Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert
What Went Down: The issue starts off with Rogue chucking a giant boulder at Iceman. She’s mad because Bobby keeps asking her where they are going, but it is obvious that something is wrong since she is overreacting quite a bit. Rogue can’t explain what’s wrong with her; she saw something in Gambit’s mind that she can’t remember. Iceman calms her down, and they continue their drive.
Gambit arrives in Seattle in one of the X-Men’s jets. Inside a bar near the University of Washington, Rogue flirts with all the patrons and asks for free drinks. She’s about to touch someone’s face when Iceman stops her, causing her to lash out and break the bar. Rogue flies away in a huff, leaving the crowd to realize that Iceman is a mutant and form an angry mob. Gambit shows up and frightens off the crowd with some exploding cards.
In an apartment, Graydon Creed is watching a news report on the hostages from the Gene Nation storyline in Uncanny #325. A man named Clay is asking Creed to run for president and tosses him a campaign button for Creed ’96.
Rogue ends up in an abandoned theatre that is somehow significant to Gambit’s history. Gambit and Iceman show up right after, and Gambit goes down to talk to her. Rogue is relieved to see that Gambit is okay. Gambit knows what is bothering Rogue, but he doesn’t want to tell her his secret and hopes she can get over it. Rogue freaks out and brings part of the ceiling down. Gambit keeps trying to frame their kiss as yet another obstacle, but Rogue gets mad and flies away.
Iceman chases after her and tells her that they both have issues that they need to settle. Gambit charges a rope and throws it at Rogue so that she doesn’t get away. Rogue tries to get Gambit to tell her what happened at this theater, but he insists that it’s buried. Gambit says Rogue has to free herself, but she doesn’t know if she can go without touching him again; Gambit says they can touch each other on the inside (figuratively, you perverts!) . Rogue decides to leave and be by herself for a while.
Iceman consoles Gambit, saying that he tried his best. Gambit tells Bobby to leave him alone for a while. While walking in an alley, Gambit encounters Sinister. He tells Gambit that he cannot pretend to be a follower of Xavier and hints that at one time Gambit needed Sinister’s help. He also hints that soon Gambit will have to play the hand Sinister dealt him before disappearing.
How It Was: I like the idea of containing this particular story to one issue. Unfortunately this issue is double-sized, and there doesn’t appear to be enough story to fill all those pages. So we get an issue of Rogue overreacting…a lot. Seriously, she gets angry and breaks or attacks something at least four times in one issue. Insert joke about mutants and that time of the month. There’s an entire segue way in a bar that goes absolutely nowhere and serves only to create some action to fill up a couple of pages.
But honestly, there is a lot of emotional mileage to be had here. The kiss between Rogue and Gambit has created a lot of drama. There’s the secret that Gambit’s afraid of, the way this affects Rogue’s trust and sanity, and the ongoing problem that they can’t touch each other. And if this had been a twenty-two page comic, I feel like it might’ve worked. Yes, some of the dialogue is really schmaltzy, like when Gambit talks about being able to kiss Rogue’s tears, but I always really liked the line at the end where Rogue tells Gambit that he was exactly what she expected. The real problem is that this secret has been teased out for months and months in the Rogue and Iceman scenes, and the end of the story doesn’t tell us what Gambit did, only that it involved Sinister.
Of course, looking back at 1995, this was pretty significant information. Learning that Sinister and Gambit worked together was a shock, and it did lend credence to Bishop’s theory about Gambit being the traitor. It just never felt significant enough for me. Maybe if the X-Office had followed up on it right away; Gambit’s secret gets jerked around for years, and by the time it is revealed, most readers had pretty much figured out what the X-office was going to do with it.
It should be noted that this is Fabian Nicieza’s last issue of X-Men. He continued to work for Marvel for a number of years, sometimes on the satellite X-books, but also on a number of other Marvel projects. He returns to the X-Men in 2001 to write the very excellent X-Men Forever mini-series, so there is that to look forward to in the far, far off future. On the whole, I’d say that his run was pretty remarkable; thirty two issues is nothing to shrug off, on top of all of the one-shots and annuals. For the most part he ended on a strong note with the Age of Apocalypse as well as the very good Avalon story in X-Men. While his final issue isn’t his strongest work, it does feature some good dialogue and an honest attempt to deconstruct the relationship of two of the characters that made his run so good. It’s unfortunate that it had to be so long and drawn out.
C
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