Cup of Tea and a Chocolate Biscuit

Busy researching comic-book hero movies for a feature in our teen magazine, and it hit me how many have been made (and remade) in recent years. And not just the biggies, starring our friends Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker and Clark Kent. Between Iron Man, Thor, Green Lantern, Hulk, Captain America and The Avengers (sort of Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League), it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet for comic book fans. And while I don't profess to know the name of every single member of SHIELD, and sometimes forget who's in which camp in the endless DC vs Marvel debate, I do enjoy a good comic book romp a lot more than, say, Valentine's Day (but then, who wouldn't, really?).

Anyway, all the spandex and superpowers got me to thinking about my very first crush. What can I say, I was that weird little girl who much preferred her brother's He Man and Ninja Turtle action figures to her own vapid-expressioned dolls. From the day my brother rented Batman Returns from the VHS store instead of Care Bears (like I'd asked) I was hooked.

And so, my first stirrings of underage adoration were not for Dominic Telo, like every other girl on the playground, but for this man, Remy leBeau, aka Gambit:

Who could resist a flaming playing card and headband in the Nineties?

Perfection, sheer perfection.

And yeah okay so he was shacking up with Rogue in X-Men the TV show (when she was a fully grown woman, not a teenager with a bad dye job), I still loved him dearly, and used to imagine him rescueing me from all sorts of dangers, like learning to write in cursive.

Sigh.

And no, poncey Taylor Kitsch, who played Gambit in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, just didn't measure up.