UNCANNY X-MEN #350: Trial and Errors

Gambit on trial -- at long last!

Originally Published December 1997

We begin in Seattle, on a night long ago, when young Remy LeBeau -- on the outs with his T'ieves Guild family and mourning the death of Belladonna (the first time [even though she was not believed dead the first time she showed up]) -- is here to make a deal, the kind of deal that will set him up for life.

His employer? None other than Mr. Sinister, who has hired him to gather a group of heavies to do some, I don't know, general "marauding."

After receiving payment in the form of a mysterious metal capsule, Gambit declares himself out of the game, but Sinister insists they're not done, he needs one more thing from Remy, and he knows exactly what his price will be.

With that, we transition back to the present, where Spat and Grovel are on their way to deliver Gambit to their mysterious employer, and Gambit compares having a Deep Dark Secret to indigestion.

Not far away, Beast jury-rigs the remains of their spaceship into a snow-speeder so that they can go after Gambit, while simultaneously worrying that Joseph is showing signs of reverting to his previous Magneto-ish self.

Back in Manhattan, Psylocke is intrigued by Maggott and absconds with him into the shadows.

Angel follows because hey, free trip.

Back in Antarctica, Gambit is in custody of the mystery man, who denies being Sinister despite Gambit claiming to recognize his voice.

Rogue and the Crew pursue, with their ride braking apart just in time to discover a playing card that seems to have come from Gambit's deck. Joseph uses his magnetic powers to raise another, different citadel out of the snow, sensing that "he" is here.

A mysterious "he" being "here" is also the theme of enigmatic dreams that torment Charles Xavier (still locked up in New Mexico despite the apparent dismantling of Operation: Zero Tolerance -- government bureaucracy in action, amirite folks?)

At the citadel, our heroes agree to split up and investigate, having never seen a horror movie before.

Elsewhere in the citadel, Psylocke arrives, having been separated from the others. She discovers a well-worn copy of the Code of Hammurabi (although I don't think it's a first edition).

Elsewhere, Angel encounters a gallows -- but set up for whom?? -- and Joseph reunites with Maggott, who is apparently his old pal.

However before they can catch up on old times, the Mystery Man tazers Joseph from behind, knocking him out. Maggott, apparently, has had some dealings with this individual too.

Anyway, we are treated to a montage of the X-People getting bonked in the darkness by the mystery foe, who is seemingly everywhere all at once.

Excited to find out who had the time to carve statues of Thunderbird and AOA Blink.

Rogue, however, locates Gambit, sulking in a prison cell. He tries to shoo her away so that he can face whatever it is that's coming to him for his past misdeeds, but she is adamant they'll be leaving together, saying, and I quote, that she loves him unconditionally. 

But before she can sway him with her further declarations of undying love, they are interrupted by the mastermind of this entire shenanigan. And it's exactly who you would expect...

 ...provided you last read an X-Men comic in 1977. That's right, it's Erik(sp) the Red! Back to exact justice on... someone!... for... something!

Elsewhere, the formerly captive X-Men are on their way home but not without incident. Cyclops is dying from a bomb that has been implanted inside of him, and is begging Jean to cut him loose, but his wife is like "Honey, I died and came back like three times, I'm not letting you off the hook that easily."

Meanwhile, Cannonball muses that despite having years of service under his belt since starting with the New Mutants, perhaps he is not cut out to hang with these X-Men.

Back at the Citadel, Erik calls the trial to order, with himself as the prosecution, Angel as the defense, and a guillotine on stand by just in case things get dull.

At long last, Mr. The Red lays out his allegation in all-caps -- an impressive feat since all comics at this point in time are written in all-caps, somehow his words are even cappier -- Gambit stands accused of mass murder of the Morlocks!

Warren, however, is still reticent to participate. He pauses things to question Erik the Red's identity. After all, there is not, and never has been a "real" Erik the Red. Angel wonders whether this Erik the Red is just some kind of madness being suffered by Cyclops (the "original" Erik) using powers of deduction that show why he has been eclipsed by Iceman as now the fifth-most competent original X-Person.

Erik the R brings things back to focus by pointing out the hypocrisy that led to the massacre, with the X-Men hiding in their little mansion while the  Morlocks lived hand-to-mouth underground. Nevermind the fact that Storm invited every Morlock to come live in the mansion if they so desired and they declined. Gambit reins Erik in by reminding him that he's supposed to be the only one on trial here, so Erik re-focuses again while still keeping his volume at an 11.

Meanwhile in the jury box, Rogue notes the absence of Joseph, and accuses Erik of being him. Erik is offended, and brings in a beaten and barely-conscious Joseph to prove that he is not Joseph and also he hates Joseph for betraying his former ideals.

