Rogue

Thanks, I wanted to start out the thread in a coherent way. Not just start it and for us to start over.

I also try to keep things organized, LOL

I like that you chose extreme dislike - because hate is such a strong word that I think dislike works better even if it needs a qualifier. And I try not to use the word hate.

Not debating you - just discussing things.   Tossing some stuff out there for further discussion.

Marvel needs to write Rogue differently. And while I don't know what that should be, I know the last 15 years has been painful. From "Ah can't control mah powers", to over abundance of angst when it comes to Gambit. Then the Legacy Mary Sue syndrome she picked up. There is not one thing I can list as a positive for her. It's possible she needs a solo or mini just get her in a better spot.

I don't see any value or positives in the romy relationship. Its been done so badly. Yes, both characters have baggage and all that but as you pointed out how you see Havok as abusive. I see Rogue the same way when it comes to Gambit.

I never bought the hall pass Marvel gave her either with Antarctica. But I can't change that either.

I will say, I have enjoyed not buying books she is in, and only getting info on the net or from somebody who has done scans.

You are right in our similarity.

I don't mind discussing her as long as a few things don't happen - you know ... the crystal ball of what will be that no one knows because we don't work for Marvel type stuff. And example would be "Rogue and Gambit will eventually get back together, its inevitable" ... actually no. Until you get a writer who wants to write it ... not gonna happen. Never say never but to force a claim like that on others (like a fact) is bothersome. My other disliked thing that has been said to me over the years is "Gambit would not have stories without Rogue". No one knows that either and trust me that sort of thing irks. Though, its not been said to me in recent years, I haven't forgotten the ego of the fans who have said that sort of thing.

I don't have a good stopping point, its my awareness that this is a wall of text that makes me stop. Mostly because .. I'm doing what makes me groan at other places. LOL

The only problem with her replicating powers she has absorbed in the past is if no limitation, then she is over powered. I don't know what they should do with her powers though.

I just felt like she lost a lot of her personality when she lost that strength/flight/invulnerability.

You read the first issue of Brian Wood's X-Men with Rogue having back her flight and strength, however stolen/borrowed and temporary, and it's like a reunion with an old friend. I made a post at the time that it was like watching Superman take to the skies and shrug off bullets again after a period of being mostly an ordinary human. And I like that having that comes at a price, both for her and others; though I would prefer someone other than Carol or Simon was paying it. Maybe a villain's power-set, and having that personality traped inside long term would give Rogue a very different struggle to play out? Make her more unpredictable and more truly a 'Rogue' element.

Rogue has long been somewhat analogous to Banner and the Hulk, with their power being bother a source of strength and a curse. It is a lot of the appeal of both characters, and whenever Marvel gets too far away from that, the characters lose a lot of their appeal to fans. Strength/flight/invulnerability might not be her natural powerset, anymore than having Adamantium is truly natural to Wolverine, but it is a large part of how people see both characters, and how they like those character to be.

But who wants to read that(the part I bolded)? You talk about 25 years the other way but at least I enjoyed many of those stories. I wouldn't want to read more than 3-4 issues of Rogue doing what I bolded out of a lifetime. Your way I get to read a story about Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler charging into battle with their powers, and Rogue charging into that same battle with their powers, too. And if I'm lucky I get to see Rogue fight the bad guy with the bad guy's own powers? How many issues before that becomes formula? A half-dozen at most?

Before, if Rogue had someone's powers, they were unconscious; so you either had them, or Rogue with their powers, but not both. She also unavoidably got people's consciousness with their powers, so stealing powers from the bad guy came with a risk. The fact she couldn't touch people without endangering them gave her a constant sense of conflict.

What is their left to the character with all of that gone? I never wanted to see Rogue get total control over her powers, anymore than I want to see Batman win his war on crime in Gotham. Fight the crime in Gotham, yes, but not best it. Once that is done, their is no more need for Batman. The conflicts of the character, the purpose, the motivation, are then gone. At that point Batman goes off into the sunset, retires. The same with Rogue.

