From dhenry@plains.NoDak.edu Fri Aug 18 08:00:24 EDT 1995 Article: 1884 of rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Path: prism!gt-news!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!qns3.qns.com!news.ecn.uokno r.edu!news.uoknor.edu!ns1.nodak.edu!plains!dhenry From: dhenry@plains.NoDak.edu (David R. Henry) Subject: REVIEW: THE MORON GAME Sender: usenet@ns1.nodak.edu (Usenet login) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 18:07:08 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: plains.nodak.edu Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network Lines: 326 NOTE: This version of the Moron Game contains the otherwise "secret" Rogue review section previously only seen on the Stripe List. Gambit #4 "Thief of Time" Writer: Howard Mackie Pencils: Lee Weeks (Amazing. Marvel finished a mutant limited series with the artist they started with) Inks: Klaus Janson (It's a sad day when the brighest moment is given by a man who buries pages in black ink) Colors: Steve Buccellato Letters: Richard Starkings Edits: BOB 'n' Tom, the Piper's Sons Let's play a game: Why Are You A Moron? This being the net and all, I'm certainly not able to score you home players that well, and keep y'all from cheating, but if we all stand close and just be good sports about it, it'll be joyful fun for the whole family to enjoy. Go make some cocoa and toast and settle down for some good old-fashioned fun. The rules to Why Are You A Moron? are numbingly simple. You find someone, preferrably doing something incomprehensibly stupid, and then ask them, "Why Are You A Moron?" Then, they have one sentence to defend themselves and their actions. If they can't -- hey, congratulations, you've won, and they are, indeed, a moron! Play then passes to the next person you see doing something very stupid, you ask them the same question, they have one sentence to defend themselves, and so on. Tournament rules available on request. Today, our guests on Why Are You A Moron? are the cast and crew of Gambit #4. Not that they know it, of course -- our hidden cameras are spying on them in the dressing room between takes. Still, let's take a close look at them as we have some fun playing the game that makes litigation fun -- Why Are You A Moron? [Sounds of audience applause] Let's start with guest star Jean-Luc Lebeau, putative head of the New Orleans Thieves' Guild. Jean-Luc, you're a successful businessman who is supposedly one of the greatest, most intelligent thieves of all time. Why Are You A Moron? "Are you insane, son? You don't stand a chance in this city with both guilds hunting you down." Is that your defense, Mr. Lebeau? Well, gee. So, you're concerned that your adopted mutant son, Gambit, won't stand a chance fleeing the personal forces of Candra, the immortal mutant who founded both the Thieves and the Assassins Guilds of New Orleans, not to mention the combined might of the two guilds? "Maybe not... but he'll be giving it a real good try..." Why? The Assassins are supposed to be the most dreaded killers on the planet, yet they've so far failed to kill one single person in three issues. No, wait -- there was Gambit's adoptive brother in issue number one, who was so obviously fish bait that you didn't even bother having him use the phone to warn his brother -- instead he treked across half of America, barely arriving at Gambit's side in time to squawk out the plot of the miniseries. The Thieves, meanwhile, have so far only sat around and looked stupid while waiting for their clues to arrive. NAFTA probably shipped them to Canada. These are the groups of people that Gambit is supposed to fear? Assassins who can't kill and Thieves who don't think? Meanwhile, you gladly submit your friends and relatives to an elixer which submits random percentages of them to a lingering, horrible death, and call it an honor bestowed upon them when they don't die. That's like awarding someone for their fourth consecutive meal. "Congratulations! Despite our best efforts, you're still alive! Please, accept this plaque in your honor." "Gee, thanks, Jim. Who do we poison next?" Okay, so if you don't die, you get to live forever. Maybe that's worth the risk. Maybe it's the seductive charms of your truly immortal benefactor, the enigmatic Candra. What exactly is Candra up to, anyway? Well, speaking of the notorious External, there she is now, by the water fountain, scowling at a cup of Metamucil. Hey, Candra, Why Are You A Moron? "We are so similar, my handsome one. Both users. Both thieves." Well, you missed the obvious one there, Candra -- Both Morons. But, that's okay. I realize you have a lot of catching up to do, since you were only introduced three issues ago but have supposedly been guiding the destiny of the world for a few hundred years. Maybe that explains why you still dress in dresses with no middle, top, or bottom: you never had an actual teenager period in your character development, so you still think it's cool after a couple hundred years to show off your tan lines. But, still -- you went to all this trouble to make these series of elixers, one of which gives the Assassins "the power" (which does them no good, apparently, since anybody and everybody has so far kicked Assassin butt back to the Gulf of Mexico since they've been introduced), and the other of which gives the Thieves "the life," without the wisdom to use their life intelligently. Having accomplished that, what do you do with your superpowered sidekicks? Nothing! You sit around in Paris and complain