Finally we get the "Exhibit 1," which is Gambit's admission that yes, he worked for Sinister -- he gathered "a group" together in exchange for "something he needed."

Watching on, Rogue and Beast are shocked that this man who was openly known to have a shady past could have a past that was so shady. They knew he had a deep, dark secret, but did the secret have to be that deep and dark? 

I thought you just sold Amway or something

Gambit defends himself, that he's put all that in the past and worked to redeem himself, but Eric screams in response that a man's character is the sum of his actions. Angel finally wakes up and remembers he's supposed to be the defense, so he counters that Gambit has proven himself time and again in battle, and that people can change, the same way he did after coming back from his time as the Angel of Death.

Or like how Rogue was a literal terrorist who all but killed Ms. Marvel, e.g.

Unfortunately, this plays right into Erik's hands, and the whole reason Angel was cast as the defense attorney anyway -- "Exhibit 2" calls Psylocke to the stand to reveal that the group Gambit gathered together was the Marauders, who went on to enact the Mutant Massacre that cost Angel his wings.

Editorial footnotes reminds us that Psylocke and Gambit mind-linked in Uncanny #324, but neglect to point out that the Mutant Massacre occurred way back in Uncanny #211.

Gambit point out that the fact that he didn't kill Psylocke to keep her quiet proves that he's not a villain -- which is the sort of argument that explains why you're not supposed to represent yourself in court.

Angel, realizing they are discussing matters that directly affect his life, wigs out and politely resigns as counsel -- which I think is fair given the conflict of interest.

To further provide testimony, Erik calls Rogue to the stand and -- close your ears if you don't like to hear about non-consensual kissing -- forces her to smooch Gambit and absorb the rest of his memories, to re-live the trauma she has been repressing since their first kiss three years earlier.

As it turns out, Gambit did not just gather the Marauders, he led them to the tunnels and even watched a little bit as they started killing every Morlock they could. Realizing his mistake when the murder starts, he tries to intervene but to no avail. Feeling some sense of shame, he did rescue little Sarah but that's about all he can do.

Greatly upset by what she has seen, and what Erik forced her to do, Rogue uses Gambit's powers to free her fellow captive X-Men and lash out against ETR.

At that point, Erik is like "Yeah, well, I think I've accomplished my purpose here" and brings the building down around them. Psylocke gathers most of the team into the shadows to escape, but Rogue flies off with Gambit herself--

--Specifically so she can tell him that things are not cool between them, and drop him off in the middle of the Antarctic tundra.

Gambit pleads that he loves Rogue, but she notes that you have to be honest with the people you love. 

And thus, she departs.

I mean, she had said she loved him unconditionally, but this sure looks like a condition to me.

On his ship, Erik the Red has a chat with his funny robot guy Ferris. He's done with the charade for now. It's time to change out of his ridiculous Erik the Red helmet, and into...

Wait a minute...

Can it be...

I mean, it's the last page, so it's gotta be...!

Oh, I get it, Ferris is like "Ferrous!"

That's right, it's Magneto! And not the watered-down, sexy, amnesiac Joseph version either!

To be continued followed-up on, eventually!

Further Thoughts:

When anyone renders an opinion on something, they have to pass it through a filter of their own design. I've always been more interested in form than content, in craft more than story, in execution more than ideas. A long while back I asserted that just because something momentous happened in an issue, doesn't make that a good issue. Others may not hold the same perspective and I totally respect that. This issue absolutely has something momentous in it, and nobody can take that away from it. It feels exactly like the big deal it is meant to be. This was the biggest card the creators of X-Men had left to play, and that's quite satisfying.

The fact that Gambit had something to do with the Marauders and Sinister and the Mutant Massacre has been, I would say, the worst-kept secret in X-Men comics at this point. It's been two and a half years since we found out that Gambit was harboring some big, shadowy secret that Rogue was aware of but had suppressed the details. In that time we'd seen links between Gambit and Marauders like Sabretooth and Scalphunter. We've seen that Sinister was very interested in him. We've seen him openly sulking at the Morlock memorial on the anniversary of the massacre. All we needed was for the comics to finally draw a line that actually put Remy in the action and explain what his part in all that was.

In a vacuum, I actually don't dislike it. As far as things that Gambit could have been doing in his past that he would have to be ashamed of and answer for, it makes sense and is appropriately appalling to our heroes. Is it a bit of a jump to go from "master thief" to "merc recruiter?" Sure, but let's give them that. I like this as Gambit's big crisis because you can see him doing such things at his lowest and yet, it's not impossible to come back from it once the shock wears off.

