by Randy Lander

ULTIMATE X-MEN #13 "You Always Remember Your First Love Part 1" Not Recommended (2/10) Marvel Comics Writer: Chuck Austen Pencils: Essad Ribic Inks: Livesay Colors: J.D. Smith Letters: Sharpefont Editor: Mark Powers Price: $2.25 US/$3.50 CAN Remember The Authority, where a fill-in story of lesser quality interrupted a quality run written by Mark Millar? Well, Ultimate X-Men just gave me deja vu. The widescreen action of the book is interrupted for a two-parter that focuses entirely on Gambit, a character that I have come to loathe over the years, and it's written by Chuck Austen, whose work on U.S. War Machine was good but who can't rise above the mediocrity of the character to tell a very compelling story. On art chores we have Essad Ribic, an interesting choice but one that doesn't seem wise, given the mark that the Kuberts' style has made on the book. I'm not sure why Marvel felt it necessary to throw this story into the mix, unless the inane story of a letter-writing Gambit campaign are true, but whatever the reason, this is the kind of thing that kills promising books. Ask any long-time fan what they dislike about Gambit and you'll get a few different answers. Some don't like the enigmatic cliche that he embodies, which began with Wolverine and became an X-Men staple in the mid-90s with Cable, Deadpool and others. Some don't like the romance with Rogue that turned her character into a hanger-on rather than an independent character. And still others can't stand that silly, stupid accent. In fairness, the only problem that the Ultimate version of Gambit retains from those elements is the accent, but it's pretty bad. Austen scores points by having Gambit's child companion make fun of it at one point, but that only helps to point out just how much of a silly throwback his overwritten "Cajun" accent is. And when every line out of the protagonist's mouth makes a reader either want to laugh or grit their teeth, that tends to interfere with enjoyment of the story. Really, though, despite this being a Gambit spotlight, his accent is a relatively minor thing. The problem is that the story itself isn't terribly interesting either. Gambit, a street card hustler instead of a thief in this iteration, comes upon an orphaned child and becomes her protector, just in time for the super-powered murderer of her parents to track her down. It's a Wolverine story dressed up in Gambit clothes, and I never found it all that interesting when it was done with Wolverine either. There is a genuine sweetness to the relationship that develops between Gambit and the young girl, and the exchange where she asks Gambit to use his "magic" to bring her parents back is heart-breaking, but it's not enough to overcome my disinterest in the characters or the stock plot. The choice of artist is a good one for fitting the tone of the story, a more down-to-earth street level tale of relatively normal folks. Unfortunately, the shift in tone doesn't really fit this book, which suddenly goes from pseudo-military wars between mutants into an afterschool special by way of Martin Scorcese. Ribic's artwork also doesn't really give much visual flair to Gambit, and given the fairly impressive job that has been done on the costume redesigns so far, this new character comes off looking quite bland. Again, it fits the relative normal setting of this particular story, but it feels out of place in Ultimate X-Men. I'll be quite honest and admit that my dislike of Gambit meant I probably wasn't going to like this story in the first place. But I'm really disappointed to see that the entirety of the cast that we've grown to like in this book seem to have gone AWOL for this story, and it reads like what it is: a fill-in. About the best thing about the story for me is that, since Millar has also stated a dislike for Gambit, we probably won't see this character showing up on the team, and I can probably skip these two issues without missing anything essential to the overall story. Email Randy Lander comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.