Donovan's Hardcore Gambit
By Eric Morales

Writing a webcomic for over three years really paid off for Danny Donovan, who is set to chronicle an adventure of everyone's favorite ragin' Cajun Gambit in the pages of X-MEN Unlimited next year.

"I've been working in the industry since 1998 on a webcomic called Hardcore located at H.T. Cow's Comic page," Donovan told X-Fan of his early days. "Sicne that time I've bounced around from various small press publishers and other dot.comics start ups, and the like. The current small press group I work with is called Committed Comics, and I helped put together and contributed to the 9-11 Emergency Relief book being produced by Alternative Comics."

"Now somewhere in-between then and now I had spoken to the new guys in charge Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada. When Jemas came on I fired off an e-mail welcoming him to Marvel, and knowing Joe Quesada for years and being the biggest fan imaginable of Ash and Azereal and his art and editorial skills in general I had spoken to him and congratulated him as well. The three of us e-mailed back and forth for a long period of time and around the time the X-books got cancelled I had spoken to both Bill and Joe about it. I was glad that some of thses books were being put out to pasture or were being re-imagined, but sadly the axe fell on Gambit too quickly I spoke with them at length about him as a character and his possiblities, not realizing it was being formed into a pitch."

"Joe said he passed the ideas I put forth to editor Mark Powers who then got in contact with me about developing it further, after awhile I had called and followed up on the 'project' and Mark said: 'How would you like to work on a 12 page Gambit story?' Immediately my jaw dropped and I began on what was going to be an inventory story, but now I have learned it will be used in an upcoming issue of X-MEN Unlimited, although at current time I'm not sure when the issue will ship. The art will be done by new talent Tom Giorello."

"It's a 12 page story that teams the Ragin' Cajuin with a New Orleans Detective set to solve the mystery of several missing homeless people off the streets. But things get sticky when the culprit is something that not even a man or mutant may not be able to handle. Not quite sure what else to say about it that doesn't blow the whole story. :)"

Donovan also told X-MEN that his Gambit story he has in the works at Marvel.

"I have been talking with various editors we are in varied states of proposals so anything can happen! I'm also working with a few brilliant artists on some pitches so I'll have to see how that goes..."