Let’s take a second and think about
touch, shall we? No groaning. Touch is a very important sense. It’s the
sensation that first fosters bonds to our parents, or other loved ones. How
many times has a hug or a pat on the back helped stave off tears of anger or
sorrow? It is perhaps the most important sense for a communal species, it’s
more important than sight, smell, or sound in showing that we are not alone.
And now imagine what life would be like if you couldn’t touch anyone, or any
living thing. You couldn’t kiss the one you love, be hugged when you’re on the
verge of tears, or even shake hands. At least not without a layer of fabric separating
you from that other person. It’d be pretty awful, right? Well, since she
started puberty, that’s pretty much been Rogue’s every day. Let’s go into more
detail, shall we?
 |
| Classic Rogue, one of my favorite designs. |
The Mutant known as Rogue spent her
formative years in Mississippi with her parents Own and Priscilla. She was born
Anna Marie, a fact that was only revealed in the last decade, for most of her
career she was just Rogue. Anna Marie and her parents lived in a hippie
commune. The commune attempted to use some sort of Native American Mysticism to
reach some sort of hippie paradise called the “Far Banks,” which failed and
seemingly caused Priscilla to disappear. Anna Marie’s father was young and a
less than adequate caregiver, so Priscilla’s sister, Carrie, took over as
Anna’s primary parent. Because she feared losing Anna Marie like her sister,
Carrie was a very strict and authoritative guardian. This kind of clashed with
teenage rebellion. Just ask General Samuel Lane (DC) or General Thaddeus Ross
(Marvel) how well their daughters took to the authoritarian style of parenting.
In two words, not well. After a few years of putting up with her aunt, Anna
Marie ran away from home.
Unlike most kids in this situation,
Anna Marie didn’t get caught and sent home. Apparently she was really, really good
at fending for herself. In her wanderings she grew close to a boy named Cody.
They got along, to quote Forrest Gump, “Like Peas and Carrots.” Because her
teenage impulses have been so good to
her up to that point, she obeyed her hormones and kissed Cody. There were
sparks, and then Cody had a seizure like fit. Said hormones that motivated her
to kiss Cody also caused her powers to manifest, and she absorbed the life
energy and psyche from Cody. Hormones are dicks. Cody ended up in a coma, and Anna
Marie developed an understandably intense fear of touching others. She started
wearing more concealing clothing and gloves to lessen the risk of touching
others. A short time later she was recruited by Mystique to join her version of
the Brotherhood of Mutants. The two developed a familial bond, and Mystique
used this connection to turn the lonely and bitter teenager into an angry
weapon of mass destruction. Great parenting Mystique, real stellar.
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| Most women showing this much skin is considered hot. Rogue showing this much skin, and I'm worried for peoples safety. |
Mystique’s advisor, lover, and only
friend Destiny told her to keep their new Rogue out of the spot light as much
as possible. While initially skeptical of doing so, this proved most sound
advice after several new members of the Brotherhood were arrested and
imprisoned. Mystique concocted a plan to use Rogue powers to steal the local
hero Ms. Marvel’s powers and use them to break their team out of prison. They
track Ms. Marvel down and Rogue attacks her on Ms. Marvel’s doorstep. Thanks to
Carol Danvers’ formitable strength of will, and her…well, strength of body,
prolongs the transfer. Rogue holds on for several minutes, significantly longer
than she’d ever grabbed someone before, and thus permanently drained Ms.
Marvel’s powers and a large portion of her mind. Rogue used her new powers to
free the Brotherhood and battle the Avengers. They were forced to retreat,
although Rogue put up a hell of a fight.
Mystique and her Brotherhood
attacked the Pentagon, where they were confronted by Storm, Wolverine, and a
recovering Carol Danvers. Xavier had helped Carol get her mind back. Rogue
proves again to be Mystique’s trump card, using Ms. Marvel’s powers to
devastating effect, and also nabbing a bit of Wolverine’s and Storm’s powers.
