Gambit seems to be in the home straits now, judging from the solicitations.  It's always possible, of course, that it's simply skipping a month, but with their history of stealth cancellations over the last couple of years, Marvel only have themselves to blame if people assume the obvious.

To be honest, in the present market, I doubt that anything short of a stellar, A-list creative team was going to sell an ongoing Gambit title.  Marvel's approach of getting a decent but less well known creative team, and then giving them bugger all promotion, was always a touch optimistic.  But then, so many of Marvel's recent titles have been launched in a spirit of near-psychotic optimism.

Anyhow, if your title's not selling all that it might do, what better story to write than a three-parter about zombies guest starring Brother Voodoo?  Actually, it's been quite a nice little superhero story.  It's about as good as you could realistically expect from a Gambit story about zombies.  There's some decent action (although really, is even Gambit reckless enough to smash entire city buildings just to slow down a villain?), a perfectly standard plot where the villain realises that she's done wrong because Gambit saves her life, and a nice enough subplot about the corrupt police officer trying to take advantage of the situation.  It's formulaic, but it does the formula well, so fair enough.

It's likeable enough, and the subplot with Ginny trying to sabotage Gambit's relationship is a cute idea.  There's nothing really wrong with this title, other than the fact that it's an umpteenth X-book, it doesn't have a spectacular hook, we don't really need it, and we probably won't miss it.  It's not a bad comic, merely a superfluous one.  Unfortunately for Gambit, however, that's enough to be getting on with.

Rating: B

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