Rogue #1: There’s Blood On Your Hands

Rogue, aka Anna Marie LeBeau, has been one of Marvel’s most iconic female heroes since her original debut in 1981’s Avengers Annual #10. As a member of the X-Men and the partner of Gambit, Rogue has historically been in the middle of team-ups and crossovers. Back in 2024, Rogue began getting some well-deserved spotlight with her becoming the leader of the Louisiana X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #1.

Being deeply tied to a team-focused title like Uncanny presents a challenge for any writer to tell a decent enough story without making significant problems for the team title. Two such challenges for a solo series are keeping the character’s portrayal similar to their portrayal in their current team and avoiding large continuity errors. There is also the ever-present challenge of keeping the stakes of any solo series from overshadowing the scale of their other major appearances. So far, in issue #1 at least, Erica Schultz has avoided “jumping the gun,” so to speak, by tying the beginning of Rogue’s personal story to her everyday life in her role as the leader of the Louisiana X-Men.

Without going into spoilers beyond the first handful of pages, during a mutant possum’s rampage, the Louisiana X-Men encounter a stranger who triggers haunting memories of blood and anger in Rogue. Overwhelmed by these memories and confused about their source, Rogue seeks to make sense of them by herself without involving her team. This is a rather strong setup to an intimate storyline that is different from Rogue’s recent adventures but not so far from her current characterization that she feels like a different character altogether.

Luigi Zagaria’s artwork is very sharp in this issue. The backgrounds are drawn in a very “off in the distance” style where everything feels more like a movie set rather than an actual environment. This works well on an action level, as it makes the fight scenes more dramatic and makes the destruction of various pieces of the background, such as an air traffic control tower falling apart on one of the first pages, feel very intense to the reader. Espen Grundetjern’s colorwork adds a three-dimensional touch to the art, making Zagaria’s movie-set-like backgrounds feel even larger in scope.

So far in the first issue, Rogue’s new solo series seems to rely on a strong familiarity with her character. This could put off some readers who may have come to this new run as an introduction point to Rogue’s character, hoping to avoid a larger backlog such as the current Uncanny X-Men run, which is over twenty issues deep at this point.