Before being blown away in a hurricane. Storm has a lot of power, it’s hard to
get it all. Over the next few years Rogue continues to nab powers from more and
more mutants and superhumans. Rogue and her “family” later come into contact
with Rom, the Spaceknight. During the fight with Rom, Rogue absorbed his
powers, along with his loneliness and his nobility. This proves to be a pivotal
moment in Rogue’s life, and she shortly thereafter sets about turning her life
around.
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| Not a bad version, but they seem to get confused on how her powers work towards the end. |
Well, that, and things were
starting to get a little crowded in Rogue’s head. While the powers she absorbs
fade after a time, the fragments of their minds/memories remain with her. These
echoes, exacerbated by an angry psychic named Mastermind as revenge on
Mystique, were slowly driving Rogue insane. Desperate to drive out the voices,
she turned to the best telepath around, Professor Charles Xavier. Xavier, being
an understanding man, agrees to help. Unfortunately, Xavier was unable to
remove all of the conflicting minds, the different human and alien thoughts
being too difficult for even him to pin down, but he was able to calm the
storm. Xavier offered Rogue a spot on the X-men, which she accepted. The X-men
themselves weren’t as thrilled. Even though of the active team roster, Storm
and Nightcrawler were the only two to have dealt with Rogue as a member of the
Brotherhood, the entire team threatened to quit. Xavier was adamant that Rogue
join and that the team remains together, so that’s what happened. Thankfully
the team did warm up to Rogue as time goes on, mostly after she showed her
willingness to sacrifice herself for the team. Like taking a bullet for
Wolverine’s fiancé, and even absorbing Colossus’s powers so he could revert
back to his organic form and be healed after he was mostly melted. She took on
the melted form for however long she had his powers. It’s hard to hate someone
who tries so hard. After saving Colossus she’s more or less welcomed to the
team.
She’s been through quite a bit
since joining the X-men. She’s spent a few years battling the bit of Carol
Danvers that is locked in her own head, and even loses out to the phantom Ms.
Marvel for a while. She’s lost and regained Ms. Marvel’s Kree powers more than
once. She was also forgiven by Cody’s ghost, (this kind of happens a lot in
Comics) and encouraged to move on with her life. She developed a sort of
brother/sister bond with Nightcrawler after it was discovered he was the son of
Mystique. She also developed a long, and I mean LONG, on again off again relationship
with teammate and fellow Cajun Gambit. And she’s just been an all-around
awesome character.
 |
| Little Darker, little Angrier, still an Awesome Rogue. |
Rogue’s mutant power is the ability
to absorb the life essence and psyche from any sapient being with a touch. This
includes all of her victim’s memories, talents, knowledge, and physical
abilities. When she touches beings with superhuman abilities she also absorbs
that being’s powers. While different writers play with how long the effect lasts,
the most common duration is a one minute to one hour ratio. So she touches,
say, Magneto, for one full minute. For the next hour she’d have complete
control of magnetism and all those other crazy powers Magneto seems to have. This
also leaves her victims weakened and possibly comatose for roughly the same
amount of time. This is barring extremely powerful opponents like, say, the
Juggernaut.
It’s been said that Rogue’s inability
to control her powers largely stems from psychological blocks. The prime
examples being that when the bit of Carol Danvers in her mind took over her
body, Carol could touch whomever she liked without ill effects. Since this
little revelation, Rogue has bounced back and forth between having control and
not.
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| I've never seen a man more willing to put himself in anogy for a woman. That's Gambit and Rogue for ya. |
Rogue has been used in most X-men
franchises since her creation back in the 1980s. Something about her southern
charms, tragic background, and her difficulties with her powers usually makes
her a fan favorite.
She is one of the main characters
in X-men: The Animated Series. This
is one of only two series that I know of that includes her having Ms. Marvel’s
powers, and the only one that has her actually battling the Ghost of Ms. Marvel
that hides in her mind. The episode is entitled “A Rogue’s Tale,” which also
delves into Rogue’s past and her connection to Mystique. A connection that is
played up in Bloodlines, where X-men ally Nightcrawler asks for their help in
saving his birth mother, whom he never knew. It’s later revealed that this was
all a plot engineered by Nightcrawler’s half-brother Graydon Creed to wipe out
the Mutant’s in his family tree. It’s also revealed that Nightcrawler and Rogue
are “siblings” in that Rogue was more or less adopted by Mystique when she was
a runaway teen. Rogue is rather liberal with her powers in this series, and the
only “negative” absorption it goes into is Ms. Marvel.
