Issue 158 - Gambit Capes On the Couch - Where Comics Get Counseling

 
Intro Background Gambit, Remy Etienne LeBeau, created by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee in Uncanny X-Men #266 (Aug 1990) You know how we've done a lot of characters whose circumstances have come back around to "it's not his fault, but it is his problem"? Gambit's definitely a twist on that. Let's run down the list. Kidnapped as an infant and raised by a society of thieves who brought him up with a moral compass that was most certainly not in line with the rest of the world, wound up homeless, captured by an immortal mutant and sold into slavery, got roped into an arranged marriage with Belladonna to end a centuries-old blood feud between the Thieves' Guild and the Assassin's Guild and wound up killing the brother of his bride-to-be in a duel on his wedding day, was exiled from his home in New Orleans, found out he had a mutant power that grew so powerful it wouldn't let him touch anything without blowing it up, had no choice but to go to Mr. Sinister to give him brain surgery to save his life, gets a simple innocuous job to do in return, assemble some mercenaries to locate the Morlock community, has no idea the mercenaries have orders to kill all the Morlocks Encounters a powerless Storm, who brings him to meet the X-men - Logan didn't trust him, so the two had a duel, which Gambit won Served as a X-Man for some time, until he was captured by Magneto and Sabretooth, and Rogue's kiss revealed the memory of the Morlock Massacre - the fallout led to him being kicked off the team Later rejoined the team after Rogue went searching for him After a battle with Destiny, he and Rogue were depowered, so they moved to California to explore their relationship  Both regained the powers and joined the X-men, but when Gambit was temporarily blinded, he began lashing out at Rogue, who left him Mystique joined the team undercover as another shapeshifter, and revealed herself to Gambit as a version of Rogue that he could actually touch - although Rogue was angry, Gambit never pursued it He submitted himself to Apocalypse in an effort to infiltrate the team, but the transformation brainwashed him, and he became the Fourth Horseman, Death - after Apocalypse's defeat, he is returned to normal with the help of Mr. Sinister Yada yada yada, he & Rogue get married after Kitty backs out of her wedding to Colossus, and Gambit proposes on the spot - they spend their honeymoon protecting the bio-engineered daughter of Charles Xavier & Lilandra, and then get teleported to the Mojoverse, where they have to fight their way out for the amusement of Mojo & his viewers Issues That is a lot of really bad luck for one person. But Gambit tortures and blames himself for way more of it than he should. He didn't want to fight Belladonna's brother, but was bound to by the traditions of the clans. He didn't want to leave Belladonna and New Orleans, but had to or there would be all-out war. He didn't want to get in bed with Mr. Sinister's, but he was the only person he knew that could save his life. He certainly didn't want to play any part in a genocide and tried everything he could to stop it when he was happening, but at the time, he genuinely believed the job was just to locate them. With regards to everything he did in his past, most of it is not his fault, and way less of it is his problem than the amount he tends to torture himself with. On a scale of zero to Cyclops, his moral culpability for the things he's done with his life doesn't even come close to the level of guilt he feels for it.  Second issue, deflection and evasiveness. Oh my goodness, Remy Labeau raises keeping people at arm's length with deflection and evasiveness to an absolute art form. And when you're a monument to male fanservice streetwise slick-talking bad boy with a mutant power that lets you kinetically excite the heart rate and neurotransmitters of other people and charm the metaphorical and often literal pants off of them, that is really not a hard thing to do. Remy is one o