Now then -- is this response warranted? I get shock and I get heartbreak, but as has been pointed out, Rogue was raised as part of a terrorist cell for many years and even committed identity murder on Ms. Marvel. She's repented, but so has Gambit. The X-Men have forgiven Magneto at times. They're soon to welcome Marrow into their ranks, who has also been at odds with the X-Men themselves. Why is this over the line? Because, well, that's the story. 

I do have to note that the Mutant Massacre was a story from eleven years ago at this point. An entire generation of X-Men fans -- or maybe even two or three -- have come in since Uncanny #211 was published in November of 1986. I don't doubt that some people have been reading continuously since then, and the comics have done a fine job of keeping the spirit of it alive in recent years with the continuous presence of Sinister and Morlock offshoots like Gene Nation. But for a casual reader it seems like the ancient past or even pre-history. It's a double-edged sword for any long-running comics franchise: you have this rich history to draw on, but you can't stay mired in the past, can you?

(And yet, when I was a kid, I did enjoy the occasional reminders that these characters had histories that long pre-dated me. There's something so fun about trying to learn something so much bigger than your experience, and comics makes a great exercise in that.)

The road to the revelation was a bumpy one. Like I said, we've been teased and teased and teased with the substance of this big secret it felt like we were never going to get to the point where it was truly revealed. We have Psylocke, who knows some of the details thanks to her mind-link, but for whatever reason kept it all to herself (even though she was directly affected when Sabretooth invaded the mansion sometime later.) We have Rogue, who had just wanted to forget all of it and move forward -- swearing up and down that it was possible, until she learned the details and it turns out, oops, some things are unforgivable, and love won't always hold us together.

And then we have this "Erik the Red." I don't know what, in-story, compelled Magneto to take on this role. I don't know why he knows all of this and has decided to hold Gambit accountable for his actions of many years ago. Theoretically, we'll be revisiting that in coming months as Magneto makes whatever moves he plans to do.

It is interesting because at that time he was actually on the X-Men's side as the headmaster of the Xavier School, but he can't give that perspective and I'm not sure it will be brought up.

Also not present are Storm, the at-the-time leader of the Morlocks, nor any prominent Morlocks like Callisto or Marrow, nor a few other characters who were physically injured as a result of the battle like Nightcrawler and Shadowcat, but hey, you take what you can get, sure. Aside from Maggott, whose relationship to Magneto/Joseph is still unexplained, all the characters present were around at the time.

This story takes a long, long, long time to work through what we either know or suspect, drawing it out to the point of comedy, to where point A is "Gambit worked with Sinister to form a group," which nets from the X-Men, a passive "Oh, that's bad," and point B is "That group was the Marauders," at which point they realize "Oh, I didn't realize that! That's really bad!" "Erik" doesn't make the nature of his vendetta known, positing only that this is a crime against mutantkind -- which it is -- and that he, for unspecified reasons (that only become marginally clearer to us at the end) is mad about it. The trial itself does not actually get underway until about page 24 of a 36-page comic, so that's 66% faffing about, getting all the pieces set up until a breathless sprint to the finale where the main antagonist is a raving lunatic who starts at 10. As far as the courtroom goes, I've seen episodes of Judge Judy that compelled me more, and there has to have been a more exciting and dramatically satisfying way to resolve all of this than "Random character appears she he can line everyone up and reveal the truth," but sometimes you take what you can get. This is the story.

If you're reading this thinking that Erik the Red is the guy from the 70's, it's confusing. Then when you get to the end and find out the truth, it's... confusing in a different way.

In short, I respect the hell out of the revelation, but the delivery could have used some workshopping. I don't know whether it's significant that Scott Lobdell's name is simply gone from the comics now, but Steve Seagle only gets credit for a script. This major plot point that has been built up for months, in fact years, and was delayed so as to get to this big anniversary issue, and Lobdell couldn't quite carry the ball over the goal line. Perhaps he was too excited to get a start on his upcoming Fantastic Four run, which will surely be another multi-year tenure. Seagle does a fine job, adding his stylistic flourishes when he can, including a runner about "What turns an X into a Y?"

Also departing is Joe Madureira, who shares art duties with Andy Smith, no doubt headed to a prolific career in the creator-owned sphere. We leave off with not quite a soft-reset, but an opportune time to close the books on the Lobdell run and move forward into the remainder of the 90's dealing with the fallout from all of this and open up some new horizons.

Nagging Questions: What was up with that spaceship that was headed for Earth and "knocked" our heroes off course, yet somehow delivered them exactly where they needed to be? Was it all just a coincidence that they were near Magneto's old base or does Erik just really like that patch of land, and forgot Nanny was still active? And why wasn't it filled with magma, as Beast wondered? Also, what happened to Landscape/Brett, did he just go home?