Remember to Forget is a feature where I spotlight comic book stories that I wish I could forget, but I can’t, so I instead share them with you all, so you’re stuck in the same boat as me! Today, we look at how the 20th anniversary of the All-New, All-Different X-Men was “celebrated” by the ultimate confrontation between Rogue and Gambit where she learned…nothing.
Recently, I did a piece about how The X-Cutioner’s Song crossover was a twelve-part event all centered on a mystery that wasn’t even resolved in the event itself. Well, I actually decided to write that after first wanting to write about X-Men #45, and I wanted to say something like, “Was this the biggest waste of a reveal ever?” and then I thought, “Well, I guess X-Cutioner’s Song probably has this beat,” so I wrote about that one first, but now I get to explain just how ridiculous X-Men #45 was, in terms of being an anti-climactic non-reveal to a supposed “big” reveal in a “big” issue.
X-Men #45 was the final issue of Fabian Nicieza’s run on the X-Men, and I think Nicieza did an excellent job with the limitations that he was dealing with at the time, when crossovers would dictate so much of the story being told in the X-Men comics of the era, and Nicieza was (and is) a writer who does particulalry well with character-driven stories, and that was the opposite of what he was dealing with on the X-books of the 1990s. However, DUE to the fact that he was such a character-driven writer, it helped to ground the stories very nicely. You could really tell that Nicieza and Scott Lobdell (who wrote the other main X-Men title, Uncanny X-Men) were doing their best in the midst of a difficult situation. This was Nicieza’s farewell to the series, though, so you’d think they would at least let him leave on a big reveal about Gambit and Rogue, who he had been doing such great work with on the series for the last couple of years heading into this issue.
You’d think…but nope.
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How was Gambit’s big secret set up?
At the end of X-Men #41 (by Nicieiza, Andy Kubert, Ron Garney, and Matt Ryan), the X-Men, and all reality in the Marvel Universe, was being wiped out due to Legion having gone back in time to kill Magneto, and instead killing his own father, Charles Xavier, as a young man. Since this changed all of Marvel’s history, primarily the history of the X-Men, the M’kraan Crystal basically rewrote reality, giving us the Age of Apocalypse crossover event. In the moment, though, it looked like all of reality was about to come to an end, and as a result, Rogue and Gambit, who had started on a romance, but obviously could not touch each other due to Rogue’s ability to absorb people’s memories and powers with a single touch, decided to make the most of the moment and kiss…
Well, as it turned out, Bishop of the X-Men (who was the only person who remembered the events of the original timeline) was able to bring the original reality back, and restore history. We learned in X-Men: Prime #1 (by Nicieza, Lobdell, Bryan Hitch, and Al Milgrom) that Rogue had left the X-Men, as she had absorbed some dark secret from Gambit, who was now in a coma as a result of their big kiss…
Iceman went along with Rogue on their little road trip to get away from Gambit (note that this was also the period where Scott Lobdell would have Rogue and Iceman visit Iceman’s parents, and it was about as gay-coded as you could possibly get, even though that was not Lobdell’s intention at the time, and as a result, fans really started to think that Iceman was in the closet at this point, and eventually, many years later, Brian Michael Bendis would make the subtext text by having Iceman come out as gay).
This all came to a head in X-Men #45, when a now-revived Gambit confronts Rogue, and, well, you’ll see…
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How was Gambit’s big secret revealed?
By the way, since The Age of Apocalypse was four months long, the gap between X-Men #41 and #45 was eight months, so it felt a lot longer than when you look at it as just a four-issue plot.
The issue was nominally meant to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the “All-New, All-Different X-Men,” but really, only the OTHER X-Men book that month, Uncanny X-Men #325, really felt like a celebration of that particular thing (that issue had Colossus, who had left the team a couple of years earlier, meet up with the X-Men, Storm and Wolverine particularly, to help stop a mutant terrorist)
As a result, it had a special gatefold cover, only this one was meant to fold UP…
It’s funny, that’s simultaneously very cool looking, but also a really bad design idea. Still, big props to Andy Kubert for designing a cover where you could flip it, and it still makes sense, while also being part of a gatefold…
Rogue and Iceman are nearing Seattle, and Rogue just knows she has to go somewhere in Seattle to confront the memories she has absorbed, but convineiently cannot access…
Once in Seattle, Rogue has a freakout at a bar with some jerks, and Bobby asks the question we’ve all been wondering, which was, what memory did you get from Gambit that has you so freaked out? And Rogue cannot answer…
Gambit finds them outside a mysterious abandoned theater. Richard Starkings had this cool effect for Gambit’s captions in the issue, depicting them as playing cards. Rogue and Gambit argue, and the fight turns physical a bit (as Rogue is getting a bit unhinged due to the secret in her mind)…
Rogue implores Gambit to tell her what the secret is that she can’t quite figure out in her head, but he says no. He DOES, though, offer to let her absorb all of his memories…she turns him down, and she officially leaves him and the X-Men, telling him that she loves him, but needs to be alone…
Iceman heads back to rejoin the X-Men, and Gambit goes off on his own for a bit, and then runs into Mister Sinister, and obviously, Sinister is somehow connected to the secret, and…that’s it.
Now, here’s the thing, Kubert and Smith did a great job on the artwork, and as a standalone story, this isn’t even a bad story. Nicieza, as always, is very true to the characters, and their interactions are solid and character-driven…but it’s all stuck behind this wall of WHY ISN’T THE SECRET BEING REVEALED HERE?!? How is this this big issue and the “reveal” is simply that Mister Sinister is somehow involved. That dude was “somehow involved” in half the X-Men stories of the era. It was such a nothing ending, and for Nicieza’s final issue!
Luckily, Nicieza later got to delve into the Sinister/Gambit relationship with more detail in the fun Gambit ongoing he would write later in the decade. The secret was revealed about two years later in SCOTT LOBDELL’s final issue of Uncanny X-Men (Gambit’s secrets drive everyone away!), where we learn that he was the one who located the Morlocks for Sinister’s Marauders to slaughter (that is a whole other thing, as that doesn’t necessarily fit the story of the Mutant Massacre, either).
So, that IS a pretty bad secret, but dang, dudes! What a waste! Wizard that month said Rogue would learn Gambit’s ultimate secret, so Marvel was definitely making peopel THINK this would have a big reveal and it just…didn’t.
Again, though, not Nicieza, Kubert or Smith’s fault. They did a fine job with the issue, as much as they could with the built-in premise.