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In which Gambit does Stardust; Wilbur Weston holds no one’s redemption; Gambit is unequivocally bisexual; Lucifer is kinda goofy; and we still don’t know what’s in the box.
X-PLAINED:
- Family businesses
- Gambit vol. 2 #1-4
- What Gambit’s been up to
- Some peculiar parallels
- Father Miguel Bonavita
- Sister Katrina
- Father Marcelo
- A box
- Tante Mattie Baptiste
- Olivier Stoker and/or Lucifer
- Fancy captions
- The Cross of Redemption
- Anielle, who may or may not Hanael and may or may not also be a fallen star and/or angel
- Gambit’s subconscious
- Octopus Gambit
- The Grigori
- Sibyl
- Cerberus
- Wormwood
- Pew surfing
- CyberFork
- Spitting locusts, sadly
- A bad take on the trolley problem
- An ambiguous ending
- A pecular transition
- Genre displacement
- Warlock as a form of art
- Elon Musk’s closest X-villain analog
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As a big Gambit fan, I still don’t know what to make of this series. I’ve read it a couple of times and it always reminds me of that X-Factor one-shot: Prisoner of Love. It strikes me as a little surreal and, well, off. I’m also not a big fan of Klaus Janson’s pencils. I love his inking work but his pencil work just leaves me cold.
A couple of things occurred to me while listening. The first is that Gambit’s boots are probably made out of vibranium. It’s never been stated anywhere, but it’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why he makes no sound in those things.
The second is that, having binged your podcast several times now, a lot of your complaints about Gambit seem to to come specifically from when Jim Lee is drawing him. There might be other instances later on, but Jim Lee seems to be the only one who does non-consensual kissing. He’s still a scoundrel for most of the ’90s but definitely less… handsy.
Also wanted to add that there is a sequel to Brood Trouble in the Big Easy (or Brood Feud) in the pages of Ghost Rider Vol. 2 called “Brood Feud II” in #67-68 (I think). Wolverine and Gambit are the only X-Men to show up in it but I felt it worth mentioning.
I’m flat-out amazed that the punchline of the cold open was ‘after Gambit, Belladonna dated Night Thrasher’s brother’ instead of ‘after Gambit, Belladonna dated Night Thrasher’s brother… Bandit!!”
Were the Gambit/Bandit near-rhyming names too low a fruit? I always thought they were hysterical!
*too low-hanging a fruit, I mean
Here’s my X-Toy display 🤙🏻 https://photos.app.goo.gl/XTSkeg9U7aapxHcn6
I suspect that the box contains something to return the stars to the heavens once it’s been identified.
Since the Astral Arbalest, better know by it’s nickname “the Sign of the Cross Bow”, is too big to move from the Vatican Archives in such a small box, I suspect it is the smaller, more portable, Zodiac Slingshot, or “the Cosmic Catapult”, which should still manage to project even the most recalcitrant astral manifestation back where it should be.
This does seem a very odd storyline, slamming a lot of religion into a character who has had no truck with religion in the past, just at the point where he is looking for redemption, which seems a bit… convenient?
(It might have been fun to have the whole story unfold up to the armpits in Catholic symbolism and metaphor, and at the end have Remy just comment that “And de weird t’ing after all dat is, dat Gambit is Episcopalian!”)