{"id":10925,"date":"2025-03-27T22:48:05","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T22:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10925"},"modified":"2025-03-28T20:57:23","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T20:57:23","slug":"uncanny-x-men-12-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10925","title":{"rendered":"Uncanny X-Men #12 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #12<\/strong>
\n“Some Kinda Way”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gail Simone<\/strong>
\nArtist: Gavin Guidry<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE X-MEN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gambit.<\/strong> This is a self-contained spotlight issue for him.<\/p>\n

The flashbacks to his childhood take place, according to him, at a time when he “wasn’t quite wild yet, not quite feral”. He’s been adopted by Jean-Luc LeBeau at this point, but hasn’t yet been fully accepted into the Thieves Guild. If we’re going by the account of his early life in Gambit<\/em> #1 (1999), this almost certainly means that he’s ten. According to that story, Remy was always seen as significant in New Orleans Guilds circles because of his strange eyes, and Jean-Luc had been keeping an eye on him throughout his life, but wasn’t able to take him in earlier due to guild politics. In the years running up to this, he’s been a member of a street gang called Fagan’s Mob, learned to fight and pick pockets, and already befriended Bella Donna Boudreaux. Everything here is basically consistent with that.<\/p>\n

Remy’s powers are apparently starting to manifest at this point. He’s promised to stay out of trouble but winds up getting into a fight with some other Assassins Guild family members, which the Vig gets him out of, leaving him in debt. (See below.) These events also lead to him meeting Marcus St Juniors for the first time, while in hiding from the Assassins Guild. It turns out that the whole thing was engineered by the Vig, and this story is basically Gambit standing up to him when he tries to get back into Gambit’s life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He correctly anticipates how both Jitter and Rogue will react to events in the previous issue, and seems to be the quietly emotionally intelligent one.<\/p>\n

Rogue.<\/strong> She’s upset about her stunt with Jitter in the previous issue, wonders what she was thinking, and frets about whether it shows that she’s unfit to lead. This makes more sense if you see the previous issue as a self-doubting Rogue attempting to rise to the occasion with a botched attempt at Motivation the Wolverine Way.<\/p>\n

Wolverine<\/strong> and Nightcrawler<\/strong> have cameos at the end, but don’t contribute much.<\/p>\n

Jitter. <\/strong>Rogue’s stunt was in fact successful at motivating her – in fact, all of the Outliers are up at the crack of dawn to train in the makeshift “Danger Room”.<\/p>\n

Deathdream<\/strong> asks Ransom<\/strong> to teach him how to box; he doesn’t give a reason, and both Calico and Ransom privately note that, given his powers, Deathdream is very unlikely ever to have a need for hand to hand combat skills. It seems to be more his way of trying to connect.<\/p>\n

Calico<\/strong> is now wearing a “Mutant and Proud” T-shirt.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marcus St Juniors\u00a0<\/strong>has been running Haven since Remy was a child, and gave him shelter when he was on the run from the Assassins Guild as a ten year old.<\/p>\n

MacKenzie Deneer<\/strong> – the mother from issue #6, who was oddly effusive in her praise for Nightcrawler in issue #10 – shows up at the end of the issue trying to persuade the mayor of New Orleans to “do something about the mutants”.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Vig.<\/strong> An enforcer for Jean-Luc LeBeau, at least when Remy was young – since we haven’t seen him hassling Gambit in any previous New Orleans stories, presumably he’s been away for a while. Before Jean-Luc, he worked for someone called “the Mink”, presumably another crimelord who hasn’t come up before.<\/p>\n

He’s presumably a mutant, or at least a superhuman of some sort; he has reptilian skin and pointed teeth, and seems somewhat resistent to damge. On the other hand, Gambit (as an adult) can handle him without too much difficulty, and Gambit seems to think that the Salvatore family ought to be a serious concern to him. (Admittedly, they are<\/em> members of the Assassins Guild.)<\/p>\n

He makes no attempt to conceal his appearance, wears a suit, and seems comfortable with using his appearance for the intimidation factor. His modus operandi seems to be to engineer situations where people think they owe him a massive favour, and then demand 25% of their earnings, with thinly veiled threats if they don’t pay. The word “vig” is short for “vigorish”; it’s an American term which originally meant the bookmaker’s cut of a gambler’s winnings (the sense in which the Vig is notionally using it), but also means the interest charged by a loan shark (the sense in which he’s actually\u00a0<\/em>using it).<\/p>\n

In Remy’s case, the Vig engineers a conflict with the Salvatore family from the Assassins Guild. This apparently motivates Remy to pay the Vig for years to come, though he evidently stopped at some point. The Vig rather implies that it was no later than the time when he joined the X-Men. It’s not entirely clear why the Vig takes in interest in young Remy; it might be because he sees Remy as personally significant, but it might also just be because of his link to the patriarch of the Thieves Guild.<\/p>\n

For some reason, the Vig demands that Gambit clear his arrears by handing over one of the four Outliers. It’s not clear why the Vig wants this – perhaps he just thinks he can traffic them – or why he seems so confident that his reputation will keep Gambit and the X-Men in line after so long out of touch.<\/p>\n

OTHER FOOTNOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 6 panel 5: “I just found out I like [cinnamon]”. Issue #9.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 1: Chaoui<\/em> is a Cajun French word (borrowed from Choctaw) for a raccoon. Presumably the reference here is to Gambit’s dark eyes.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 3: “In the memory of a boy prince…” This flashback takes place after Remy has been adopted by Jean-Luc LeBeau, then the patriarch of the Thieves Guild. According to Gambit’s origin flashback in Gambit<\/em> #1 (1999), Remy was adopted by Jean-Luc at the age of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #12 “Some Kinda Way” Writer: Gail Simone Artist: Gavin Guidry Colour artist: Matthew Wilson Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort THE X-MEN Gambit. This is a self-contained spotlight issue for him. The flashbacks to his childhood take place, according to him, at a time when he “wasn’t quite wild yet, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10925"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10932,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10925\/revisions\/10932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}