Rogue (2025)

Rogue
(2025, 11x14)

If there’s a better villain-turned-hero story in the X-Universe, I’d love to hear it. Rogue (alias originally unknown, but later revealed to be Anna Marie, last name still unknown) was slated to make her first appearance in “Ms. Marvel” #25 (1979) but the book was cancelled abruptly. I find that interesting since Rogue later fought Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) and permanently absorbed her powers of flight and super-strength.

Rogue instead made her first appearance in “Avengers Annual” #10 (1981) before regular appearances in “Uncanny X-Men”. At first, she was a fairly “normal”, non-flying mutant with the ability to absorb a person’s life essences through skin-to-skin contact you know what you’re here cuz you already know all this. The important thing is that she used to run with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants with Mystique and everybody thought Mystique was her mother. In fact, writer Chris Claremont said that, had he not left his role at Marvel in the early 90s, that he would have made it official. (Wasn’t Mystique supposed to be Nightcrawler’s mom, too?)

After a few clashes with the Avengers and the X-Men, Rogue stole Ms. Marvel’s powers and started to go a little crazy, what with having another person’s memories and persona running around her head. So she turned to Professor X for help and he convinced her to join the team. The rest, as they say, is history. A history of doing the right thing for people that she once wronged and earning a place among the greats.

Interestingly, for a long time, she had serious beef with Dazzler. I imagine it was a lot like Biggie and Tupac, but with more word balloons and flying around and such.