Rogue

You either die the team rebel, or live long enough to see yourself become the team mom. Rogue moves her way up the ranks of Magneto's X-Men, eventually leading a team of mutants to prevent the culling of humankind. It literally just occurred to me: with the exception of Blink, everybody on Magneto's team of X-Men (the team he led into battle in Astonishing X-Men, not the full team that included everyone in Amazing X-Men as well) was originally a villain. Or at least villainish. Magneto, Rogue, Sabretooth, Wild Child, Sunfire, and Morph. The "Age of Apocalypse" story just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and I honestly never put that together until now. Do you think that was intentional, on either the part of the creators or the character? Did the writers purposely choose to surround him with other characters who were only good guys now because Apocalypse was so much worse, or was it just a wild coincidence? AoA Rogue starts with a normal body - smaller than the busty body previous Rogues have used, but growing up in a war-torn world would mean she had poorer nutrition as a child, and thus a smaller frame as an adult. It makes sense. And anyway, she still gets a lot of new parts. Like the normal 616 Rogue at the time, she wears a tight suit that covers everything, but Joe Madureira's anime influences mean she gets large, chunky boots and upper sleeves that are big and puffy. There's a band around her right thigh, and the Magneto-inspired collar ring is a separate piece that plugs into the figure's back. Even the upper edges of her gloves are loose pieces being held on by the hands. The anime flavor extends to Rogue's hair, too. Instead of the huge head of curly hair we were familiar with, Rogue chopped most of it off, leaving her with an angled bob that came to the nape of the neck in the back, but hangs down below her collar in the front. She still has the white bangs, of course, but they're done as a large poof of hair that almost looks separate from the rest. The face behind all that hair looks similar to the 616 Rogue figures, but the fact there's no bandana on the forehead makes it clear it's not actually the same. Rogue's colors remain green and yellow, though there are more shades of the former than usual: the upper sleeves, collar, and the stripes on the outside of her thighs are dark green, while the lower sleeves and the majority of her legs are light. The torso is almost entirely yellow, except for the high bikini cut on the hips. Her gloves and boots match that color, as does the thigh band. Black stripes run around the top of her boots, framing raised red ovals. The line between the greens on the left hip of my figure doesn't match up with the line on the thigh unless the leg is turned slightly, at which point the sculpt of the muscles doesn't match. A minor annoyance. At more than 6¼" tall, AoA Rogue feels slightly too big. Her boots have thick soles, while all 616 versions have worn flats, but that's still pretty tall. Her only accessories are alternate fists - they couldn't have given us the "glove" hand from Retro Rogue? Maybe it's because the figure already includes one other extra hand: it's for Colossus, this series' Build-A-Figure. She's got the left arm, which has either an open hand or a fist for you to use. Variety! The relationship between Rogue and Magneto didn't come out of nowhere in the Age of Apocalypse: she'd been flirting with "Joseph," the probable-clone or de-aged version of Magneto who'd been hanging around the X-Men prior to the event; and even before that, she had run into Magneto in the Savage Land, and he helped her finally expurge Carol Danvers' personality from her mind. So making them married in this new alternate reality may have been a big swing, but it's not as big as it seems at first. There was an AoA Rogue way back in ToyBiz's '90s X-Men line (as long as you were willing to mix and match the head and body of two different figures), but getting a modern version - even a tall one - is nice. -- 12/02/21

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