"A Rogue Through and Through."

Alright guys, back for another round and blog series that finally gets around to talking about comic books themselves. Funnily enough, it's also my first 'Marvel' character blog; and one of the few that will be on this blog as I don't find most females in the Marvel comics that are all that interesting outside of 'X-men'. We will be discussing the character 'Rogue' in this series; specifically the Chris Claremont run, maybe a slightly longer run than Claremont himself, but no further than the mid 90's era.

For this first post though I will be discussing Rogue's origin through all the iterations, with a highlight of 'Uncanny X-Men #158'. Without further ado, let's begin this long journey of the exploration of comic book Rogue.

In her first appearance(in the X-Men comics, I'm not going into anything outside of the Uncanny X-Men title) Rogue is in a military base, seemingly being a distraction for Mystique, when Carol Danvers along with Ororo and Logan bump into her in the terminal. Once Carol recognizes her, she flies into a rage remembering what Rogue did to her just a few short months ago.

Rogue beats her back as Carol has not had possession of her powers since Rogue stole them from her, permanently. Carol is barely down when Logan tackles Rogue, and the two share a brief struggle before Rogue kisses him to keep him down for a time.

Before Logan's powers can be taken permanently(which I'm not sure that she would have taken them completely since it's already said that both Rogue and Carol have been psychically scarred by that act), Ororo strikes Rogue with a lightning jolt. Ororo and Logan retreat for a brief time until Rogue learns how to use Logan's abilities properly. Kurt is called in to help when it's shown that Rogue takes on the person's personality as well as their powers with her line of "Bub" dropped into a sentence and drawn very much like Logan.

The team fights Rogue until she gains Ororo's abilities and is overwhelmed by the power at her fingertips by creating floods and tornados. It's established that the more Rogue uses the abilities her victims possess, the quicker they drain and return to the owner. Once the powers are returned, the team wears her down when Logan says that since a punch to the jaw wasn't being productive, maybe a hit to critical pressure points might take her down, and may have done so if given the chance. Unfortunately, Rogue knocks them down and would have continued the fight if Ororo did not create a tornado to send her back long enough to retreat.

Interesting to note that it takes three major players in the X-Men universe to take Rogue down and even then the best they can do is keep her down briefly so they could retreat. This does show that Rogue could have been one of the most powerful foes the X-Men would ever face if she stayed that way past this issue. Rogue will not be shown again until issue #171, over a year after this issue was released, when she joins the X-Men.

Since there is admittedly not much to Rogue character-wise in this issue as she is meant to be a one-dimensional character, with the interesting stuff coming once she joins the X-Men, I thought I would discuss on-screen iterations of the characters first appearances.

It should be noted that every animated version of the character has shown, in one way or another, that Rogue has been an adversary for this team at one point in her life. In X-Men: The Animated Series, Rogue's backstory is shown in the episode 'A Rogue's Tale' where Mystique tries to get her daughter back by impersonating Carol Danvers to shock her memory because Charles Xavier blocked the memories and connection between the two once she joined the team, to keep her from going mad. Rogue's backstory is shown in flashbacks as more of her memories keep coming back. The backstory is pretty much what is done in the comics; which is shown in the comics later so I won't spoil it here in case anyone doesn't know when starting this blog. The only big difference is that when Rogue takes Carol's powers she wanted to let go and was commanded to drain it all by Mystique, where in the comics she looks malevolent while she is draining the powers.

With the 'X-Men: Evolution' version of character, it's more of a gigantic mislead and omission of information. Mystique impersonates the X-Men because the team is sent once Rogue's powers begin to show it's deadly affects. Mystique makes it so that it seems that the X-Men are a group of assassins to kill her for putting a boy in a coma she touched at a dance. Some of the real X-Men, particularly Jean Grey and Kurt Wagner, get a few words in and gain a bit of trust before their reputation is ruined. Rogue plays a part in every episode after her appearance in episode three, with the game of keep away trying to be kept up by Raven, however, some of the X-Men(particularly Scott Summers) don't give up hope on her and try to befriend her until the seventh episode of the season where she becomes an official member of the team at the end of the episode.

That is my favorite version of Rogue, maybe even withstanding the comics because she doesn't have the Ms. Marvel powers constantly on top of her absorption abilities in this series. As interesting as the Carol Danvers story with her can be, it does seem a bit like overkill, which is my issue with The Animated Series version.

The final iteration of Rogue we will look at is 'Wolverine and the X-men'. In this version she is already a member of the team and seemingly has been for many years. The area where they keep her a semi-antagonist is by having her join the Brotherhood ,in episode two, as a spy until the mid-season finale where she rejoins the X-Men once again.

As far as the movies go, while I like the version of Marie they created(not including Last Stand), in the fact that she wouldn't be comfortable in her own skin and not have the cockiness she has the comics and the 90's animated series. Which this version is closer to the X-Men Evolution version. The reason I'm not including it here is that she never once is shown to be on the side of the Brotherhood at any point. Makes sense as Eric kidnaps her in the first film so why should she, but the point stands.

Anyway, this has been ridiculously long for the length I like to keep these blogs, but there was a lot of material to cover. The next blog post in this series will be cover Uncanny X-Men #171, which will be in two weeks, possibly sooner than that. Thanks for reading guys and strap in for what is sure to be the longest series of blogs I have planned for the near future.