Can Remy Lebeau save the woman he loves, and her mom, and his ward, young ‘Ro, from grotesque intergalactic bounty hunters? Will morally ambiguous space mercenary Bounty (that’s her name) turn out to be a letdown or a quicker picker-upper? Will Chris Claremont wrap up all his plot threads in this miniseries finale? Find out in Gambit #5, written by Papa Chris Claremont, drawn by Sid Kotian, colored by Espen Grundetjern and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Stephanie Burt: I’ve been cheerleading, rooting for, hoping for this throwback miniseries since issue #1, when Gambit and de-aged Ororo — that’s ‘Ro, for now — began their trip down the Mighty Mississip’. I’ve also been expecting them to end up in Remy’s native New Orleans. And I’ve been wondering whether the story we got — in which Remy falls in love with ex-Marine and would-be superhero Marissa while Marissa’s mom learns mystic ways with ‘Ro — would wrap up in some neat, satisfying way, and whether these new characters would lead us anywhere.
We have our answer. It’s a big N.O., and that doesn’t stand for New Orleans.
Austin Gorton: It’s hard to argue Gambit #5 is anything but a letdown. It’s basically an issue-long “punch ’em up” in which Gambit and the other heroes fight a bunch of newly created alien bounty hunters. There’s some Claremont tropes we can discuss that are at least fun in a Leo pointing meme kind of way, but otherwise, it’s a pretty lackluster conclusion.
Bonehead Moves
Stephanie: All of Gambit #5 takes place during a super-spectacular Lila Cheney concert in Huntsville, Alabama, where Kotian and Grundetjern outdo themselves depicting the stage, the musicians, the concert’s hot lights: It’s a massive, old-school, outdoor arena rock event, the kind Journey used to put on, and Lila Cheney would probably feel pretty burned by the comparison to Journey, but Alison Blaire — the no-longer-disco Dazzler — might not mind. She’s got a cameo in here, too!
Austin: I’m not even sure that Dazzler cameo quite works given where this would fit in her personal chronology, between Uncanny X-Men #260 (where, in the wake of her trip through the Siege Perilous, she decided to use her powers to help people) and X-Men Vol. 2 #5 (where she doesn’t seem to remember her life as one of the X-Men and gets taken to Mojoworld alongside Longshot, but is at least hanging out with Lila Cheney at the time). But in the grand scheme of things, it works about as well as having Lila on hand does.
Stephanie: It’s Dazzler. Maybe there’s a time loop involved. You could write an explainer, No Prize-winning fanfic involving Longshot that places her on stage at the right moment. That might be more fun than the punch-a-thon here, which feels like the kind of thing great comics writers develop on a deadline, when their first choice for an ending proves unworkable, or inconsistent with other books, or … I don’t know, I’m making excuses. I had high hopes!
Austin: Part of the problem with Gambit #5 (which reaches back to the entire series) is Gambit’s romance with Marissa. She is a fun character, and I wouldn’t mind seeing her again. But I never really bought Gambit’s infatuation with her as anything more than an attractive lady to whom he is attracted — certainly nothing on the level of her being the love of his life she’s depicted as in Gambit #5. Yet that romance is meant to be the emotional core of this issue, the place from which all its drama and tension derives. With it lacking, the rest of Gambit #5 is lacking.
Stephanie: Marissa was so much fun in issues #2-4, too! But the fun didn’t come from her dalliance with Gambit (Hey, everyone dally with Gambit; it be part of Remy’s charm). The fun came from how much Marissa wanted to wear Gambit’s costume and fight supervillains and lead the hero life. Here she doesn’t get to throw a punch; she just exercises her super-strong will power (what?) once she’s semi-consumed by (wait for it) Bonehead (a baddie I like, but more on that later).
Wave Goodbye
Austin: Similar to how the Gambit/Marissa romance leaves me cold, while I can understand Marissa’s mom’s anguish on an intellectual level and a base emotional one — the fear of a parent for the well-being of their child — beyond that general notion, nothing Claremont has done has sold me on the specifics of their relationship. Granted, that’s a problem in many limited series/finite stories set in a serialized narrative which introduce new characters that exist only within its boundaries, but Claremont used to be much better about making readers connect to and care about one-off characters in just a panel or two, let alone two or three issues. Here, I don’t WANT Marissa to become food for a cosmic bounty hunter, but I also don’t really care, because this is probably the last comic I’ll ever see her in. Claremont needs to make me care despite that, and he mostly didn’t.
