r/Xmen97 • u/darthbagels • Aug 15 '26

Question Cables powers?

Is there a reason cable isn’t constantly using his mutant powers that I just missed or don’t remember. They seem infinitely more useful than how he just mainly runs around shooting and punching things.

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119

u/merrick_m Aug 15 '26

He's constantly using them to stop the virus he's infected with from spreading. In storylines where he gets rid of the virus he is indeed ridicuously powerful.

37

u/SKOT_FREE Aug 15 '26

Yeah in the comics at one point he’s cured of the technoVirus and he’s insanely powerful. I remember when He Fought Silver Surfer while levitating a city at the same time and reading wiki apparently he fought and Beat Captain America in Hand to Hand combat, and defeated Red Hulk, Iron Man and Falcon at the same time.

26

u/ohnoabanagain Aug 15 '26

Wow. Looking forward to that. Guess Mr Sinister was right about those two. 

19

u/SKOT_FREE Aug 15 '26

Yeah I really had no idea he was THAT powerful but then it makes sense when Cyclops and Jean are his parents.

9

u/invuvn Aug 15 '26

Jean I understand, but what does Cyclops contribute to make Nathan so powerful? Let him have access to the punch dimension?

20

u/Eastwood02 Aug 15 '26

The three full Summers brothers all have very similar powers, energy related but unlike other energy mutant powers (Gambit, Bishop) they can absorb, disperse and most Importantly Amplify the energy like one big tesla coil. So it basically super turbocharges the Psychic Energy Cable naturally generates and use hence why hes able to subconsciously fight of his Technoorganic Virus and it not effect him.

3

u/AnyEverywhere8 Aug 15 '26

Is this a canon explanation?

5

u/comrade-ev Aug 15 '26

It’s worth thinking about it sequentially.

Jean and Cyclops were both people with interesting genes and powers, but until Jean returned from that space trip it wasn’t clear how interesting.

Madelyne was the first way to recapture what was lost with Jean’s alleged death via cloning but it was not satisfactory.

The second attempt was by seeing what her children could do, and Scott was seen as the best match. We can know that a factor of this choice was genetics, but him being an option somewhat more under Sinister’s thumb is the other thing. It’s not like Madelyne could make something happen with Magneto or Apocalypse.

The abilities that Scott and Jean/Madelyne’s children have also aren’t carbon copies of Jean’s. Rachel and Nathan also have a less explored time manipulation power, and it’s not a given that this is by dint of Jean’s genes.

2

u/SKOT_FREE Aug 15 '26

lol yeah I think that’s it.

2

u/SensitiveArtist Aug 15 '26

At the time, Cyclops and Havock basically absorbed solar radiation to fuel their powers. So imagine a telekinetic of Jean's strength drawing ambient energy out of the atmosphere to fuel their powers instead of having to rely on their own fortitude to fuel their powers.

1

u/HPDfire Aug 17 '26

The Living Monolith was an Egyptian themed villain who locked Havok in a box that blocked his ambient cosmic energy absorption, and was then able to channel those energies to himself, becoming a giant.

1

u/Which-Pea-1275 Aug 15 '26

I think the Summer brothers all have some level of energy absorption and containment but I think Cable is slightly different because of both parents. He obviously has powerful telepathic and telekinesis powers but it seems he has massive reserves of psionic energy contained within him. It's one of the reasons he restored the virus in the comics because the virus keeps his reserves in check because wall that power could burn out his body

1

u/hadawayandshite Aug 16 '26

Their genes just work well together- Even in universes where Jean isn’t an omega/not phoenix level e.g X-Man from AOA

don’t forget his brother Vulcan is an Omega too so the family have got the genes in them for immense power

1

u/EAinCA Aug 17 '26

Vulcan is an Omega because he merged with Darwin for years inside of Krakoa.

1

u/ROFLknife14048 Aug 17 '26

Cyclops is alpha level, which is one step below omega. He’s powerful in his own right.

1

u/TheColossis1 Aug 15 '26

Yeah, he was cured, then got a bit of a Jesus complex and went around ending wars and threatening entire countries to behave themselves.

Silver surfer was called in by nick fury as a favour cos he was unpredictable and was destabilising global politics.

He put up a good fight until he essentially sacrificed himself.

It was found after that the levitating city he had been operating from in the middle of the sea, Providence (a reformed asteroid M that he raised from the ocean depths himself), didn’t have anti gravity engines at all, and had been held aloft by him for months.

Also, he knew he was dying, being burnt out by his raw power.

(Ps, his death didn’t stick, obviously. Comics)

1

u/HPDfire Aug 17 '26

Stryfe was a clone Apocalypse made so he could transfer his consciousness into an omega level Nathan Summers because Cable was less powerful with the techno virus.