The King of Thieves - Gambit Appreciation 2022

[BobbysWorld]

Anyone ever read any of the X-Men novels from the 90s? I just finished Jewels of Cyttorak and it was decent. Remy had a large role and it dealt with Guild stuff (and tied into the comics at the time). It also has one of the funniest covers I've seen in a while:


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Anyone know of any others that are any good that involve Gambit?

Man, haven't thought about those in ages, but there were some fun ones. Also interesting to me is how many of them did stuff the comics only tried years and years after them. Like, the Mutant Empire trilogy of novels in the 90s had Juggernaut working alongside the X-Men for most of the third book, almost a decade before anyone ever entertained using him on an X-Men lineup. I think a lot of writers took a bunch of inspiration from various tie-in novels, and its kinda interesting to go back and see where various things from the comics mirror events from the books, which had more freedom to just....do whatever, without worrying editorial would shut a plot down because of how it would impact other Marvel franchises.

But in regards to your question, don't quote me cuz its literally been years since I read most of these, but I remember the Mutant Empire trilogy having some great Remy moments. There was another stand-alone called Smoke & Mirrors, that featured Sinister as the primary antagonist, and tbh I can't remember off the top of my head how extensively Remy figured into that one, as it was less about exploring Sinister's past history with the X-Men and more just him being his lovely mad scientist self and experimenting on these new OC mutants created by the book's author and that the X-Men were trying to rescue from him. There was also a trilogy who's title I'm totally blanking on right now, but it was actually a three-novel crossover between the X-Men and Avengers, and involved classic Hulk villain The Leader kidnapping Rogue, Wolverine and Wanda due to some scheme he had about how he could combine their powers in a way that would definitely let him succeed in taking over the world for real this time. There were a lot of good moments in that trilogy, I feel like, particularly because we don't often get to see the X-Men face off against gamma-based threats like the Hulk's villain gallery.

Also there was a trilogy that crossed over the X-Men with Spider-Man, that one was called Time's Arrows, I think, and it involved them having to stop some time traveling villain from shaking the timeline like an Etch-a-sketch or whatever. Your usual paradox shenanigans.

But the various novels didn't have a single consistent lineup of X-Men, it tended to be at the discretion of the individual author, like Smoke & Mirrors is the only one I can remember having Betsy in it, and Bobby was only in the Mutant Empire trilogy, etc....but because all those books were released throughout the 90s, when the animated show's lineup reined supreme, I'm pretty sure the core cast of the cartoon ended up in all the books as those were the characters Marvel figured everyone was picturing when thinking of the X-Men in those days. And then characters who weren't present much in the cartoon were the ones who were add-ons in some books but not present in others, based on the preference of each novel's writer. But as far as I can remember, Rogue, Remy, Scott, Jean, Ororo, Hank and Logan were main characters in all the novels I can think of.