Rogue&Gambit #3: Spoilers and Review

[Malachi]

Here we go with issue 3 of 5 in a mini that certainly has a lot of flaws. I would argue that flaws are the defining traits of the mini. With this said we have gotten what is perhaps the best issue yet, with a whole new set of flaws to write about.

The issue starts with the panel from the preview with Destiny and Mystique. They talk about Irene’s vision and we learn nothing new. For people interested in this couple this is the only time they appear in the issue. 1 page.

Then we move to Forge’s lab and the scene with Gambit and the explosives from the preview. Remy is approaching four small marbles that Forge admonishes Remy over because they are explosives. Rogue then adds her 50 cents with more nagging… To then pivote into asking about the Caliban suit. It’s not a good look for her. Neither for Forge. So 3 of 3 in the “people you dislike on page” count. I am having a hard time figuring out why a couple like Romy is presented like this. No fun, no chemistry, nagging and add to that they are hypocrites and overall jerks. As I said it gets hard to support this mini.

Then we get a data page from Forge trying to reason why he built the suit. Why is this in a Rogue and Gambit mini?

Next scene is a flashback. The time is set to “Many years ago”. We have Logan and Remy in their old costumes, a destroyed sentinel and a hole in the roof. Rogue is the reason behind it, apparently she lost control.
I will just address this right away: she lost control? How? For me that is important and we just skip over it. Has she lost control before in training scenarios and what happened? I can’t remember one scene and certainly not after Remy arrived to the X-men. So if anyone has an example please let me know since it would hopefully add context for this.

Remy goes to find Rogue at a lake in New Orleans. This is a reference to the early stuff from X-men from Fabian NIcieza and Adam Kubert that Stephanie Phillips has mentioned in her AIPT interview, the word interview used very loosely here.
Remy approaches Rogue and she wants him to back away because “Captain Marvel’s powers are too much…”. Remy doesn’t let her get away that easily and kisses her. This scene is meant to contrast the next scene where their relationship is much more frosty.

Remy is angry at Anna for knowing about the suit and keeping it from him. She gets defensive and talks about him not being in a position to be angry about keeping secrets. Forge then says that he destroyed the suit so there is no reason to argue about it anyway.


Forge goes into saying that creating the suit was a mistake and he destroyed it. Rogue then gets angry at him for destroying the suit. Their argument is interrupted because Gambit has activated one of the marbles. The marble explodes and we know this because we get a full page of seeing that.


Rogue is worried about Forge after the explosion and we see that the lab has been blown up. I think it’s suppose to say that the explosion, because it happened on a desk, sent shockwaves above and level with the point of origin. Keeping objects below it’s level relatively safe. If not then we have no reason why Remy, who was hiding just behind the desk, gets away unscathed while Rogue and Forge does not. Forge then gets pissed off and sends them away from his lab.

Next we see the couple walk away from the tree into a New York street. Rogue is angry at Gambit and says now she has to find Caliban to absorb his powers and she really didn’t want this. But she apparently was ok with the suit despite it being you know… a suit made out of Caliban!

Remy surprises her by taking out the suit. He had noticed that Forge kept looking at a certain drawer in a desk so he created a diversion and took it. He then lets Rogue know she now can finish the mission. He then takes his leave.


We get a data page between Rocket and Rogue where Rocket is the reasonable one and Rogue is… well less reasonable. In essence Rogue thinks Gambit has behaved differently from after she got elected into the X-men and Rocket warns her that by not talking about it it will get worse. So nothing new. The big reason seems to have been just so Rogue can do a version of the tunnel joke in conversations.

Rogue flies solo and finds Manifold in a missile silo. Manifold doesn’t speak but Rogue does. She mentions that she has the powers of Captain Marvel… I have read issue 49 of CM and that was not my take from the issue. Her baseline powers are still Wonder Man’s.

The silo is closed and Rogue has walked into a trap. The villains we have seen from the preview appear. We have Vanisher, Juggernaut, Absorbing Man, Electro and Lady Deathstrike. WIth Manifold included also. So 2 teleporters just to make that part clear.

Rogue tries to evade them and kicks Lady Deathstrike. She then for some reason fail to understand the plot of these villains being sold, which was introduced to her in issue 1 with the Brosseau scene. She removes the control chip from Vanisher and we learn that without the chip they die. Cliffhanger!



