Another ongoing X-book bites the dust, as Gambit joins District X and Excalibur in the cancellation pile.  (Next week, Rogue.)

Gambit was launched along with Rogue and Nightcrawler, without much publicity, without big name creators, and in the apparent conviction that the X-book connection would be enough to sell them.  It wasn't.  This really shouldn't have come as a surprise - there are already so many X-books out there that the readership simply isn't looking for new titles, especially ones that seem to serve no particular purpose.  As a character, Gambit is years past the peak of his popularity; even a few years back, his solo series was only able to survive for a couple of years.

Taken as a whole, Gambit really wasn't a bad comic.  It suffered from being perceived as a shameless exercise in milking the readership (which it was), and it didn't help that it opened with a story that seemed rather inconsequential, and was stretched out to at least twice its natural length.  Subsequent stories, kept to a sensible number of issues, have been much improved.  But ultimately, there just isn't a market for a Gambit solo title - certainly one where nothing much seemed to be happening.  Frankly, nothing of any great importance ever did happen in this title.  But in the last few issues, it was still a fun, enjoyable read.

We wrap up with the second half of "Thieves' World", which ties up the two or three dangling plots that had been established in New Orleans.  From the look of it, John Layman wasn't exactly at home with the Thieves Guilds, and was probably better off not using them.  They're played here as a bunch of generic thugs in a warehouse, which has the advantages of getting rid of all the baffling quasi-mystical stuff, but also makes them look a bit ordinary.

But Gambit's charm and energy carries the book, and Layman has some nice ideas about the relationship between him and Belladonna.  Instead of trying to tease a reconciliation, Layman plays them as ex-lovers with Belladonna not really over the relationship yet.  Gambit doesn't want her back at all, but he still shows a bit of concern about her getting involved with a clot like Bandit.  Gambit's attitude to Bandit is also played rather well.  Although he doesn't come out and say so, Gambit sees Bandit as a bit of a D-list bozo, and he's a little rattled by the idea of such a total clot being able to fill his shoes in New Orleans.

Part of me will kind of miss the book that we had for the last three or four issues, where things really started to click.  But only part of me, because for the most part I still think we're better off with a vastly slimmed down line, and books with no apparent reason to exist, such as Gambit, ought to be going as part of that.

Rating: A-

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