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| A universal truth, Younger brother's can be really irritating. |
A drastically different version of
Rogue appears in X-men: Evolution.
Here, our usually outgoing and flirty southern belle is reimagined as a rather
depressing Goth teenager. A personality type encouraged by her guardian,
Destiny, in order to decrease the risk of having people touch her. After her
powers manifest, Mystique uses her usual cloak and dagger techniques (shapeshifting is so useful for that) to trick
Rogue into thinking the X-men are out to get her. Rogue joins Mystique's
Brotherhood for a short time, but jumps ship after Mystique tries to kill Cyclops
and she learns of Mystique's manipulations. After that she’s a major member of the
X-men team, and forms friendships with most of the other students. This series
also plays up the Rogue-Nightcrawler-Mystique family tree by having Mystique
reveal she adopted Rogue when she was only four. After that point, she and
Nightcrawler for a sort of sibling bond. Her powers are a little different too,
in that she seems to keep a little bit of them, like her victims personalities.
This is explored in the episode “Self Possessed” where Rogue touches Mystique,
and the personalities she absorbed used Mystique's powers to let loose. If she
didn’t keep a little bit of their powers, she’d have only been able to assume
said personalities shape, not their powers. Just an FYI. This aspect of her
powers is abused by the villain Mesmero, who mind control’s Rogue, forces her
to take the powers of every mutant in the series, and then transfers them to
Apocalypse. Things kind of hit the fan after that.
 |
| I'm suddenly filled with a desire to stay on Rogue's good side. No idea why. |
Rogue appears four of the main
X-men films, all portrayed by Anna Paquin. This version is kind of a mix of
Rogue and Jubilee and/or Shadowcat in that she’s a bit younger, more vulnerable,
and Wolverine develop a kind of parent-child bond. In the first film she is the
lynch pin to Magneto’s evil plan, which was to transfer his powers to her, and
use her in this mutation acceleration machine to mutant the leaders of the Free
World into Mutants. The use of said machine nearly killed him the first time,
and nearly killed Rogue. It did give her that bit of white in her hair, so it
at least made her look cooler. In X2
she is one of only three students that escape the government raid on the
X-mansion, partially thanks to Wolverine, but does little to help with the
movie’s plot. She’s got a bit of a subplot in X-men: The Last Stand where she battles with the idea to take the
Mutant Cure, a bizarre drug that supposedly removes a mutant’s powers. She does
take it, and misses out on the final battle because of it. And while she seems
to enjoy powerlessness, the post credit scene implies that the effects aren’t
permanent. She has a subplot in X-men:
Days of Future Past where she is captured by Sentinels but rescued by
Magneto and Ice-man. This was removed from the theatrical release but will be
included in the director’s cut of the film.
I like Rogue a lot. She’s one of my
favorite X-men. Regardless of her outward appearance, the classic southern
belle or the more reserved version of the films/X-men: Evolution, her insecurities and troubles created by her
powers makes her a very real and likeable character. She arguably one of the most
powerful X-men ever, and yet this power keeps her from having a lot of the most
natural experiences that a person can have. Despite this, she (usually) keeps a
flirty smile on her face and throws out southern colloquialisms to reduce the
tension of any situation. She’s the Rambunctious, Rebellious, Redemption
seeking Rogue. Next time, I think it’s time for another Theme Week. I think we
should keep this X-train rolling. March 30 to April 5th will be
X-men week, first four days focusing on the original four characters I haven’t
covered, day five Mystique, day six will be X-men
Review and Doing it better, and close it off with Charles Xavier. It’s
gonna be awesome!
http://x-men.wikia.com/wiki/Rogue
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/336433034635935783/
http://xmenmovies.wikia.com/wiki/File:X1_Rogue_Anna_Paquin.jpg
http://x-menevolution.wikia.com/wiki/Turn_of_the_Rogue_Gallery
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/546413367262809992/
http://marvelanimated.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rogue_angry_at_Nightcrawler_XME.png
https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/180020/today-is-the-day
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