that they're not doing anything for you. Gee, maybe if you told them what they're supposed to do? Isn't the whole idea of being a mastermind involve something like actually using your mind? Yeah, I know -- being immortal means never having to say "I'm bored." We feel for you, Candra, really. Tell you what -- go to casting, get a costume change and a personality, and we'll talk pity. And, hey, what about your impressive sidekick, The Tithe Collector? Tithe Collector, Why Are You A Moron? "I, the Tithe Collector, stand here with Assassin and Thief alike." Good help hard to find these days, Tithy? Okay, let me lay out the scenario: you have Gambit (the man your Big Boss Lady Candra wants dead because he stole one of the all-precious Elixers from under her, um, nose last issue) trapped. You have some twenty odd Assassins and Thieves standing with you, all ready to fight and apprehend the felon. I'm not sure what good they'll do you, given their past history, but maybe it looks good for the press; I dunno. Large, hungry rose bushes would probably be just as dangerous, and far more photogenic. So, you have superior numbers. You have superior powers. You have ranged weapons. You have Neat Costumes in Red and Yellow. How, pray tell, _how_ can you lose? Well, how about this: unlike anyone with, say, sentience, you, a supposed immortal with years of experience, training, and wisdom, gather all your men in a large group under a window just so Gambit can take you all out with one explosive statue. What a keen sense of tactics! Do you set perimeter guards out in on all directions in case he tries something revolutionary and sneaky, like, say, taking the back door out of the house? Nope. Snipers on nearby rooftops, ready to take down the Man in the Coat when he makes his move across the completely surrounded, isolated building you have him trapped in? Nope. Men in cars, or motorbikes at least, ready to either scrap it up with the fugitive, or at least follow him to see where he could flee to? Nope. With all you have at your disposal, you take all your men, gather them in a big group in flashy costumes in an open killing zone, and then complain when Gambit blows half of them up and escapes in the other direction while your men scramble to catch up. If you're the sort of man that Candra trusts enough to be her main assassin and facilitator, it's obvious why she hasn't ended up ruling more of the world than she has -- all the instructions on how to open the cereal boxes still have her confused. I dunno. Am I being too harsh on you? "I am totally without pity." Oh. Well, then, since you also let a guy who can make anything he can touch explode fondle your coat -- while you're wearing it -- you can take my utter lack of pity, comprehension, or caring with you to your grave. And don't think about any silly quests for vengeance if I've offended you or your mistress -- assuming you can even find my house, I'll set out the garden sprinklers before you come. That should buy me a few years. You know, we haven't got a chance to talk to the main man of the series yet, the impossibly unshaven Remy LeBeau, also known as Gambit. Gambit, Why Are You A Moron? "Now I've got to be showin' you my gratitude. Tonight me an' you are goin' do dis town right for the last time, neh?" Man, if tactlessness were post-it notes, you'd be 3M. You've just risked life and limb to run half-way around the world to get a possibly backfiring elixer to bring your wife back from the dead, you've just beaten up the Tithe Collector and caused the dissolution of the Thief and Assassin Guild structure, and you've just risen your wife back from the dead, only to find out that she has no memory of you. So what do you do? "I'm goin' ta Disneyland!" Nope! You hit on Rogue! A woman who has just watched you pour out your love for another woman, and instead of returning the love that you could have, you just go, "Oops! She don't remember me!" and ask _Rogue_ out on the town. Outside of tranquilizer darts and nets, how do you ever get dates? I'm sorry, you're the hero of the story. Which means, I guess, that we're supposed to be impressed and moved by your tale, in which we learn the following things of importance that we didn't know before Gambit #1: --the New Orleans' Guilds were set up for no comprehensible reason besides a random background for the story to take place in --your wife, a complete cipher before, has now been made complete in her uselessness by having her memory stolen, and is back alive --Candra, who would have been behind the whole plot if there was one to speak of, loses her control over the Guilds, the net result of which is she has less things to not use --Rogue loves you, but you don't know that, making it useless as a relevation in the series --you can beat up a bunch of wimps for four issues without always having to break into a scowl. Is this the wrong place to ask Why? Probably. It is the right place to ask: Rogue, Why Are You A Moron? "I love you, Remy." Well, you're not a moron, sweetheart, although I sure do wish they'd get down and give motivation as to why you're falling for this spitwad one of these days. The few times you do anything, it's usually in character -- it's not your fault the writers decide that Gambit has time to jet over to Paris, fly back, resurrect his wife, and you still aren't the least bit impatient with him. Well, maybe you are a bit of a moron. Hey, speaking of the writers, why can't we share the blame some? Howard Mackie, Why Are You A Moron? "So goes