{"id":4411,"date":"2018-11-22T22:20:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T22:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4411"},"modified":"2018-11-22T22:21:23","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T22:21:23","slug":"mr-mrs-x-1-5-love-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4411","title":{"rendered":"Mr & Mrs X #1-5: “Love & Marriage”"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s really the title of the book, then? \u00a0Because\u00a0Rogue & Gambit<\/em> was a perfectly serviceable title, and\u00a0Mr & Mrs X<\/em> sounds like a regional quiz show from 1982. \u00a0Maybe that’s just a British thing.<\/p>\n

Effectively, this is the second arc of a series that began with the\u00a0Rogue & Gambit<\/em> mini – which re-established them as a couple – and which now continues following their impromptu wedding in\u00a0X-Men Gold <\/em>(which is rightly expanded on in issue #1). \u00a0It’s not a bad idea for a series, at least once you’ve got people to care about the couple again. \u00a0There haven’t been all that many superhero books based on a married couple with equal billing – on their own, rather than as part of a wider team – so the dynamic is relatively fresh.<\/p>\n

Rogue’s struggled in the past to carry a solo series, but Gambit’s worked better in the role. \u00a0Still, at least in the early going, you don’t particularly want stories drawing on Gambit’s solo villains. \u00a0That’d undermine the equal billing. \u00a0You don’t really want them hanging around with the X-Men either, since then it’s a team book. \u00a0Solution: send them off to space on their honeymoon, and then chuck a mission at them. \u00a0That way, they get parity. \u00a0There’s a downside, of course – you get a story that neither of them has any particular connection to, going in. \u00a0But it’s still probably the better choice.<\/p>\n

So we’re off in Shi’ar space, where our heroes join a whole bunch of other characters in\u00a0chasing a macguffin in the form of an egg. \u00a0The thing inside turns out to be Xandra, the genetically engineered child of Professor X and Lilandra and technical heir to the Shi’ar throne, who’s fresh out of incubation but learns quickly thanks to the whole telepathic thing. \u00a0Since Xandra is very desirable for political reasons – and everyone else assumes she’s still in an egg – an array of Shi’ar agents and mercenaries are all out to catch her. \u00a0That means we get not only the Imperial Guard and Cerise and Deathbird, but also the Technet and, um… Deadpool…?<\/p>\n

Okay, Deadpool doesn’t have an especially compelling plot reason to be here, beyond the mere fact that he’s a mercenary and word gets around. \u00a0But he\u00a0did<\/em> have a romance subplot with Rogue over in\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em>, which is worth acknowledging in order to draw a line under it. \u00a0And even without that, he’d clearly be the single most annoying person to gatecrash anyone’s honeymoon, which means there’s a couple of issues to enjoyment to be had in watching him irritate the leads (or rather Gambit, since Rogue both knows him better, and knows how to handle him). \u00a0He also helps keep the pace up in the first half, before Rogue unceremoniously boots him out of the story as things start to get serious. \u00a0It’s a good way of using him.<\/p>\n

Still, this is best when it’s focussing on Rogue and Gambit themselves, and the bits when they aren’t quite on the same page. \u00a0Gambit is vaguely offended that Rogue starts giving him a speech about interrupting their honeymoon to do the right thing, as if she thinks he wouldn’t bother if it was up to him. \u00a0Rogue is smuggling Gambit’s lockpicks because people aren’t as likely to check her. \u00a0When Xandra suggests she could fix Rogue’s powers, Gambit can’t initially hide his frustration that she dismisses it out of hand – though after a bit he does accept the point that these quick fixes have never lasted before, probably because they didn’t involve Rogue actually figuring out the solution for herself.<\/p>\n

Kelly Thompson has a good handle on their relationship, and a fairly rounded take on Gambit. \u00a0In the husband role, his own loveable-rogue tendencies are downplayed, and he knows when he ought to be deferring to Rogue’s wishes – and he does – but he isn’t especially good at concealing the fact that he would have preferred something else. \u00a0He’s a little bit aggrieved that she doesn’t treat him as the grown-up he’s never entirely been, and worries with some justification that Rogue isn’t really taking him into account when improvising her own battlefield plans. \u00a0Rogue, on the other hand, seems to be on her way back to the old “can’t control her powers” schtick, which feels like extremely well-worn territory – even cranking up the problem further, as the final issue does, feels a little like an attempt to avoid the sense of repetition. \u00a0Then again, at least this time round she’s also got a perfectly functioning power-damping collar, so at least we’re not going back to “they can’t touch”, which really would have been a backwards direction.<\/p>\n

Oscar Bazaldua’s art is good and clean, and does well with the parade of Shi’ar C-listers who show up here; the Imperial Guard and the Technet both have plenty of visual potential, which comes out well. \u00a0He does a pretty good Deadpool as well. \u00a0It’s maybe a little antiseptic at times, and his women have a slight babyface tendency, but he can sell Rogue and Gambit’s rapport in their body language, and that’s the really important thing here.<\/p>\n

Still, while I can see why we’re out here, I’m not sure about five issues with the Shi’ar to kick off the series. \u00a0I’ve never been especially interested in the politics of the Shi’ar Empire, and Xandra herself is a bit of a well-meaning naive cipher. \u00a0The story works when it’s a backdrop for Rogue and Gambit’s relationship, but the actual A-plot of everyone chasing after Xandra isn’t all that gripping in its own right. \u00a0Nor does it have any particular resonance for either Rogue or Gambit, aside from the passing connection of Xandra potentially being able to fix Rogue’s powers. \u00a0I guess she’s also a vague echo of Professor Xavier’s successful marriage, but does that really go anywhere?<\/p>\n

Then again, I generally do find Shi’ar stories an unwelcome detour, so it could be just me. \u00a0The Rogue\/Gambit couple does work here, so there should be plenty of good story material once we get back down to Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s really the title of the book, then? \u00a0Because\u00a0Rogue & Gambit was a perfectly serviceable title, and\u00a0Mr & Mrs X sounds like a regional quiz show from 1982. \u00a0Maybe that’s just a British thing. Effectively, this is the second arc of a series that began with the\u00a0Rogue & Gambit mini – which re-established them as […]<\/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-4411","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\/4411","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=4411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4413,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions\/4413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}