Earth Abides

• Writer - Robert Weinberg
• Penciler - Michael Ryan
• Inker - Ted Pertzborn
• Inker - Rob Hunter
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Lettering - Saida Temofonte
• Colorist - Hi-Fi Design
• Ass't Editor - Pete Franco
• Editor - Mark Powers
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Cable is troubled he didn't protect Moira, his first friend here (iss. -1). He lays flowers on her grave in Scotland, where Storm meets him. He has been fighting all his life, but villains keep coming. She says she knows someone who can help.

  Four days later, Cable sees a movie with Irene, and the Dark Sisterhood observe. They protect drug lords and recently expanded to New York. Lobenzano cheated them, so they kill everyone in his organization and all their families, then send him out as a warning. They plan to kill Cable and his sister.

  Irene says Cable is a hero like Tom Cody, the Michael Pare character in "Streets of Fire," and yells at him for wallowing in self-pity.

  At midnight, Cable takes a cab to St. Bartholomew's in Brooklyn, whose graveyard grate warns, "Man comes and goes but earth abides" (Ecclesiastes 1:4). Storm sent him there to meet Nightcrawler, who says Cable is a soldier and doesn't belong in the X-Men. Moira blamed him for bringing Stryfe and his Legacy Virus into the world. She left him a message, but Nightcrawler makes him chase him before he'll tell. Cable gets angry and chokes him; Storm appears and says they just wanted to make him face his anger at Moira's death. Nightcrawler reads her last message, "To every thing there is a season…" (Eccl. 3:1-8).

  Cable thanks them for dragging him out of his despair. He reconsiders being an X-Man, but Storm says he's always welcome. He goes to the safehouse and watches Kurt Russell in "Soldier," another example of "a man who does the right thing, no matter what the cost."