That’s the title for the final trade paperback, if you’re wondering. \u00a0Because, yes, it is time once again for the X-books to indulge in the Cancellation of Gambit. \u00a0We had it in 2001, we had it again in 2005, and now here it is again.<\/p>\n
In some ways it’s surprising that Gambit hasn’t been able to support a title better than this. \u00a0On paper, he ought to be one of the most suitable X-Men to sustain a spin-off book. \u00a0He’s a loveable rogue adventurer who has ample excuse to go off and have his own stories. \u00a0He wasn’t specifically conceived as a team player; if I remember rightly, his creator Chris Claremont originally planned for him to be a recurring guest rather than joining the team. \u00a0He’s got a back story and mythology of his own, which has nothing much to do with the themes of the X-Men and might even be better off explored in its own book.<\/p>\n
But it’s never really worked, commercially at least – though Fabian Nicieza’s first volume did good work with the character, and this series had a good stab at being a fun heist comic. \u00a0Perhaps one factor here is that Gambit just isn’t the hot character that he was in the early 90s. \u00a0Publishers are always fond of going back to an idea that’s worked in the past, but sometimes a character has his moment, and after that he’s best used as a familiar figure in the crowd.<\/p>\n
There’s also the fact that while Gambit does have his own detailed back story and mythology, it takes the form of the bloody Thieves Guild. \u00a0A wonky mishmash of vague mysticism, inexplicable secret society, and dreadful clothes, the Guild were introduced in a Ghost Rider crossover back in the early 90s and have remained a bit of a mess ever since. \u00a0Nicieza kind of got them to work at times, but I’ve always felt the character would be a lot better off just being a cavalier Cajun rogue. \u00a0They are, in fact, one of those rare bad ideas that has arguably done serious damage to the character – as they’re too deeply embedded in his back story to simply ignore.<\/p>\n
Hence these final few issues of the current series, in which Gambit is asked by the Guild to choose between being a hero and being a thief. \u00a0Naturally he ends up choosing both, though it’s not quite as straightforward as that since the story is fairly clear that his thief identity comes first, and that Gambit will do whatever he can to manipulate both sides so that he never has to choose for real. \u00a0You can see how that could have worked as a set-up for the series going forward.<\/p>\n
The main plot involves Gambit being put forward as a potential leader of the Thieves Guild – now being presented as a worldwide network of guilds – and being sent to do the usual random heist to prove himself. \u00a0Naturally that mission turns out to be a set-up by Gambit’s big rival, which gives writer James Asmus the chance to loop back and put a bit of closure to the book, both by bringing back the main villain from the first year, and by having a bunch of Gambit’s allies turn up to bail him out.<\/p>\n
There’s some fairly drastic retooling of the Guild concept and of their trappings here, and moving the focus away from New Orleans may also be part of that. \u00a0That’s all for the best, because if you’re going to use the Guild at all, at least this allows the more convoluted aspects to be downplayed. The story still ends with Gambit as their new leader, which is one of those things I might not have done in the final issue of a cancelled series, but what the heck; it’s supposed to be his secret life anyway, so if it never comes up again it’s not necessarily a problem. \u00a0And the story also wisely makes a point of positioning Gambit as the pragmatic guy who rejects many the Guild’s more ridiculous mystical traditions.<\/p>\n
Had the series been able to go forward with this idea, Asmus’ revamp of the Guild under Gambit’s leadership might well have been an improvement. \u00a0But the Guild itself remains a difficult idea to take seriously – a secret cult of kleptomanics? – and Thieves Guild stories usually want us to take it very seriously indeed. \u00a0Why couldn’t Gambit just have been a career thief? \u00a0What did any of this Guild stuff ever really add to his stories?<\/p>\n
I’ve largely enjoyed James Asmus and Clay Mann’s take on Gambit, largely because it\u00a0has<\/em> played him as simply a thief and not worried about the details beyond that. \u00a0But I can see how they find themselves compelled to come back to the Guilds, given that the theme here is about Gambit’s competing identities as thief and hero, and this is the back story they’ve got to work with. \u00a0There’s plenty of good stuff here; they’ve got a strong take on Gambit’s character, and the series has generally succeeded in constructing effective heist sequences that are fun in their own right, as well as playing into the story. \u00a0The twists in these last two issues have been well played, and there’s a lovely feint halfway through the final issue where the bad guy manages to shoot Gambit (even if the back door used to get out of it is a bit unsatisfying).<\/p>\n It’s been a good series for the most part, which understood Gambit’s appeal and played to it reliably; whether bringing in the Guilds would have been a good move going forward, I have rather more doubts. \u00a0But if you’re going to do the thief-versus-hero dynamic – which is surely the central conflict with Gambit – then how long can you really avoid them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That’s the title for the final trade paperback, if you’re wondering. \u00a0Because, yes, it is time once again for the X-books to indulge in the Cancellation of Gambit. \u00a0We had it in 2001, we had it again in 2005, and now here it is again. In some ways it’s surprising that Gambit hasn’t been able […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097","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=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}