STORY: "Thieves in the Temple" (23 pages)  When the Juggernaut's power is stolen by Cyttorak cultists and trapped in a duplicate of his magic gem, Black Tom Cassidy calls in Storm and Shadowcat.  With Gambit's help, they recover the gem.  Gambit agrees to return to the X-Men.

What you need to know:
Gambit rejoins the X-Men following his expulsion in issue #350.  The story never makes it entirely clear why he's in Seoul.  He says that he got "a big offer" to steal "a big jewel" - presumably the duplicate Cyttorak gem - but he never tells us who the customer was.  Possibly he was simply hired by Black Tom Cassidy; otherwise, it's a dangling plot.  In any event, he has an attack of conscience and returns the gem to the Juggernaut, who's dying without the power.

From the Juggernaut's point of view, the main effect of this story is that he's back with an actual Gem of Cyttorak.  The continuity of the original one had got a bit haywire over the years.  He was supposed to have retained the power himself and chucked it into orbit, and a later fill-in issue of Avengers West Coast showed it landing in the USA and being found by a teenage boy who used it, as I recall, to animate some waxworks.  That's never been followed up.  In any event, from this point on the Juggernaut is back to his original set-up with a real gem.

The dialogue suggests that this is the first time Shadowcat and Gambit have met.  In fact, they met in Excalibur vol 1 #57, which must have been overlooked.  (Thanks to Gregor MacDonald for pointing this one out.)

According to Storm, in a throwaway line, the X-Men "were all too ashamed" to discuss Gambit's disappearance.  This appears to be an attempt to explain away the lack of follow-up in subsequent issues.

Gambit declines to explain how he got out of Antarctica, other than to say "I walked."  A one-panel flashback shows two sets of footprints.  This is a set-up for the upcoming Gambit series; the answer is ultimately given in Gambit #½.

In the subplots, Rogue has been searching the Antarctic for Gambit (and apparently, she's flying there and back from New York under her own power).  Not surprisingly, she hasn't found him.  She does helpfully confirm that Magneto's citadel from issue #350 is no longer there.

Marrow is sulking because the X-Men have turfed her out of the Danger Room.  Not unreasonably, they'd like to use it as a training room.  The general thrust of Marrow's scenes in this issue is to show her fascination with beauty and how she continues to push away the other X-Men when they try to get close to her.

Wolverine decides to move out of the mansion and live in the grounds for a while.

Garbled continuity (1): Black Tom Cassidy mentions that he's "been recuperating from my own injuries".  This is a bit of an understatement.  For reasons we needn't go into, prior to this story Cassidy had been merged with his wooden shillelagh and was wandering around as a sort of half-plant creature.  When we last saw him, in Generation X #25, he was killed by Penance.  In this issue he's alive and well, and back to being a normal human in appearance.  Basically, as was par for the course around this time, the entire thing is completely ignored, and they even footnote Generation X #25 to make it clear that they know they're ignoring it.

Garbled continuity (2): The narration describes the Juggernaut as "a mutant who hid behind a kinder, gentler facade in order to betray the X-Men in their very own home."  This is footnoted to X-Men vol 2 #70.  Point one, the Juggernaut's not a mutant - and what's more, the plot of this issue is premised on that fact.  Point two, this is a hopelessly inaccurate description of X-Men vol 2 #70, in which the Juggernaut showed up to serve a court order declaring himself the administrator of Charles Xavier's estate during Xavier's absence.  Needless to say, that plotline went absolutely nowhere, so once again we have the editors flagging up their cavalier disregard for ending any of the subplots by referring to one.  (And, simultaneously, showing that they couldn't even remember what was in it.)  You have to despair, really, don't you?

"Thieves in the Temple" is, of course, the name of a Prince song.

The credits list everyone's first name as "Steve" (except Bob Harras).  Just before anyone e-mails me to ask why the credits on this page don't match the issue.

Comments:
Infuriatingly lax continuity aside, this is really quite a fun issue.

The remit is simply to bring Gambit back into the team, as a set-up for the ongoing Gambit series that launched at the tail end of 1998.  That leaves Seagle a reasonable degree of freedom to play around, and the result is a fairly entertaining romp as Gambit, Storm and Shadowcat fight anonymous cultists with ludicrous death-traps (piranha-filled water pools?!) in South Korea.  If depth isn't an option, then the rollercoaster is a guilty pleasure as an alternative.

This issue's guest artist is Steve Skroce, presumably on the basis that he was going to be the regular penciller for Gambit.  To more mainstream audiences, Skroce is probably best known as the artist who storyboarded The Matrix.  I haven't read this issue in ages, but it's a pleasant surprise - it's a good looking book, with some fantastic action sequences.  Skroce had a tendency around this point in his career to produce really elaborate pages which just looked cluttered by the time they saw print, but this issue largely avoids that.

Entertaining.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Marrow, Rogue, Shadowcat, Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler (all last in X-Men vol 2 #80; all next in X-Men vol 2 #81, then the latter two in X-Men: Liberators #1-4, then all in X-Men Unlimited #22, then all in Avengers vol 3 #10)
Wolverine (last in X-Men vol 2 #80; next in X-Men vol 2 #81, then in Wolverine vol 2 #131, then in Heroes for Hire #18-19, then in X-Men: Liberators #1-4, then in X-Men Unlimited #22, then in Avengers vol 3 #10, then in Wolverine vol 2 #132)
Gambit (rejoins the X-Men; last in Gambit vol 2 #4; next in X-Men vol 2 #81, then in X-Men Unlimited #22, then in Avengers vol 3 #10; also behind the scenes in flashback following Gambit #½ and preceding Gambit vol 2 #1)

VILLAINS
Black Tom Cassidy (last behind the scenes in Peter Parker, Spider-Man #84; next in flashback in X-Men vol 2 #88)
The Juggernaut (last in X-Men vol 2 #70; next in flashback in X-Men vol 2 #88)
Cyttorak cultists

Updated: 22 November 2004

back | next