Rogue. The Journey to Power, Compassion, and Wisdom

Rogue proved herself heroic, or at least nobler and kinder than the average villain, after only her first 2 or 3 appearances. She proved herself worthy of the team to Wolverine's satisfaction on their first adventure, as shown on the previous page, and saved the lives not only of Wolverine and Mariko, but, in relatively quick succession, Cyclops, Xavier, and Storm.

Still, there remained some lingering doubts about her loyalties.
She cottoned to her new adoptive family, yes, but, what would happen if an attack came, not from neutral villains, but her old adoptive family?

Readers did not have to wait long for an answer; the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants launched a 2-pronged attack against the X-Men just weeks after Rogue's "adoption" ...

The attack on Peter, deadly though it was, was only a distraction.
Ultimately, the target was Xavier ...

Happenstance (and Marvel's creative team) has Rogue's character arc occurring against the backdrop of a secretive, and more than somewhat pernicious, move by the Morlocks. They frame the apparent suicide of a street urchin as the death of youngest X-member Kitty Pryde. There are disturbing hints the death was in fact murder of the young girl, and indeed, one thing the X-Men do consider as a possibility is that the young girl was killed by a 3rd party. However, they initially believe the Brotherhood responsible, and would have gone after that group for revenge were it not for Logan sussing out the plan.

Ultimately, the interaction with the Morlocks leads to the salvation of Colossus, who agree to allow the X-Men use of their healer. This is in exchange for the promise by Kitty to wed one of their love struck own, mainly because Morlocks leader Callisto thinks the arrangement emotionally satisfying revenge against X-Men leader Storm, who has demonstrated love and care for Kitty equal to that of any adoptive mother for her daughter. Striking at Storm's "heart" as it were, even as Storm literally did when she dueled and won against Callisto in single combat. The unsung hero who makes this possible, however, is the convert from the rightly-maligned Brotherhood who put Peter at Death's door. This is a full circle transaction that cements Rogue's place with the X-Men. She has defected from her own group, saved the lives of several of her new family, stood up to her mother, and now, for a second time, agonizingly endures a near-lethal experience to reclaim someone from Death.

Rogue's first encounter with the X-Men, pre-retcon at least, was fighting the trio of Wolverine, Storm, and Nightcrawler, as shown on the previous page.

X-writers had Rogue make amends by saving the lives of Wolverine and his fiancée in her first major adventure with the X-Men after joining their team; Storm during Rogue's 2nd or 3rd. Nightcrawler? He would have to wait just a little longer for Rogue to rescue him, but it DID soon follow, in the pages of Marvel Team-Up #150:

Rogue's recent showings against Juggernaut and heavies like Graviton were what prompted me to create this thread.

One, I have not seen a respect thread in a LONG while that has anything more recent for her than about 5 years ago.
Two, I was struck by how cyclical some of these encounters have become. In some cases it seems as if modern writers are paying tribute to their "fathers" and "grandfathers" by showcasing gems from 20 to 30 years ago.
Reminded me of how awesome characters like Rogue were even back then.
In some cases, they might have been even more so.

I'll probably settle into a more standard mode of respect thread posting after my next few submissions, but I wanted to show how remarkably consistent the restrained, hopeful, helpful character of Rogue has been, even from her days as a stock villain character who had little reason to display such humanity.

The X-Men are a team of globetrotters.
Unfortunately, many of the villains they fight are world-travelers, too.

So, it should come as little surprise that, for all their business in New York, the X-Men next find fanfavoritespar Marko during a journey to the UK:

Well, at least one of them next found Juggs ...
(Full-team engagement will follow soon, though.)

The showing above by team-separated Alison Blaire underscores the claim made last page -- it was NOT a shameful thing for Dazzler to get the better of you in the 1980s, however unlikely she presented as a combatant. Even at low power levels, lost, disoriented, and on the verge of collapse, she would overachieve like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, she WAS at the end of her rope there, alone, lost, tired, and without a significant power source. Though she brought Jug to his knees there, he eventuality recovered and overtook her, and now having no reserves, expended the utmost of the little remaining power she had, and dropped so exhausted from the effort that Jug mistook her for dead and regretfully buried her. Thankfully, Dazzler's power is such that she eventually was able to slowly absorb just enough ambient sound energy to prayerfully send a shot up through the ground that her searching teammates noticed before she blacked out again, almost certainly for the last time ...

