Gambit’s condition is worsening, causing an unexpected shake-up in the roster of the Louisiana X-Men. But is it merely magic that is taking over his form and behavior, or is it something far more sinister? Uncanny X-Men #33 is written by Gail Simone, drawn by Luciano Vecchio, colored by Matt Wilson and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Adam Reck: Hey, Austin, hope you’ve got enough tickets to go on this WILD RIDE!
Austin Gorton: Ugh, I don’t even like roller coasters. And it looks like this one has some kind of trippy-ass fly demon motif.
Adam: Too bad! I know we meet the minimum height requirements — and so does returning artist Luciano Vecchio — so let’s queue up and take off!
What’s for breakfast?
Adam: Why don’t we start with what’s happening with the Outlie– er, New Mutants, back in Nawlins? As promised, Monet and Quicksilver have arrived to lead the team in Rogue and Gambit’s absence. It isn’t going well. Before we get into the conflict, a quick elephant-in-the-room check — I guess Graymalkin Prison did actually close off-panel as suggested in the recent Hellfire Murder? Not that it doesn’t bring me joy, but it was absolutely insane to drag that story out for that long and have it end the way it did.
Austin: Right, and then deny us the catharsis of actually seeing it shut down. Like, what was even the point of showing Monet as the de facto warden forcing former teammates to hang out in prison until the paperwork or whatever could be processed? Like, just end it with the Perimeter story and do this, where Monet is at Haven House and Shaw is talking about being free in Hellfire Murder.
Adam: Anyway, we’re getting the classic “that’s Magneto not Professor X” thing here where the kids don’t like their new parents, and Monet is of course a snob who mistakes Mrs. St. Juniors for “the help.” Oof.
Austin: This scene is complicated, as CXF EiC Dan Grote pointed out in our Slack, by the fact that Monet is Muslim, so asking for no pork is less snobby and more religious practice, while at the same time, toast with chutney is very much a “that’s the help and I expect things my way” kind of move. Which honestly seems like a hornet’s nest Simone would have been better off avoiding, even as I understand her goal with the scene to do the compare/contrast thing between Monet/Quicksilver and Rogue/Gambit.
Adam: It’s definitely a scenario ripe for dissection, but it does serve its purpose. Likewise, Pietro seems like he means well by helping the sleepwalking Calico back to bed, but honestly if you don’t know a child and they don’t know you maybe don’t assume you can just PICK THEM UP AND CARRY THEM.
Austin: Yeah, Quicksilver needs a better understanding of boundaries (also, are “kids who hurt inside” really one of his soft spots, above and beyond any other hero/decent person?). I’m also not sure if his comment about Gambit not leaving if he truly cared about Becca falls on the right side of his “snotty indifference” characterization, because he knows Gambit isn’t just off having fun but trying to save himself (and, indirectly, the kids) from the consequences of being a dragon man.
But also, the tenor of Becca’s revulsion to Quicksilver seems pitched a little high. Like, I get the point, she misses Gambit and he’s not Gambit and her social skills are warped in the first place, but her reaction just seems way too extreme, like how the Outliers were all acting like Rogue and Gambit were leaving forever instead of just on a vacation last issue. Deathdream says of Becca, “that’s what a broken heart looks like.” HE LEFT FOR A GOOD REASON AND INTENDS TO COME BACK.
I get the Outliers view Rogue and Gambit as their parents (just like Rogue and Gambit view the Outliers as their kids), but my 11- and 5-year-old boys understand the idea that when their mom and I go away for a vacation we still love them and will come back, so it feels silly that these teenagers can’t seem to wrap their heads around it.
Adam: We saw a bit of this last issue when Rogue and Gambit said goodbye and they all collapsed into teary messes. I get these are feral children with traumatic upbringings, but boy they sure are emo.
Seeing the tension after breakfast, Monet does try to make up for all of this by getting the kids out to the Lincoln Logs Danger Room. They get to wear their new looks and are super psyched. Also, Mutina is here again and … has a costume? How did Mutina get a costume? Did Rogue leave one out on the porch for her? Gail’s really gotta decide whether this character is on the team or not.
Austin: Shit or get off the pot with Mutina already! I bumped against both the “having a costume somehow” and the “pops up for one panel” business.
Adam: Agreed. She’s either on the team or an adversary. This standing on the sidelines thing is just annoying.
You mentioned Quicksilver’s thoughtless comment after he tries to help Calico again and she sics Ember on him. Vecchio and Wilson’s art looks great throughout the issue, but this sequence (along with another we’ll highlight in a sec) is really impressive. Drawing horses is the bane of many an artist, but Vecchio is able to capture Ember’s fluid motion and work with Wilson to effectively showcase the special effects of both Ember’s flames and a really cool representation of Pietro’s speed.
Featuring Gabriel, Devil-Hunter! (Who’s that?)
Adam: In a previous arc of Uncanny, The X-Men fought an Agatha. That Agatha (Timly) turned out to be a very deep cut from a single issue of Werewolf by Night. This issue is headlined as “Guest Starring Gabriel, Devil-Hunter.” Gabriel isn’t as random a character, having first appeared in Haunt of Horror and later as a recurring character in the 1990s series Hellstorm: Prince of Lies. That said, dude hasn’t been on page in almost 22 years!
