The problem with Gambit

For a period in my teens I bought X-Men and Uncanny X-Men comics religiously. For some reason I have a very clear memory of walking half hour into town to buy the latest edition from the general store when my family holidayed down south. (Yeah that was a great general store - terrific magazine and comic selection). It also inspired me to write/draw my own terrible comic (thankfully unseen by anyone but myself I hope and pray) featuring thinly disguised versions of my favourite characters. To call it an homage would be... generous. Terrible fan-fic is closer to the mark.

The reason I was so into the series at that stage was the reason I think a lot of people, by which I mean women and girls in particular, were into the comics at that stage - the sweet-arse love story that was Gambit and Rogue. I won't bother going into the ups and downs of those two crazy kids but, yeah, it was a romantic story line that really worked. As a hormonal teenager I ate it up with a spoon and thought Gambit was the shit.

Which is why I'm so super bummed Channing Tatum will be playing Gambit in the planned film, even as I feel bad for being down on it. I like Tatum - he's funny, charismatic and seems like kind of a sweetheart. I think he's great onscreen and I am usually interested to see him in things. But dude is not hot. I'm sorry but he is not. There is too much muscle, too much... ears. Too much... chin? I don't know but dude is TOO MUCH. The Gambit I remember was drawn thin and kinda rangy, always slouching around in his too-big trenchcoat and looking undernourished and faintly in need of a bath. Tatum will wear that trenchcoat like a second skin.

I shouldn't complain. I mean, I'll always have the beautiful romantic pairing of a young Professor X and Magneto in the current crop of X-Men films - a charming development I did not see coming. If Fassbender makes a cameo in the Gambit film wearing that white-tshirt and pants combo he wore for historic Nazi hunting in the first flashback film you will not hear me complain about C-Tate's melon of a head. Not once.