Former aliases: None known

Identity: Secret

Occupation: (current) Adventurer, (former) Professional Thief

Legal status: Citizen of the United States with no criminal record

Place of birth: New Orleans, Louisiana

Marital status: Separated from his wife

Known relatives: Jean-Luc LeBeau (father), Bella Donna Boudreaux (wife, separated)

Base of operations: (current) Xavier Institute, Salem Center, Westchester County, New York State, (former) New Orleans, Louisiana; Paris, France; Cairo, Illinois

Group affiliation: (current) X-Men, (former) Thieves Guild (New Orleans)

First appearance: X-MEN (first series) #130

Height: 6'1"

Weight: 175 lbs.

Eyes: Red

Hair: Brown

Strength Level:

Gambit is a mutant who possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height, and build who engages in intensive regular exercise.

Abilities:

Special skills and abilities: Bilingual in English and French, ability to throw small objects, including knives, throwing spikes, and playing cards, with extraordinary accuracy.

Known Superhuman Powers:

Gambit has the mutant ability to tap into the potential energy contained within an object and transform it into kinetic energy. When Gambit thus charges an object with kinetic energy and throws it at a target, the object releases this energy explosively on impact.

He has recently developed the ability to charge flesh.

Fighting Skills:

Excellent hand-to-hand combatant, utilizing streetfighting techniques and acrobatics

Personal Weaponry:

Throwing spikes, a bo staff, and playing cards

A homeless boy wandering the streets, Gambit was adopted by Jean-Luc LeBeau, head of the council of the Thieves Guild, a criminal organization based in New Orleans. As part of a peace pact between the Thieves Guild and their rivals, the Assassins Guild, a marriage was arranged between Gambit and Bella Donna Boudreaux, the granddaughter of the head of the Assassins. However, Bella Donna's brother Julien objected to the marriage and challenged Gambit to a duel. Severely wounding Julien, Gambit was forced to flee New Orleans to prevent war between the two guilds.

Gambit wandered the world as he plied his skills as a master thief, aided by his mutant power to charge objects with explosive energy. He employed playing cards he charged with kinetic energy as his trademark weapon. At one point Gambit agreed to assemble the team of assassins called the Marauders for Mister Sinister (see Marauders, Mister Sinister). Gambit did not realize that Sinister would employ the Marauders to massacre the underground mutant community called the Morlocks (see Morlocks).

Eventually, Gambit encountered the X-Man Storm, who had been transformed into an amnesiac child and who had turned to theft (see X-Men). He helped her escape her enemy, the Shadow King, and they became partners (see Shadow King). Later, when Professor Charles Xavier returned from a long period of traveling in outer space, Storm, having regained her memory and true age, sponsored Gambit's admission into the X-Men (see Professor X). Gambit has remained on the team ever since and fell in love with his fellow X-Man Rogue (see Rogue). Recently, however, Gambit and Rogue have grown apart. As for Bella Donna, she has become Gambit's enemy. Recently, the X-Men learned of Gambit's role in the massacre of the Morlocks. Guilt-ridden, Gambit temporarily left the team (more like, he was left, by Rogue, to die in Antarctica ).

He once held the dual positions of leader of the X-Men and the Theives Guild. His tenure, however, was short-lived. He is currently in Australia, working with the X-Men who defected to the X-Treme team.

In the alternate future in which the X-Man Bishop was born, Gambit has become an aged figure who witnessed the betrayal of the X-Men by one of their own members. Bishop suspected Gambit was the traitor until he learned how Xavier's mind spawned the malevolent entity Onslaught (see Bishop).