Rogue Forever

This week's kicking my butt a little bit, so I apologize for getting behind. It's especially bad following New York Comic-Con when there's so much to talk about.

Sounds like Rogue is going to be around in X-Men: Legacy for a while. That's good news because I was half-afraid that writer Mike Carey would focus an arc on her and then be done. But it sounds like he's still planning on moving her character forward, saying that upcoming issues will see "profound changes" to her.

This is pretty much Marvel's last chance to do right by Rogue as far as my interest in her goes. She's always been my favorite X-Man, but the ridiculous way in which X-Men writers have refused to let her control her powers is second only to the ridiculous way in which they refused to reveal Wolverine's back-story for years. As if the only interesting things about Wolverine and Rogue are his back-story and her inability to touch others.

I long ago stopped caring about Wolverine's mysterious history, so when Marvel finally decided to reveal it, I wasn't interested in the least. They're right there with Rogue now. After this tease, it's time to fix her powers and see where her character can go from here. If that doesn't happen now, it's not going to. Or if it ever eventually does, I'll be past caring.

Which brings me to Marvel's huge do-over book, X-Men Forever. As CBR puts it, "legendary writer Chris Claremont is returning to the X-Men as though he never left. Picking up where X-Men Volume 2, #3 left off in 1991."

I can't help but be curious about this. Chris Claremont was the X-Men writer of my youth and I was sad to see him leave the title 18 years ago. The series suffered a lot after that and never fully recovered; not even when Claremont himself returned to write it and various spin-offs. Part of me wants to see if he can recapture that old magic by going back to the exact spot where he quit. A bigger part of me thinks that Claremont is a major factor in Rogue's being stuck as the tragic, pathetic character she is today and doesn't really care to see his version of her. I think I'm going to have to follow the reviews carefully on this new series and see if it's worth giving Claremont another shot.



Speaking of '90s-style Rogue, the '90s X-Men cartoon is finally coming out on DVD. Flawed though that period of X-Men history was, the cartoon captured perfectly everything that was great and horrible about it. I'll be looking forward to seeing it again.