Earlier this year, Marvel announced that 2018 would feature the “wedding of the century.” While it was believed to be Kitty Pryde and Colossus tying the knot, that wedding was not to be. Unwilling to let the day go to waste, Rogue and Gambit decided to take the plunge and took Kitty and Colossus’ place at the altar.
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This move was preceded by the Rogue and Gambit miniseries written by Kelly Thompson. Thompson now teams with artist Oscar Bazaldua and colorist Frank D’Armata to continue chronicling this fan-favorite mutant couple’s adventures and relationship, and Marvel couldn’t have found better stewards to care of this newly minted matrimony.
Rogue and Gambit began with a tone-setting, theme-establishing sequence that was somewhat divorced from the actual events of the issue, showing Rogue and Gambit in various different costumes from many different periods in their relationship. Thompson goes back to that well once again to kick off Mr. and Mrs. X #1, with Bazaldua alternating shots of Rogue and Gambit’s wedding ceremony with shots of a ship flying through space, culminating with a two-page spread of the ship exploding as Rogue and Gambit kiss. The sequence also serves as a microcosm of what D’Armata does with the colors throughout the issue, juxtaposing the light and airy pinks and greens of the wedding with the heavy darks of space. It’s a thoughtful and engrossing hook to start the issue.
The rest of the first half of the issue is spent on Rogue and Gambit’s proper wedding. Not content to let the couple settle for being fill-ins for Kitty and Colossus, the X-Men go all-out to give Rogue and Gambit a worthy ceremony. Thompson truly shines in here, giving all the X-Men present dialogue that reflects the warmth and humor of an extended family.
D’Armat’s colors are at work in this sequence, alternating between a mostly fuschia palette for “team Gambit” scenes and a largely green palette for “Team Rogue” before the two ultimately come together. Those finals pages verge on garish as the pink tones get turned up very high towards the culmination of the ceremony, but it works well as a counterpoint to the blackness and isolation of the second half of the book.
Bazaldua brings a lot of warmth and love to the faces of the characters at the wedding, especially when a certain family member shows up at the wedding unexpectedly. Like D’Armata’s colors, Bazaldua’s layouts also vary between the wedding section of the book and the pages spent ins pace. This is best illustrated by the issue’s action scene (surprise — the honeymoon does not go uninterrupted), where Bazaldua quickly shifts from relatively straightforward layouts with a bit of panel overlap to filling pages with irregularly shaped, angled panels that convey the sense that the action is bursting out from the page.
There are a few scenes during the issue’s more intimate moments were Bazaldua’s anatomy is a bit overly elongated, giving the characters, particularly Rogue, an overstretched look. But despite that, the artwork conveys the affection felt between Gambit and Rogue so well that the flaw seems minor by comparison, and the issue leaves the reader ultimately feeling bad that the happy honeymoon comes to an unexpected end.
In a very real way, Thompson, Bazaldua, and D’Armata have with Mr. and Mrs. X #1 delivered the comic book that many fans have been waiting their entire comics-reading lives to read. People have been following Rogue and Gambit’s ups and downs for decades waiting for a series that does the couple justice by celebrating their love rather than leaning on their heartbreak. With Thompson’s delightful dialogue and characterizations, Bazaldua’s balance of the intimate and the exciting, and D’Armata’s tone-setting, Mr. and Mrs. X seems set to deliver equal parts overdue emotional payoff and endearing adventure.
Published by Marvel Comics
On July 25, 2018
Written by Kelly Thompson
Art by Oscar Bazaldua
Colors by Frank D’Armata