Stephanie: Thank you for saying what you just said, because now I get to don my late-Claremont-defender hat and boots. I would love to see Marissa and her mom Gabriella stick around, because Gabriella’s a neat mentor for young Storm and Marissa’s ambition to be a hero (and relive her U.S. Marine days) strikes me as a cool motivating force. Presence of Gambit very much optional, though I do like his briefly heartfelt regret: “Ah should never have pulled you into this life o’ mine. Ah’ll regret that t’my dyin’ day.” Claremont knows exactly what he’s doing with these Claremontisms at this point, down to the way the monstrous Bonehead promises to devour Gambit’s lady love “body and soul!” Can we talk about Bonehead yet? No?
Austin: To be clear, I wouldn’t mind seeing Marissa and Gabriella again, or seeing Claremont develop the connection between ‘Ro and her ancestor further. I just wasn’t given enough in the course of this series to get deeply invested in their predicament, knowing I’m probably never going to see them again.
That said, I think this series never actually made it to New Orleans because Claremont wanted to leave it open ended for a sequel. Once he gets Gambit and ‘Ro to New Orleans, he’s in danger of synching back up with their previously published story from Uncanny X-Men #267. On the one hand, I can admire his desire to leave things open for a return to this period (for as much as I was let down by this issue, I wouldn’t mind seeing more “Adventures of Gambit and ‘Ro” either). On the other hand, leaving the completion of their road trip to the vagaries of publishing and a dice roll that sales would support a follow-up mini leaves the whole thing with a bit of an incomplete “when are they going to get to the fireworks factory?!?” feeling.
Stephanie: Bingo. They could at least get to Jackson. Or Baton Rouge. I’d love to see a writer with roots in those areas get an arc with this throwback story before the characters reach the Big Easy. I’d also love to see another arc of Claremont and Kotian on these characters, because I got pretty invested in #1-4.
Austin: The trio of bounty hunters hired by Solarz are confirmed to be new characters in Gambit #5 (by dint of them receiving names, and those names not being familiar to me at all). They are Bonehead, Sunami, and Cannibird, and they are very much latter-period Claremont creations, in that they get by mostly on a strong visual image and a funny name, because modern Claremont doesn’t really get the chance to stick around and develop new characters like he used to.
Stephanie: Still got my hat and boots here. These guys are a look, a name and a power set, they’re bizarre and a bit horrific, and they show up and fight as a team: They’re like the original-flavor Marauders, most of whom also lacked personalities and scared the heck out of heroes they fought (and sometimes murdered)! They don’t make up for the lack of character moments, nor for the romance-centric end (or is it?) to the Marissa plot, but they stick in the memory!
Austin: I will grant that “Cannibird” is a delightful and memorable name, and that Bonehead has a deeply disturbing power (Sunami is like the worst Marauder in that their power is both undefined yet also hyper specific).
Bonehead is also an agent of one of Claremont’s favorite tropes, body transformation. The gist of his deal is that he’s like a walking suit of armor that puts people inside himself and feeds on their energy, causing them to wither up amid tremendous pain. He begins the process on Marissa at the beginning of the issue and Gambit frees her by the end, but not before her time inside Bonehead has caused her to take on an almost skeletal appearance. Kotian does an effective job of visually depicting the horror of the whole sequence, and it is suitably grisly and horrifying, but also seems a bit at odds with the overall tone of the miniseries, concluding what had largely been a fun superhero road trip romp with an almost Cronenbergian body horror sequence.
