In keeping with new Marvel policy ("Fleece the little bastards for all they're worth"), we have another two X-books starting this week!  That brings the total to eighteen - not counting miniseries, Starjammers or Alpha Flight. 

I remember when there were only three, you know.  Innocent days.  Happy days.  Days when you could follow the plot without a flowchart.  Not that Marvel are helping much in that regard, since at the same time as they're trying a renewed push of old-school values, they still can't be bothered keeping elementary points of continuity straight.  So Gambit's blind in X-Men and Rogue, but seeing perfectly well in this title.  Bit pointless doing major Gambit stories which don't even get reflected in Gambit, isn't it?

Anyway, let's leave that aside and take the book on its merits.  On paper, this is potentially decent.  If you're going to hunt for potential solo books among the X-Men cast, Gambit has better prospects than most.  He has an entire set-up and mythology quite independent of any of the X-Men's themes, all of which works better in solo stories.  The previous Gambit solo series was largely successful by ploughing that route.  John Layman, who got great reviews for Puffed, seems to be following the same approach.  Georges Jeanty is an ever-reliable penciller whose style seems at home on the character (more so than it did on Weapon X, where his style just didn't seem quite dark enough for the material).

And yet...  And yet...

And yet I picked the book up to review, and realised that I couldn't remember anything about it.  Something about Gambit going to New Orleans and being hired to get some playing cards.  Must be more to it than that.  Flick, flick, flick.  Nope, that's it.

There are certain phrases which strike fear into all right-thinking individuals.  "Concept album."  "Live televised seance."  "Four more years."  And to those we must now add another, at least when it appears in Marvel solicitations: "Issue #1, part 1 of 6."  Because I'm damned if I can remember the last time a Marvel book opened with a six-issue storyline that wasn't, as Grant Morrison's put it, "lavishly upholstered."  And here, yet again, we have a first issue in which nothing bloody happens because they're trying to stretch out the plot to six issues.

Pages 1 to 5: Gambit blags a motorcycle.  Pages 6-8: He arrives in New Orleans and wanders about a bit.  Pages 9-10: A wise old man who might be insane delivers cryptic warnings about cards.  Page 11-13: Gambit wanders about some more.  Pages 14-16: Local crimelord Orlean, who also wants the cards, fires Fast Jack from the case (presumably because he's planning to hire Gambit instead).  Pages 17-20: Lili Penrose hires Gambit to get the cards.  Pages 21-22: Fast Jack says he's going to get the cards anyway, to prove he's better.

Okay - so there's slightly more than "Gambit gets hired to get some cards."  But really, not very much.  When literally nothing of any import whatsoever happens in the first eight pages, I think it's fair to say that the book is off to a slow start.  When the entire plot boils down to "two people try to hire Gambit to get the cards, and a disgruntled thief wants them too", without any indication of what's so important about the cards... well, that's just not enough for a satisfying first issue.  Nothing wrong with a plot about Gambit hunting for some cards - at least it's a thematically consistent macguffin.  But surely the first issue needs to make more headway than this.

Perhaps it'll pick up speed, but this is a very underwhelming debut.

Rating: B-

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