Matthew Cable
46 years ago - Matthew Cable is born.
28 years ago - 18-year-old Matthew Cable enlists in the army.
26 years ago - 20-year-old Matthew Cable is attached as a support unit to special forces working with S.H.A.D.E. agents.
24 years ago - 22-year-old Matthew Cable completes his term of service with the army. He becomes a reservist while he studies criminal justice, but is approached by S.H.A.D.E. to become an agent, investigating mysterious monster sightings.
22 years ago - 24-year-old Matthew Cable travels to a small European country to track stories of a monster attacking people. He meets Abigail Arcane, one of the victims, who convinces him to look deeper into the creature's origins, proving that the Patchwork Man is her father Gregori Arcane turning into a monster by her uncle Anton Arcane. He helps her destroy her uncle's lab, seeing him fall from his castle to his death. Abigail comes back to the States with him, helping him with his investigations.
18 years ago - 28-year-old Matthew Cable arrives in Louisiana with his wife Abigail Cable to track the illusive Swamp Thing.
17 years ago - 29-year-old Matthew Cable chooses to step down as a S.H.A.D.E. agent when he is hired by wealthy scientist Eric Loveday ast an expert on tracking the Swamp Thing. They are finally successful, but it is revealed that Loveday is in fact Anton Arcane, disguising his deformity, having approached Avery Sunderland and revealing that the Swamp Thing may be a result of Alec Holland's Bio-restorative Formula so that he will fund his research. Arcane rebuilds himself into a hideous monster to confront Swamp Thing, and is ultimately killed. Cable becomes a local cop.
13 years ago - 33-year-old Matthew Cable's drinking worsens, and hIs relationship with his wife Abigail Cable deteriorates. His depression allows Anton Arcane to possess him, using him to psychologically torture Abigail and eventually kill her, forcing her soul into hell. Matt is able to steal control from Arcane, allowing Alec Holland to defeat him. Matt is left with no brain activity for months before Abigail mercifully chooses to end his life support.
Matthew Cable started out as the heroic leading man character in the original Swamp Thing comic, but as that story has evolved in some very strange directions, This original one-note leading man has gone on to experience some truly drastic changes. He becomes incredibly useful for us as a framing device for these stories, but even after building a whole timeline for this character, we still have a long way to go...
Matt Cable's Comic HistoryMatthew Cable's first appearance was in Swamp Thing #1 in 1972. He was the government agent assigned to protect Alec and Linda Holland as they set up their secret Louisana labs. As the series of tragic events unfolded that led to Alec Holland's transformation into the Swamp Thing and the eventual death of Linda, Cable was left chasing the monster through the woods, swearing into the night that there would be a reckoning between them.
Rather than stay in Louisiana, the series quickly began to span the globe, stumbling from one monster encounter to another. which meant that Cable constantly chasing and trying to capture Swamp Thing was effectively the main framing device of the series. When he eventually succeeded Swamp Thing finally revealed that he was in fact Alec Holland, leading to them starting to work together. Matt & Abigail vanished from the series in its final issues when they assumed Alec was dead, and Matt would later make a brief appearance in a Showcase series, showing up to arrest Valentina Vostok of the new Doom Patrol. |
The new 1982 Swamp Thing series didn't include any of the original supporting cast in its early non-Alan Moore stories, but eventually Matt and Abigail were reintroduced with whole issues of exposition explaining the complex backstory of what had happened to them. Essentially, After they were married, Matt was targeted by the government agency responsible for Swamp Thing's accident, subjected to electroshock therapy, and left with crippling alcoholism and a mysterious ability to manifest his monstrous hallucinations into reality. These last few issues of Swamp Thing, before Moore took over, are a sudden roller-coaster of horror concepts, and it's easy for a small detail like the fact that Matt Cable suddenly, inexplicably had reality-warping powers to somehow get lost in the shuffle.
Once Moore took over the series, a lot of the tangle of ideas was either straightened out or gently laid to the side. Abigail was, of course, the main love interest of Swamp Thing, but the fact that she was married meant that a lot of their connection was left unspoken. Matthew seemed to lose himself in his alcoholism, right up until it was revealed in the titanically terrifying Love and Death storyline that his despair had actually allowed him to be possessed by Anton Arcane, who used him to torture Abigail. Matthew was able to exert himself one final time, reclaiming his own body so that Swamp Thing could defeat Arcane, leaving him in a coma without any brain activity until eventually Abigail mercifully asked for his life support to be switched off. |
And that is just about as much of Matthew Cable's story as we'll be examining for now...
Our Matt Cable StoryIt's actually pretty important that we make certain distinctions with Matthew Cables' story in order for other stories to play out correctly. First, we made the distinct choice to make him a S.H.A.D.E. agent. In our timeline, S.H.A.D.E. was a paranormal investigation organization during World War II, but at this point in history it has actually gone rogue, working to catalog and control the monsters of the world. While this does mean that Matt isn't TECHNICALLY working for the government so much as for a private organization, his role in the story still works just the same, and it goes a long way to explain why this operative keeps getting assigned duties revolving around chasing monsters.
In fact, that's another big change we made. In continuity, Cable just keeps finding himself in situations that involve monsters, since that was the framing device of the comic. Now he has a very specific reason to be there. He'll be the one who goes to Abigail's country to track the Patchwork Man and help her confront Arcane, and later he and Abigail will be headed to Louisiana entirely on assignment from S.H.A.D.E. to track Swamp Thing. While he won't be developing any reality-warping powers, he will begin to suffer from alcoholism when he loses his job. Cable eventually sacrifices himself to save Abigail not just from Arcane, but also from himself, and that idea is just too brilliant not to include. And for now, that's as much of Matthew Cable's story as we need to adapt... |