Fight!

In the years to come, Rogue will formally lead the X-Men and related teams, as well as become regarded as a well-respected teacher of young mutants, as Charles, and Sean, and Logan before her.
Rogue presents a strong profile of what a leader should be like even in this era, though, and few show her ability to think strategically, prioritize, and coordinate with otherwise directionless partners going on KNOWN variables than the following:

Source: Uncanny X-Men #218

Rogue had a lot more to overcome psychologically than people probably realize.
Just being a teen is tough, but being cursed with a condition that makes touching and interacting with people in the normal way impossible?
Being shunned by the family and friends you grew up with?

But when one considers the kind of murderous mentor who adopted Rogue, or the kind of basket case she unwittingly "borrowed" the psyche of afterward ...

It's interesting to note how cyclical these stories are both large and small scale.
Large scale? The fight featured in this origin story of Rogue gaining her familiar Chris Claremont's "Supergirl" powerset has Ms.Marvel (Carol Danvers) previewing the action Rogue herself will see when she fights Graviton decades later.
Small scale? The Pierce/Ms.Marvel Leland/Ms.Marvel skirmishes here are a prequel to what readers originally saw when Wolverine took on these members of the Hellfire Club.

Ms.Marvel's fights give us a unique opportunity to see what Rogue at what most fans probably think of as her "base" level is capable of, even as here where she takes on Pyro and Avalanche:

Graviton, though powerful and cinematic as all get out, is very obscure;
Let me not then let the overall established chronological structure of my thread prevent me from showcasing someone like that in the midst of showing mad and gravity-controlling villains -- there'll never BE a more natural segue:

Source: Uncanny Avengers #27

(Volume 2? Right now I don't know if there was an Uncanny Avengers series before the one that featured this incarnation of the team.)

It was somewhat strange to me to discover stories like this were actually retcons.
Any fan who is a modern reader of Rogue or who watched her TV debut will be very familiar indeed with this woman who overcame the "demons" of her mentor and her victimized predecessor. Strange to think people had to wait roughly 10 years before they saw a proper on-panel depiction of this fateful fight:

Ms.Marvel vs. Rogue

Source: Marvel Superheroes #11

Fun Fact.

Rogue has been trained to detect and resist certain forms of telepathic attack:

Rogue's use of the techniques taught her by Professor X enable her, first of nearly all her Avengers teammates, to detect and break a villain's mind control.
Interestingly, it also puts her into conflict with the SECOND Ms.Marvel, Kamala Khan.

Note that "conflict" is a better word choice than "fight" as Kama would have only prayer to help her against Rogue in a true battle.

Rogue, opening a bank vault (one-handed?) with impossible ease ...

Source: Uncanny Avengers (2016) #5

Wanted to see if I could isolate the images on a page with mobile.
Possibly underscoring just how thick the metal of the vault she broke was.

Rogue is a superlative lifeguarder.
So much so that I'm toying with the idea of seeing if, in her early appearances, she has fewer, comparable, or more saves than either Supergirl or Superman.

Again, I first encountered Rogue as the beautiful, helpful, flying tank from the X-Men show, for which the following was a typical display:

But such was a true image of her even a decade earlier, regarding the woman she CLAIMS she was trying to kill before joining the X-Men:

And it proved true even regarding people she actively wanted to clobber.
Rogue had no great love for Spiral for instance:

Yet wasted no time in redeeming her life from sure death when the following presented (with perhaps a little help from Fred Dukes, aka The Blob) ...

Rogue could be counted on to be altruistic, in other words.

The following scene is quietly awesome in how it illustrates that above statement

Somewhat strange to see the way of cycles nowadays.
A randomly ordered selection of UA29 featuring Juggernaut versus Rogue illustrates the strange mix of upgrade and downgrade.
Note that, unlike their Edinburgh encounter, Rogue now, or at least very recently, had/has the power to send Juggernaut flying unless he's concentratingly set for her punch.

Source: Uncanny Avengers #29