Summary: <br> Adam takes a look at ragin’ Cajun and begins his examination of the first collection of comics from Gambit’s Solo series in 1999. <br> Affiliate linked included in this post.<br> Transcript below:<br><br> <br> Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast. From Boise, Idaho this is your host, Adam Graham. If you have a comment email it to me: classycomicsguy@gmail.com. For today’s program we’re going to be taking a look at X-Men Gambit: The Complete Collection. The first volume collecting Gambit’s 1999 comic series. I should note that it’s been nearly two years and a second volume hasn’t been issue so perhaps this should be ‘X-Men Gambit: The Incomplete Collection’. Be that as it may I’m going to go ahead and take a look at this collection and see if it lives up to my standard as a classy comic. <br> I have to say I have never been into the X-Men very much. There are two big reasons for that: the modern world of X-Men comics is just way too complicated. There are too many characters with too much continuity between them. I decided a few years back to pick up the all-female X-Men book; I thought that with an Issue One this would be a great jumping on point. Instead I got lost in all the continuity of how all these characters got there, what their relationship to each other was, while they were also managing an ongoing plot beginning. And many of the X-Men were often off in other X-Men books. They had a total of four different books going at the same time. I think they’re down to two different books going right now. But it’s just too daunting to try and get this all figured out. <br> The other thing is that in the Marvel Comics Universe the X-Men could often behave in ways that were unheroic. In ‘The Secret Wars of Ant’ they went off and rescued Magneto and separated from the good guys and started a separate mutant section to the battle world. In ‘X-Men-Fantastic Four’ against Reed Richards’ advice they turn to Doctor Doom for help. In ‘X-Men- Avengers’ they decided to help Magneto avoid being tried for crimes against him which led them into conflict with the X-Men. However, unlike many kids of my generation, I didn’t grow up watching the X-Men which may have led me to view them more fondly despite their issues in print. My wife, like every other child with geek cred in our generation, swears by the X-Men as a great series and I’ve actually been impressed as we’ve started re-watching it on Amazon – though in my case it’s for the first time. And I’ve found a favorite character: Gambit. I’ve never read Gambit in comics so I decided to request a Gambit collection from my library as an interlibrary loan. I got the wrong one – I wanted the Gambit Classic with shows us introductory issues, but this collection actually collects his ongoing series that began 1999. It begins after the trial of Gambit when it’s discovered that Gambit led the Marauders into the sewers where the Morlocks were. These were sewer-dwelling mutants who were slaughtered by the Marauders. <br> The X-Men respond to this the only way they know how – abandoning Gambit to his fate in Antarctica. See what I meant about unheroic actions? Though I will say as the book goes on, it comes out there were some mitigating circumstances on both sides. Now unlike Silver Surfer where it kind of made sense for me to go through this on an Issue by Issue basis, at least for the first several Issues of this series it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to do that with Gambit as there were ongoing stories going on throughout – plus this is a really much longer book than the Silver Surfer. There were five key points that worked it way through the first few Issues of Gambit, the first seven and the annual that we’ll go ahead and talk about.<br>
