seems to have vanished from comics around 2010, like many before him.

Now what’s not to like with this splash? We have a “stealth armor/costume” version of Cable going on a mission during the night where he is attacked by a huge werewolf type creature.

I like Cable’s defensive and surprised stance which I find realistic given the context. You may be a badass psychic mutant soldier from the Future, when a monster jumps you, you are not going to directly react on the offensive.

The werewolf is quite impressive, if only for its size which is well enhanced by Ryan stretching his left open arm to the forefront. The only real thing (slightly) bothering me with its design is that thing coming out of its mouth that is not its tongue but rather some sort of anatomical weirdness. And to add to the fun for my fellow Wildstorm readers/lovers, its design really harkens back to those of the Were-Nation’s in Whilce Portacio’s Wetworks (which Ryan drew 3 issues off).

I don’t know who that inker is and to be honest, this looks like an alias to me but whoever that is, he did a very nice and slick work on those night blacks.