Marvel didn't develop Rogue's character, they concluded it. She reached the end of her quest, completed her journey. What do you do when the hero completes their quest, finishes their journey? You put down the book and start reading another story with another character.

Marvel had a few choices, either try to create a new character that had all the appeal and issues of the old Rogue, and find some other purpose for the old Rogue now that she wasn't serving the purpose of the character she was created to be, or send her off into the sunset...or reset Rogue back somehow, bring the crime back to Gotham.

Marvel/Remender decided to try to set Rogue back closer to what people liked about her to begin with, and hope somehow that works. It's not a perfect solution, but Marvel painted themselves into a corner with the stories they let their writers tell with the character in recent years.

You're where I was several years ago. I felt the exact same way.

I'd been reading PAD's run on the Hulk. He'd taken away the curse aspect of the Hulk and given Banner total control over the transformation. He'd taken the Hulk from being a mindless man-brute and allowed him to retain Banners intellect. At the time they said that it was Banner in control of the the Hulk's body.

Before the Hulk comic was about a brilliant scientist cursed in moments of anger to transform into a largely mindless instinct-driven man-brute. Now the Hulk comic was about a green-skinned, erudite, genius-level superman. And when Marvel decided to say that form of the Hulk was actually just another Hulk personality, called "The Professor"; and took away Banner's control and made the Hulk a brute again, I was like...NOOOO!

I've read that! I don't want to read that again! I'm an adult and I want to read about a character that has grown up along with me, not one permanently stuck in some place!

But the Hulk under PAD didn't just grow, he eventually concluded his arc as a character.

Ask people to describe who the Hulk is and they will say a brilliant scientist cursed in moments of anger to transform into a largely mindless instinct-drive man-brute...not a green-skinned, erudite, genius-level superman. PAD didn't just grow the character, he took him beyond the parameters of his character until he became something else. At that point Marvel no longer had a "Hulk", just that character in name only.

They either had to create a new Hulk to fill that void, or somehow turn the character they had back into the Hulk.

Ask people to describe Rogue: Someone who's mutation is also a curse. Someone who permanently gained the gifts of strength, speed and flight by stealing them and the consciousness of someone else. Someone who can take the powers of others but only by rendering them unconscious or running the risk of being overwhelmed by their thoughts. Someone strong and brash on the outside, yet tortured and vulnerable on the inside.

Now describe your version of Rogue: Someone who use to have all those problems and struggles but overcame all of them. Some who's now trying to be a better leader.

That's the story of a person's journey from childhood into adulthood and beyond. They grow up, get a job, have children(become a leader to them); then they become a grandparent, retire, and finally die.

90+% of your Rogue's story is over. Most of her story is in her past, not her future.

It's the same problem Marvel is having with a number of their characters.

Look at the 05:

Cyclops: Evolved from being a hero to someone many fans see as a permanently irredeemable villain.
Jean: Evolved into a goddess and died.
Angel: Took the Angel/Archangel thing to it's ultimate conclusion, until there was nothing left but to to basically kill him by reducing Warren to a blank state and start over.
Beast: Made into such an ineffectual screw-up and so hated by many fans that they killed Dark Beast in part to placate fans by killing some version of the character.
Iceman. Has devolved into a man-child. They way the character was originally portrayed was fun in a young teenager but is grating in an adult.

So what is Marvel to do? Put those characters on a shelf and start over? Try to create new versions of all those characters for the fans?

That's why we have the 05 time-traveled from the past to give people back the versions they liked. That's why people have discussed before Wolverine's death having the old version come from the past to replace the current less-popular one.

Sure characters can grow, but if they grow beyond their parameters as a character, their story needs to become something else and another needs to take their place. People want a Robin, so if Robin becomes Nightwing, someone else has to become Robin to fill that void. Marvel never made a new Rogue to take the old one's place, and the qualities of the new Rogue are hardly selling points. I doubt you're going to attract a new reader to a character by saying their character's description is they use to be a lot of interesting things they aren't anymore, but now they are a leader.



