Reviewer: James Hatton
Story Title: Going Rogue: Part 1 (of 6)
Written by: Robert Rodi
Penciled by: Cliff Richards
Inked by: Norm Rapmund
Colored by: Transparency Digital
Lettered by: Dave Sharp
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Rogue is one of those characters I feel bad for. Marvel won’t let her change at all. She was a villain with the Brotherhood, and now she is an X-Man who has had an on-again, off-again with Gambit. If you read those last two sentences, you know almost everything there is to know about Rogue — except for a couple of minor details about Ms. Marvel.
Now, in the vein of Emma Frost, Gambit, Bishop, and quite a few other characters before her — she is getting her own title. I don’t have high hopes that this is going to change her in anyway at all, I mean look how good Gambit’s solo book did. *shudder*
Story!
Rogue can’t be touched. She’s mopey about it. Down right whiney about it really. I mean, at this point in time in her life hasn’t she just gotten to the point of accepting it. I’ve heard of paraplegics getting over the fact that THEY DON’T HAVE FRIGGING LIMBS, yet she’s all pissed off because she not only is living in a world that she’s hated and feared, but she can’t touch a human and she’s wanted to get laid since 1985. Oh, wait, I’m wrong on that. She’s macked it with Gambit a few times when they were hit with power nullifiers. Whatever…
Anyway, a mutant with some major city trashing powers has shown up on the clichéd ‘Cerebro Detection System’ and, go fig, it’s a couple blocks away from Rogue’s hometown. So she heads off with generic X-group ‘A’ and saves the day. Rogue then stays back conveniently, to find the girls mother. It’s not a bad deus ex machina, but they decide to kidnap the kid and go home with her, leaving back one person to search an entire town. Which is, by the way, her old town.
The whole thing was kind of contrived, if you haven’t already gathered that. Oh, and at the end of the issue, somebody who knows her (yet she, herself, does not know) goes and touches her without it causing her any problems. OH MY GOD… SHE’S FELT FLESH…
Unless the next issue starts with her paying $30 for the by-the-minute rate and finding what it’s like to go bareback, I guarantee that I probably won’t care.
Art!
The cover is nice. For an issue one, it doesn’t need to convey a whole lot of message, so it doesn’t. It just goes and shows you Rogue in a Spawn cape, looking halfway between seductive and drugged up. I’m ok with both of those things. The problem thusly will be that the next five issues will also have Rogue in various states of standing around empty backgrounds.
On the inside, the art is acceptable. It isn’t going to break down the barriers of worlds and bring together warring nations, but it doesn’t make my eyes vomit. I do want to know why Havok seems to need a Lens Flare coming out of his head for half the book, though.
Overall!
I don’t know what they are trying to capitalize on in this book. Is it Anna Paquin? Probably not, as they are two entirely different kinds of ‘Rogue’. Was it that Rodi just came up with this amazing idea that had to be put to print? Probably not, as this issue screams ‘GENERIC’. Is it that Marvel is hoping to win more female readers, and are now going to throw any old crap at them possible? Yes.
I have faith in Jubilee’s new book, and I even enjoyed Emma Frost’s. This, though, is walking up to a girl who wants to get into comics and saying ‘Here, your apathy towards the world is justified, but we wouldn’t feel right selling you books written by Slave Labor Graphics’.