the legend of... Gambit." I can't use this for the rest of your life, but at least in this instance, I'm afraid the prosecution will have to rest. Amen. Evaluation: I thought Vertigo was supposed to be a DC sort of thing: watching the plot threads get tied up here before the fourth-issue deadline hit gave me the spinning wheelies. There's a resolution to the plot, but since the plot wasn't about anything to begin with, who cares? There's more background given to Gambit, which now means we know as much about him as we do about Cinderella in the first paragraph of her fairy tale. It's nice, but it ain't much. Rogue's brought in to sucker poor, silly fools like myself into buying the series, and then is promptly unused for the entire series -- her touching Bella Donna, which is supposed to be the motivation to her finally admitting her love to Gambit aloud, is fumbled by him not hearing her. Maybe there was an attempt to do some tragic irony with that at the end, but all I could see is Gambit acting like a louse with no comprehension of his prior action. That's the trouble with the whole series -- nobody in it behaved like they had any sort of life before the series began. Candra has these Guilds which she apparently has never used, and schemes with them for no reason other than she schemes with them. Gambit goes from sketchy motivation to sketchy motivation, forgetting everything except not to shave, and in the end promptly forgets everything which has gone before and dares ask Rogue out for a night on the town. The Tithe Collector is supposed to be some grand, horrific being, and is beautifully set up in the beginning of the series as one, only to have his legend quickly displaced by Gambit at the end -- some effective dude he must have been. Bella Donna was finally given a life, but then she might as well not have been, since she ended up a complete amnesiac. Rogue just stands around and acts stupid, but then we can't have X-women acting intelligent in this day and age now, can we? She'd be twiddling her thumbs if she didn't require the mutant power to have fifteen thumbs to qualify for the amount of twiddling she did in this series. It's not as useless as some recent X-series have been -- the X-Cutioner's Song springs to mind (hey! No plot! No revelations! Just mindless people, milling around on the moon!) -- and Lee Weeks does an okay job on the art (Klaus Janson kicks on inks, as usual), but the art's not good enough to buy the series on its own, and the story most certainly is not. In the end, I guess if you like seeing a "cool" hero go around and blow up worthless paper villains who can't even shoot straight, the Gambit limited series is for you. With that glowing recommendation, we head directly into: The Page Count: Well, I've wasted most of the good lines already, but what the hey: Page 1: "He comes here not out of anger, but of love." We leave here not out of anger, but of nausea. Page 3: Any more shadow and we could almost fit in a panel of Lobdell captions without obscuring any art. Page 6: Words fail me. I learned better small unit tactics in Cub Scouts. Page 12: Random Rogue Weakness Patrol Part 342 -- she can't break out of anything, nowadays. Sigh. Page 14: Why superheroes should always yell. Keeps the letterer awake, too. Page 21: I have the sinking feeling that the motivation that Rogue should be feeling to make her run away isn't the motivation that the writer thought behind her running away -- shock and disgust at Gambit's thoughtlessness, as opposed to "Ah can't get close to ANYone!" That's all I can handle. I cain't stand no more! Rouge Watch: Throughout the entire Gambit Limited Series, Rogue didn't do much. Let's go over it: #1: Confesses love of Gambit to Wolvie. Wolvie gives typical Wolvie Words o' Wisdom (WWW) (TM). Follows Gambit because she likes him. #2: Helps fight the Assassins. Aunt May could have had the same effect. #3: Shows up for all of two pages, while Gambit finds time to fly to Paris, France (!!!) without her noticing. Accidentily bumps into Bella Donna, which leads to: #4: Her declaration of love to Gumbo, which he doesn't hear. Boy, what a list of achievements. If this was a creative writing class, you'd ask certain questions: why was this character put into the story? For some sort of ironic love comment? To prove that Gambit is a guy so full of self-pity (look at the last page of #4) that you could fill a blimp with his sighs? For no other reason than to attract Rogue fans? I dunno... you be the judge. In any case, Rogue's involvement in the Gambit LS is good only because they finally came out in the darn open and admits that she loves him. No reason is given why, of course, and there's still no motivation behind it, but at least we can now take it as a given. Otherwise, she was unused and poorly used, at that -- look at how she responds to Gambit's utterly self- serving come-on at the end of the series. I can't shake the feeling that she should be running from him in anger at his use-'em-and-leave-'em nature... but maybe I'm just allowing her more intelligence than Marvel wants to give her. Sigh. Some days, you just want to give up. Rating: One-half burnt card. Series total: One-half a X-belt. That last issue really brought down the average. Rogueosity: One and a half mint juleps. -- David R. Henry-Rogue Fan Club //// The power to make you feel real stupid. "All you of Earth are IDIOTS!"-P9fOS / What was the question? -- Kate Bush dhenry@plains.nodak.edu * Evolution: Give it some time, it'll grow on ya.