Gambit #2 (vol 1)

Gambit #2

Writing: Howard Mackie

Art: Lee Weeks

What Went Down:  Down in New Orleans, Gambit breaks into an Assassin’s Guild base and finds his wife Bella Donna unconscious, but alive.  He then attacks the assassins as they try to sneak up on him.  During the fight, Belle’s father Marius shows up, blaming Gambit for the loss of both his children.  They duel with swords, and Gambit spares Marius’ life after defeating him.  As the rest of the assassins move in to kill Remy, Rogue shows up to help him out.  They beat all the assassins and plan to take Belle with them.  Marius tells Gambit to use the Thieves’ Guild’s Elixir of Life to cure Belle. 

After the two X-Men leave, Julien shows up and kills the remaining assassins.  He confronts his father, blaming Marius for letting Gambit take his sister.  Marius denounces his son, and Julien attacks the old man, leaving his fate unresolved. 

Gambit takes Belle and Rogue to the Thieves’ headquarters and interrupts the tithing ceremony.  The Tithe Man disappears, saying he will return when they are not busy.  Gambit implores his father to use the elixir on Belle, and fights off one of the angrier thieves named Pierre.  Gambit and Rogue leave after Jean-Luc refuses to use the elixir on an outsider, and after they leave Pierre tells Jean-Luc that they need three vials for the elixir to be complete. 

Julien, Pierre, and an army of assassins attack the Tithe Man, trying to get the vials for the elixir.  Julien tells Pierre that he has to steal the vial that the thieves have to complete their deal.  In a house that Gambit owns, he thanks Rogue for staying with Bella Donna while he goes to Paris to retrieve part of the elixir.  Gambit mentions that the house is for when he settles down, knowing that he probably never will.  Gambit visits Marius for information to save Belle, while Gideon apologizes to Candra for having to leave.

How It Was: The opening with the super-melodramatic panel of Gambit screaming his wife’s name is not a good sign for the series.  Side note: why is Bella Donna naked…shouldn’t the Assassins caring for her put clothes on her since she is a patient.  Again, the fighting is very cool, but Gambit is challenged to his second duel by an assassin in a matter of pages.  So this is getting a bit repetitive, and the fight doesn’t actually progress the story.  In fact, the fight just stops and Gambit calmly takes Belle away. Marius as a character is pretty generic.  He does get a bit of an arc this series, but he doesn’t do anything particularly defining or memorable.  Also we get the first inference that Julien wants to be a little closer with his sister than is normal, which is a might bit over the top and uncomfortable, at least for this reader. 

The problem is I miss the fun, wise cracking Gambit.  There is yet another melodramatic ham fest when Gambit announces to his father “We will have words!” And Jean-Luc doesn’t turn out to be any more memorable than Marius, other than that Remy’s dad is calm and Belle’s dad is angry; Mr. Lebeau hardly even reacts upon learning that his real son Henri is dead.  None of these new characters, from the fathers to the Tithe Man, are really that interesting or compelling.  There’s also a serious problem with Candra’s scheme if her plot is to reward the guilds with enough power that they can eventually beat up her and Tithe Man and steal more power for themselves.  On top of that, Gideon gets one panel to reveal he’s not actually in this story, so what was the point in having him in the first two issues at all?

There are some nice bits toward the end as Gambit tells some of his origin to Rogue.  And learning that he has a piece of land set aside is a nice little character point for Gambit.  Although it is rather sexist that Rogue is being sidelined as a nurse; I like to think it’s more to do with being Gambit’s series than her being a girl, but we all know it’s a little bit of both. 

Hmm…what else?  The scenes of Julien carving up the assassins are well sequenced and have the right mood I guess.  Sorry, not much is coming to me.  None of these characters being introduced are that interesting and Rogue doesn’t have anything to do except ask Gambit questions that let him give exposition about his history; she helps fight, but it doesn’t feel needed or necessary.  Plus the fact that Gambit has to retrieve three elixirs is frustrating; it’s like a generic video game fetch quest delivered to our hero.  It’s just not very original.

Completists Only