{"id":4141,"date":"2018-05-20T20:52:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T19:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4141"},"modified":"2018-05-20T20:52:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T19:52:54","slug":"rogue-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4141","title":{"rendered":"Rogue & Gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I regret that Marvel doesn’t just run a single weekly\u00a0X-Men\u00a0<\/em>title and cycle in different creative teams for each arc. \u00a0It seems like a better vehicle for something like\u00a0Rogue & Gambit<\/em>, which deserves more than to be dismissed as a side miniseries. \u00a0(Also, between\u00a0Gold, Blue, Red<\/em> and\u00a0Astonishing<\/em>, two of which are biweekly, Marvel currently produces more than one X-Men title a week, so combining them into a single book would require some welcome restraint.)<\/p>\n

This five-issue miniseries is written by Kelly Thompson, which is something of a catch for the X-office. \u00a0I’m less familiar with artist Pere P\u00e9rez; judging from his bibliography, he’s been around forever without making a huge impact on me. \u00a0But teamed with Frank D’Armata on colours, he’s done some very good work here; classic-looking superhero stuff, but with strong character beats and an ability to keep hordes of Rogues and Gambits from different points in their histories distinct.<\/p>\n

Because, yes, there’s a surprising amount of continuity in this. \u00a0Not that you need to be particularly familiar with the continuity, though; that’s not really the point. \u00a0The point is more that, well, simply that there’s an awful lot of it, which means the characters are dragging a lot of baggage behind them.<\/p>\n

The idea of Rogue and Gambit as a Scott-and-Jean type couple, destined to be together, took root somewhere in the early nineties. \u00a0They weren’t created to be together; not only does she predate him by nine years, but Gambit was originally introduced as a foil for Storm, and was supposedly intended to wind up as a villain. \u00a0But once Gambit became embedded as a regular cast member, he and Rogue were pinned together, and then pretty much entered into a holding pattern of break-up and reunion, until eventually drifting apart into different titles. \u00a0Rogue’s spent the last while in\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em>, Gambit’s drifted off the radar somewhere.<\/p>\n

Despite all that, they tend to gravitate back together. \u00a0The problem being… to what end? \u00a0A big part of the challenge for this book is in making Rogue and Gambit’s coupledom feel like something with legs for the future, rather than a callback to the glory days. \u00a0Smartly, the book’s approach is to stand back, look at their history, and decide that their endless dance is<\/em> their\u00a0status quo. \u00a0And to that end, the book makes good use of continuity, since it uses actual examples drawn from their history, but it doesn’t really matter whether you know or remember them. \u00a0It’s enough to recognise that they’ve been like this for ages, and by drawing on actual continuity for its back story,\u00a0Rogue and Gambit<\/em> positions itself as part of a larger character arc stretching back decades. \u00a0But it doesn’t just do that by acknowledging old stories; it also strikes a tone that feels consistent with that history. \u00a0This is very much a plot that you can imagine being done, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, by Claremont.<\/p>\n

Cerebra detects mutants vanishing from a private couples retreat, which offers to “free mutants of their trauma”, so Rogue and Gambit are sent undercover to investigate because supposedly only a real couple will get past the screening process. \u00a0This is, of course, gloriously contrived. \u00a0Gambit is predictably delighted to go on a mission to the five star resort with Rogue; Rogue, not so much. \u00a0So there’s some actual tension for the therapist to get to grips with in the first half of the series. \u00a0In particular, a \u00a0flashback to their first “meeting”, way back in the Muir Island Saga, does play on the details of the original (and very well, too; basically, Rogue doesn’t want the time when she was still under the Shadow King’s influence to count as their first meeting, and Gambit thinks it does). \u00a0Their first major break-up in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #350 is referenced rather more obliquely, because while it’s an important turning point for them, it was also a desperately stupid story. \u00a0A flashback to Gambit<\/em> vol 5 #17 is remarkably obscure, but still works in terms of establishing where the relationship has got to.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, where this is all heading – and you see why I say this is really quite Claremont – is that over the series, Rogue and Gambit have their memories stolen by the baddies. \u00a0They get superficially (or maybe genuinely) happier and closer as all the emotional baggage drifts out of view and the focus gets back to them again. \u00a0Of course, it turns out that the stolen memories have been made into copies representation memories of Rogues and Gambits from various points in their history, and naturally they’ve got to beat those copies in order to reclaim their memories and get back to full power…<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s one of those Very Literal Dramatisation stories where the villain has powers that very conveniently lend themselves to providing a framework for the character bits. \u00a0I’m not generally a fan of this stuff when it’s done with the likes of D’Spayre. \u00a0Here, though, it works better, because it’s not played for angst; instead it clears the way for them to first remember why they were together, and then come to terms with their shared history.<\/p>\n

Now, granted, it’s still Very Literal. \u00a0The biggest weakness in this series is the villain, Lavish, who really does exist mainly as a plot device to let \u00a0Rogue and Gambit to do their thing. \u00a0Her own arc feels decidedly tacked on. \u00a0The loose idea seems to be that she started off making her own golems to export the emotional baggage that she didn’t feel able to deal with, but Rogue and Gambit, being the heroes, will face down their history and deal with it. \u00a0And that’s fine in theory, but Lavish is too convenient a character for her choices to mean a great deal. \u00a0There’s a slightly ill-advised bit in the epilogue, too, where a couple of minor characters spend two panels more or less spelling out the moral.<\/p>\n

But none of that really detracts from the core with Rogue and Gambit themselves, which works. \u00a0This takes a tired relationship and makes it feel like something you actually want to see again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I regret that Marvel doesn’t just run a single weekly\u00a0X-Men\u00a0title and cycle in different creative teams for each arc. \u00a0It seems like a better vehicle for something like\u00a0Rogue & Gambit, which deserves more than to be dismissed as a side miniseries. \u00a0(Also, between\u00a0Gold, Blue, Red and\u00a0Astonishing, two of which are biweekly, Marvel currently produces […]<\/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":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4141","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\/4141","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=4141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4146,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions\/4146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}