The very first X-Men comic I ever read was Uncanny X-Men #173, with art by the great Paul Smith. Wolverine and Rogue, a reformed-villain new to the X-Men and still not trusted, verses Viper and Silver Samurai. It still holds up incredibly well after all these years. It hooked me on the X-Men. It made me love Rogue. I haven't even wanted to read a story with the current incarnation of Rogue in years, and got little enjoyment form the ones I did.

Do I want' 90's Rogue back, the one who whined and pined? No, that's where they started going wrong with the character in the first place. I want 80's Rogue back, the one who was brash and strong, who had problems but dealt with them. I would read stories about that character all day long. In the 80's I liked almost everything about Rogue. In the 90's they took away half of what I liked about her and added a bunch of stuff I didn't. I became 50/50 with her, conflicted in my like/dislike. Since the 90's, in an effort to fix what they did to the character in the 90's, they got rid of even more of what I liked about Rogue and added even more that I didn't, until there was very little left of what I liked at all.

For me, Rogue has never been about an endgame of shedding the powers and memories she permanently absorbed from Ms. Marvel, of gaining such mastery over her abilities that she could touch anyone she wanted, take powers without consequence to herself or others, because that is an endgame for the character.

I know if Batman cleans up the crime in Gotham, he hangs up the cowl and stops being Batman.

I know if Frank Castle becomes a sane, well-adjusted person with a life, he stops being the Punisher.

I now know if Banner gains control over the Hulk he becomes just a green-skinned Superman, which is what happened.

I knew if Barbara Gordon ever got out of that wheelchair she would stop being Oracle and go back to being Batgirl, which is also what happened.

The point of Rogue as a character was largely based on her internal struggle with those adversities, of not beating them but learning to live her life with them; and when they go away, so does much of Rogue's character. Rogue was a character who when like gave her lemons she learned to make lemonade. In recent years she learned how to have all the apples she could ever want.

They let Rogue live happily ever after.

That's great for an Elseworlds/What If story to show how things could turn out with a character, but that is an ending to a character. If Marvel was content to have Rogue be a teacher at the school, or and Xavier-type leader from the sidelines, great; but Rogue was a marque character, a star attraction, and if Marvel wants her to keep being that, that doesn't mean continueing her on a trajectory that only sends her off into a sunset.

A character can only grow so much along with their fans before they get old, retire and die along with them. I'm not selfish enough to want to take the characters I love with me when I go.

I think we are not too far apart on this.

I think the thing with Rogue for me is, I always took her issues with her powers as analogous to a disability, either as physical or physiological in nature. And I didn't enjoy her moping and whining about it the way she did in the 90's, I enjoyed watching her try to live her life with those limitations, on her terms, more the way she did in the 80's.

I felt like making Rogue mopey and whiny about her issues in the 90's was a mistake; and I felt like the solution Carey used to move her beyond being mopey and whiney, by basically curing her of her problems, was a bigger mistake.

The growth I wanted to see for Rogue was her getting wiser and making better decisions, both for herself and others, not eliminating all of the challenges and issues that came with her powers.

It's been suggested that Cyclops needs his visor only because of a physiological hangup rather than the brain injury it was original presented as. I'm sure at some point some writer will come along and show how much Cyclops has grown as a character by having him not need the visor anymore. The same way writers keep thinking it is growth for Xavier to get him out of his wheelchair.

I don't see Rogue being able to touch people or take people's powers without consequence to her or them as growth for the character, I see it as eliminating what made her unique as a character. And the process of showing her trying to have the things she wanted out of life despite the challenges that gave her was enjoyable to me. I didn't want to see Oracle get out of that wheelchair, I didn't want to see Rogue be able to touch people without consequence. I wanted to see them learn how to have the life they wanted within those limitations, not without them.