Austin: I may pick nits with some of Simone’s series-long tendencies, but as a comic history nerd, I can get behind her “let’s bring in the most deep-cut guest stars as possible” routine. Why go to Doctor Strange or Doctor Voodoo or even Doctor Druid for magical help when you can go to Gabriel the Devil-Hunter.
Adam: Oh, totally! I think it’s a fun pick. Though the cover tagline is a bit over the top. Really seemed like Gabriel did a quick turnaround on taking Gambit’s case, too. Before Rogue and Gambit show up, he’s like, “I’ve been waiting,” but then when they do show up he’s like, “Go away,” and two panels later he’s like, “Yeah come in, I guess.”
Austin: Rogue references something called the “Iron Cathedral” to convince him to help, and I have no idea what that is — and a quick Google search turns up naught. I wonder if this is a new bit of past mutant lore Simone is going to weave into this story, maybe some kind of historical Spanish Inquisition/Salem Witch Trials-style church-sanctioned persecution of mutants?
Adam: Could be another unexplored corner of Marvel history or something we just don’t get the reference to.
The Fly
Adam: Gabriel’s attempt to “exorcise” Wyvern from Gambit involves holding a copy of the Darkhold and accidentally summoning the demon Thenassil, Tormentor of Thieves. And damn, Vecchio and Wilson do a killer job with this creepy fly devil. Together it looks almost painted more than drawn, and even though this extra layer of demon feels a little like a hat on a hat, I liked the design too much to dislike this turn of events.
Austin: It’s a case where a lesser art team definitely would have had me rolling my eyes at the video game-esque “to defeat the real demon you must first defeat this other demon” setup, but Vecchio and Wilson really do art the hell out of it. The reveal of Thenassil looks like it could be a blacklight poster in a skeevy pot shop (that’s a good thing).
Adam: I think we said something similar about Marquez’s art in the “Dark Artery” arc, so that’s high praise! What did you think about Gambit/Wyvern’s use of “prayer cards” to defeat Thenassil? I thought it was stupid, but it did make me laugh.
Austin: Honestly, it’s very stupid but also delightfully comic book-y. It also has me wondering if Gambit has any other themed cards for various missions. Could he use a “reverse” Uno card as a kind of defensive measure to force an attack back on the attacker?
Adam: Oh my god, Gambit using Uno cards would be incredible. What would a charged-up Draw 4 do to a man?
Well, with Gabriel failing, it looks like Rogue and Gambit will have to look elsewhere for help with de-dragonification. Do I sense a new character on the horizon?
Austin: If so, I hope it’s someone even MORE obscure than Gabriel, Devil-Hunter!
Bonus Rusty content for Austin
Adam: I knew we needed to save space at the end here to talk about your personal Glup Shitto who makes an appearance in this comic book. Together with last week’s episode of X-Men ’97, you must be very excited as the world’s only fan of Rusty Collins.
Austin: I’ll have you know, there’s at least a handful of us (as in, enough to count using my hands but not so many I need more hands). And we are FEASTING right now!
Adam: This scene is confusing, though. Where do mutants go when they die? None of these characters were buried in Nawlins, so is the implication that all mutants who have died since Krakoa rest in the Dark Artery and not the White Hot Room? This is made extra confusing since it’s unclear whether Sabretooth (whose ghost Deathdream walks with) was eviscerated in Wolverine Vol. 7 #50 before or after the Waiting Room is revealed to have been emptied in Resurrection of Magneto.
Also curious — why can Calico suddenly see the dead?
Austin: Look, I’m not going to look a gift horse appearance of Rusty in the mouth, but yeah, this makes no damned sense. A legitimate criticism of the Krakoa era is that, between the Waiting Room, the White Hot Room, the Pit, etc., there were way too many “not alive, not dead” spaces to keep track of (especially in an era defined in large part by death being off the table). Which makes the introduction of another such space in the Dark Artery questionable. But I didn’t bump against it at the time since it seemed to be more of a localized effect, limited to mutants who died in the vicinity of it/Haven House/New Orleans. But if the idea is meant to be that ALL Mutants go there, well, I have no idea how to square that with the rest of the mutant afterlife cosmology.
Adam: Me neither! But luckily we don’t have to explain it … yet, anyway. For now I’ll be counting which sins to think of next issue when we’ll have to – REPENT!!!
X-traneous Thoughts
- As Becca says, Quicksilver is not a mutant, as per a 2015 Uncanny Avengers story, which established that he and Scarlet Witch’s abilities were from genetic experiments conducted by the High Evolutionary (this was also the story that retconned them as not being the biological children of Magneto, though later stories affirmed their familial bond). Of course, this could easily change with another retcon at any time.
- Nightcrawler praying is in line with the character, but with Gail’s issue #1 “Father” joke and X-Men ’97 giving him a priest collar, I feel the need to repeat that Nightcrawler is not a priest. Having faith and being a priest are different things!
- Wolverine keeping Nightcrawler company while he prays? That’s fine, I guess. I liked Vecchio’s barely perceptible Kurt smirk.
- “Ichor” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an ethereal fluid taking the place of blood in the veins of the ancient Greek gods.”
- Also among the dead in the graveyard: Feral and Cameo, who died along with Rusty in the first issue of X-Factor Vol. 5.
Buy Uncanny X-Men #33 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom. Follow him @adamreck.bsky.social.
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 @austingorton.bsky.social.