Ok so this issue has all the problems that previous issues did but we get 2 positive developments. First Gambit uses an actual gambit to get Rogue the suit. It’s very unclear how he managed to actually do it seeing that he should have been hurt badly and didn’t have the time to circle around Forge and Rogue. But he does it.
The second positive, which is not intended as one, is that he leaves the mission after this. It’s a reasonable move in a very unreasonable plot. It’s supposed to drive home to Rogue that she has been abusive to him and that he characteristically blames himself. But we don’t really get to see this, it’s more or less been delegated to art to deliver and we get 1 or 2 panels to see it.

As with the other two issues this issue is very decompressed. Not a lot happens and it feels just wasteful. Did we need the Destiny&Mystique scene? Did we need any of the data pages? Did we need to spend 1 page on just the marble exploding?

Overall this issue has many flaws but art is one of it’s stronger parts. It’s very polished, clean and cartoony. With that said for me it falters several times, most noticeably with Rogue's facial expressions. Which is a shame since a mini like this clearly puts a lot of value into that to drive the story.

Back to the flaws. First off we are 3 issues into the mini and we know nothing. Nothing about the supposed secrets from either of them. Nothing about the vision. What we do know are the less important parts like villains are being controlled.

The next flaw feeds into that. Because we don’t know anything about either the secrets and the vision and we can’t address it and neither can the characters. They are stuck in a loop of being unpleasant to each other. But they are unpleasant to Forge also, hey more of that to go around.

Third flaw is the hypocritical treatments from our leads. The scene from the previous issue where Gambit almost killed someone is not mentioned. Gambit gets angry about the Calliban suit and at Rogue not mentioning it. It feels appropriate for him to be upset at this but it looks bad after issue 2. Then we have Rouge that is for some reason not upset with the suit. Which just looks bad for her. Then we have Forge who lied about it being destroyed and spends almost all of his time yelling at them. He looks bad too.

Fourth and lets call it final flaw because I don’t want to type more flaws. The best part of this mini so far has been Gambit leaving. I can not stress this enough. A mini about Rogue and Gambit is better off because Gambit left it. That is just a really bad score.

So my score is 3/10.

[Malachi]

This mini feels like it was created with a dynamic in mind. Rogue and Gambit both are in a bad spot and so they argue about pointless things. Still we need Rogue to drive the plot so she has the X-men as her reason. Then Gambit must have some opposite reason and therefore he becomes disinterested and actively tries to hinder the mission. Which of course looks bad if you take Rogue’s reason at face value. Then they added clumsy, drunk and inept to Gambit for the laughs. Rogue needs to be opposite this so she is the straight woman to his routine. When he goes clumsy she goes competent and nagging. Sprinkle that with bickering and the occasional scene of romance/angry sex which are instigated by Remy so you can have the old theme of him chasing her in place.

Over that dynamic you have a plot where they can’t go into any details about why and what they are doing because apparently they think it will spoil Destiny’s vision. So what we are left with are arguments about secrets. Secrets that we never heard of before this mini. Secrets that happened off panel. Secrets that are naturally hard for us readers to care for as they are very much hypothetical at this point. They might just be misunderstandings from one part.

[ChronoRogue]

Yikes. I really wanted to like this series, but Phillips really has not done her homework and it's just keeps showing itself every issue. She either has not kept up with the characters or isn't as big a fan as she claims, if she thinks Rogue still got her powers from Captain Marvel. Also that data page with Rocket... I get that it's supposed to be funny, but considering how off this series has read, I wouldn't put it past them to not actually know who Rogue would reach out to as a friend to talk to about relationship issues.

Comparing this to Captain Marvel #49 is just night and day in terms of character knowledge and genuine love for the characters.

[BobbysWorld]

I'm stuck on the irony of 'we're better at the physical than the verbal' as though one of the MOST defining hallmarks of this couple is that for a huge part of its history, there was basically NO physical aspect to their relationship whatsoever! Sure, that doesn't make it a given that they'd be good at the verbal/communication stuff as a result, but when we've literally seen them navigate communication issues and secrets from day one of their relationship, while the physical aspect of said relationship really only became a consistent element in recent years.....the attempt to paint it as an 'either/or' thing is....unconvincing, to say the least.

