Asmus (w) and C. Mann (a) and Rosenberg (c)
Gambit needs to save himself from death in a pit filling with water while his hands are locked with vibranium chains (because vibranium is almost impossible to get unless it's for a throwaway item that will never come back again in which case it is all too easy to get) with, I don't know, really good locks, look that's not the point, the point is he can't pick his way out so he Gambits his way out, charging everything kinetically and bursting forth. The people who kidnapped him (the guy who raised him and some others, with the help of Fence) inform him that they're looking to install a new leader for the International Thieves Guild and that they think he'd be perfect, what with his big character and reputation and his mad skills. The problem with that is then that there are a handful of other talented players with powers of their own (including Ajna the clairvoyant and Nil the technomancer) who would rather they be in charge than Gambit. To prove his worthiness, he must retrieve a ring for Nil that the technomancer's father took to a maximum security prison with him after he killed his wife. Gambit will have to break in, steal the ring out of a safety deposit box, and escape. Of course, somehow Gambit fails to see that this is a trap and is suddenly caught off-guard when he's contacted by Nil from within the safe deposit room and told that this is all a trap. Nil gives him a chance to leave with other valuables or perish with the bomb he left in another box. Gambit chooses to try to stop the bomb, which explodes, though Gambit keeps the explosion relatively contained at personal risk only to find himself greeted by original series villain Mr. Cich, who Nil had informed of the plan.This is the second to last issue of Gambit so he's going to have to work his way out of this one pretty rapidly. Or, you know, die or whatever. My money's on working his way out of it but there's certainly a lot happening for one issue remaining. Gambit will have to escape Cich and his bodyguard Remlik (plus others) while probably making them non-threats, likely he'll have to take out Nil, and we'll have to resolve the thieves guild business all in one issue. Or, like I said, Gambit could die or whatever. That might be the road I'd take if I was Asmus, seems easier than all of these threads. The issue was decent though I'd say a lot of the exposition lasted too long (we had a lot of Fence interjecting little bits of jokes or more exposition than necessary which didn't help things). Maybe they could have cut some of that and used it to wrap up a plotline? I don't know. I guess how good this issue was with spacing will come down to how well done the final issue is? We'll have to see.
Wolverine MAX 10
Starr (w) and Boschi (a) and Brown (c)
Wolverine leads the mysterious man he's run into a couple of times now back to the man's home to grill him for more information. Wolvy immediately realizes there's a dead body in the house but has no time to deal with that right now. Instead, he wants to know what the man knows about him. The man, whose name is Bobby Fragosi, tells Wolverine that he used to work for the FBI back in the late '70s and that he tailed a Punisher-esque Wolverine for quite some time before losing him and coming to terms with the fact that he'd never be able to catch him in the act well enough to lock him away. Fragosi became the fall guy for the department's failures to catch Wolvy and his life spiraled out of control, which has now left him broke, hence why he has been following Wolverine: he thinks Wolvy has money stashed away nearby, why else would he show up in this area? Cops show up at Fragosi's place and Wolverine gets the pair of them out of there, driving Fragosi out to the desert before killing him and leaving him behind to make his way to Vegas.This series continues not to impress me. I think there's a way to do this story, where Wolverine has no idea what's happened in his life and is trying to piece things together in whatever way he can, that might be interesting but this isn't it. In addition, I think it's a story that's already been done more than enough. If you're coming back to this side of Wolverine's life, I think you have to come back here with a purpose, have a real story that's worth telling or a real angle that hasn't been explored. I haven't seen that at any point from this story, begging me to ask again who is benefitting from it. We get Jock covers, which is neat, but not much else to it. Also, frankly, if you're insistent on continuing the MAX line and putting Wolverine in a MAX series, you should probably use that a little more viscerally. It seems like there are overdone amounts of swearing just because there can be but Wolverine is one of the more violent heroes in the Marvel Universe. If you have a MAX book and you spend most of it rolling out rather boring flashbacks that largely focus on a guy who's going to be dead at the issue's end, at least load it with violence. I'm not saying that makes for a good book or anything (and if that's what had been done here, I might be complaining about it anyway because I'm fickle) but it seems strange to have the go-ahead to do that and then to waste all your rated R stuff on swears (and a couple of naked women). What this book shouldn't be is boring and that's what each issue leaves me with.
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