How To Fix Gambit, By Erin Palette

Erin Palette, she of Lurking Rhythmically fame, was one of the first to rally to the siren call of Gambit Week, and she’s been pecking diligently at her keyboard ever since, coming up with a fresh take on the character.

Again, no character is a bad character, or so the old saw goes.

Anyway, here’s what she’s come up with:

What I would do is no less than a total retcon of the character. Given the sheer amount of bad ideas, baggage, history and histrionics that have been foisted upon the character since his appearance, I think that to salvage a truly workable Gambit you need to do two things: reduce him to his core element and savagely burn the rest.

Gambit has been the victim of chronic mishandling since pretty much day one, and I think the main reason for this is because the writers tried to stack too much into one character: He’s a thief AND a martial artist AND a cajun AND a mutant AND he wears spandex AND a trenchcoat AND throws explody cards AND uses a quarterstaff AND AND AND AND AND it’s ridiculous. It’s sort of like being a Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirl — while hilarious when used for comedic effect, attempting to build a serious character upon this house of cards* can only result in mockery.

Plus, he has a stupid costume.

So forget all of that crap. Wipe it from continuity and let us, as Jeff says, reduce Gambit to his core element and rebuild him from there. And what is the core of Gambit’s character?

He’s scum.

He is a criminal, a thief, a conman and a traitor. He’s the skeevy friend you’d never trust with your car keys or your girlfriend, but you could drop him in the desert and within 24 hours he’d find booze, gambling, and strippers.

And from this concept, we begin.

Keep reading.

How would YOU fix Gambit?