[Rzerox21xx]

Well if ROMY fans are not happy with this title. I can tell you that today's Captain Marvel 49 was so much better with great ROMY moments, Thank Kelly Thompson-sama(I know kinda weeb of me), its like night and day.

[Ilargi]

I'm certainly not going to buy this, I'm tired of all this nonsense.

If I already thought it was bad that they made a mini to break up the couple to be about a stupidity of this size is insulting.

Has the writer read any of Rogue and Gambit's previous writing? a single page?

I'm glad Gambit is leaving the mission so he doesn't have to put up with that woman pretending to be Rogue.

[Sandmans_Raven]

Thanks for the review. Glad to see I'm not missing out on anything by not buying this.

I will say, I'm a leaning more towards them not breaking up at this point, though. Seems like this is setting up for a reunion, but who knows. Nothing about the characterization has really made sense so far so why should it in the next 2 issues

[Grinning Soul]

I'm not reading this, but judging by these panels alone...

I'm *so* sorry, guys... They're not my favourites, but I love both characters and they deserve much better. What a waste of a mini.

[Malachi]

Thanks for the review. Glad to see I'm not missing out on anything by not buying this.

I will say, I'm a leaning more towards them not breaking up at this point, though. Seems like this is setting up for a reunion, but who knows. Nothing about the characterization has really made sense so far so why should it in the next 2 issues

After this issue I am also leaning against them not splitting up. Rogue is alone against too much to handle. Gambit is being set up as the cavalry. If they still break them up then.. yowza that is a mess inside another mess. I think Gambit leaving is suppose to be the nadir of their relationship plot.

I'm not reading this, but judging by these panels alone...

I'm *so* sorry, guys... They're not my favourites, but I love both characters and they deserve much better. What a waste of a mini.

Yeah it sucks. Thanks for the support. I always try to remember when a character is being written badly that every character has fans and it sucks for them.

[dragon1440]

This mini feels like it was created with a dynamic in mind. Rogue and Gambit both are in a bad spot and so they argue about pointless things. Still we need Rogue to drive the plot so she has the X-men as her reason. Then Gambit must have some opposite reason and therefore he becomes disinterested and actively tries to hinder the mission. Which of course looks bad if you take Rogue’s reason at face value. Then they added clumsy, drunk and inept to Gambit for the laughs. Rogue needs to be opposite this so she is the straight woman to his routine. When he goes clumsy she goes competent and nagging. Sprinkle that with bickering and the occasional scene of romance/angry sex which are instigated by Remy so you can have the old theme of him chasing her in place.

Over that dynamic you have a plot where they can’t go into any details about why and what they are doing because apparently they think it will spoil Destiny’s vision. So what we are left with are arguments about secrets. Secrets that we never heard of before this mini. Secrets that happened off panel. Secrets that are naturally hard for us readers to care for as they are very much hypothetical at this point. They might just be misunderstandings from one part.

The random spades on the data page.... now where have we seen spades recently...................

[Vizzz]

Duggan might have had the nerve to write this mini himself instead of commissioning someone else.

[Sandmans_Raven]

After this issue I am also leaning against them not splitting up. Rogue is alone against too much to handle. Gambit is being set up as the cavalry. If they still break them up then.. yowza that is a mess inside another mess. I think Gambit leaving is suppose to be the nadir of their relationship plot.

Yup, that's exactly what I'm thinking too.

[Grinning Soul]

Yeah it sucks. Thanks for the support. I always try to remember when a character is being written badly that every character has fans and it sucks for them.

I do. And I also think it's important not to blame the characters. It's all on the writer *and* the editors.

I don't want to be too critical on a book I haven't read in its entirety, but there was something in particular that I think it's inexcusable and goes beyond not understanding the character. It's worse: it's about not understanding how character motivation in general works.

So I really hope future writers pretend this mini never happened.

[Ilargi]

I have a problem if these are the kind of secrets they are keeping from each other.
They aren't even secrets that affect them personally.
I guess if there is a big secret it will be about Moira X, but if it's just the suit it's so ridiculous that's gossip for the X-men.

[Zoks]

Well at least Gambit looks a whole lot better from #2. I suspect Rogue contacting Rocket about her relationship problems is from editorial. She's going to join the Avengers again so she's gonna need close personal friends on that side.