Stephanie: It’s a horror trope! And it gives Kotian the chance to draw horror, which he didn’t get to do earlier: I hope he had fun. I had fun watching his art on the baddie Sunami, who appears to have decided to skip the T in her name for no reason: She manipulates water, great waves, swaths and gouts at a time, so she can drown her opponents or wash them away. ‘Ro gets to use her skateboard as a surfboard. It’s cool. Austin, do you understand what happens to Grandma Gabriella here, or why? She calls on the ancestral god who stands behind Storm and gets … claws like Deathstryke’s? Or root-system hands with sharpened points? Because she’s a latent mutant? Or what?
Austin: I have zero clue. More frustrating, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to know, and either Claremont or Kotian failed in making it clear, or if this was something Claremont was teasing for a possible future sequel and it’s meant to be a mystery.
Legalize Cannibird
Stephanie: After encouraging words about the flesh-withering, people-eating Bonehead and the surf’s-up baddie Sunami, I regret to inform our readers that Cannibird has no 420 connections, nor does he open up any cans. He (or they? or she?) says “thy” and “thee” and “shalt” like a Thor villain and has a big beak and claws and, I guess, eats victims. Bounty ends up throwing Cannibird right at Gambit, who administers de coup de grace while Bounty shouts “Duck!” A missed chance for a pun, no? Because when Gambit ducks, Bonehead fires a laser beam and hits Cannibird: crispy duck!
A battle of wills ensues, with no quarter asked and none given! Marissa defeats her foe body and soul, using the focused totality of her will power to wrest control of her flesh and bone back from the clutches of the alien killer. She may lose a contest like this someday. But not today, and not to him. (Takes deep breath.) Also Lila bops Solarz, the pinstriped business baddie, with a flying microphone, so he’s out. Is Lila the best there is at what she does?
Austin: Lila really doesn’t need to be in the story at this point, but I love that she’s there nonetheless.
Stephanie: After the fight we learn from Bounty that “no one’s ever beaten them before” (meaning this trio of space baddies) and that Gabriella has seized Sunami’s “armor and weaponry.” So maybe Marissa and Gabriella can have adventures together. But they’ll have to take place in space, because Marissa has to go into space alongside Lila to get her withered and horrifying flesh healed. Kotian makes some lovely decisions here about panels and angles and compositions. He’s really making it work.
Austin: He’s definitely injecting a lot of energy into the pages. He is also making the most out of the fact that these villains really only exist as delightfully goofy names and gonzo designs.
Stephanie: But the feelings don’t work: Marissa cares more about her medical status than about staying with Gambit (Reasonable: it’s more than just a flesh wound). But then Gambit offers to follow her into space, which would leave our young skateboarding ‘Ro on her own. ‘Ro watches from far above in the light rig, and sheds a tear. Then she sees Marissa talk Gambit into doing the right thing: remaining on Earth to help his young ward: “Right now, Cajun, she needs you more. And both of us know it.” Both of them should know it, anyway. Then again, Remy’s a bit of an idiot where romance is concerned. I still don’t believe he’d abandon this kid, or even consider abandoning her.
Austin: That rang really false for me, too. It’s another example of Claremont not really selling the Gambit/Marissa romance. Was he infatuated with her? Sure. Is he so in love with her he would leave Earth and ‘Ro? No. Don’t buy it. It reads like Claremont writing his way out of the dilemma of needing Gambit to stay on Earth (because of … all those comics he’s already appeared in after this) but also not wanting him to look like a superficial cad by abandoning his disfigured would-be girlfriend without a second thought.
Stephanie: My favorite page? It’s the last one, where ‘Ro — who seems to have forgiven Gambit fast after he proposed to abandon her — tells him, “I’m sorry, but if this is what love looks like, I’m never letting it happen to me.” Awwwww. (Just wait till you meet Yukio.) Rereading Gambit #5 makes me like it more, even though it’s a bit of a disappointment and the Marissa plot doesn’t work. It be fun, anyway.
Wild Cards
- Lila Cheney continues to dress like Clare Grogan — I want that skirt! — and after the concert she drinks from a metal bottle. I wonder what’s in it.
- Lila’s band also contains at least one alien with a classic BEM head. And a keytar. Crossover with Jem and the Holograms, anyone?
- Editor Mark Basso wraps up Gambit #5 with prose recommending earlier issues to fill readers in on the continuity: a good choice. All throwback stories should end with one.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton
