Rogue Storm #3: A Lesson in Purpose

My first thought after finishing this final issue of Rogue Storm was “well, that happened.” The writing is solid, and the art has genuinely great pages and panels, but I struggle to find exactly what the point of it all was.

Rogue Red is barely in this story despite being in half of the name, and Strom is treated more as the object of the story than a direct participant of it. She is so bad-ass and righteous, which are normal traits for Strom but the story also feels a bit less personal because of it and is close to making Ororo come off as a Mary Sue. There are also a few cameos here from a few of Marvel’s notable mages, but they are only there to just make the villain more powerful and Storm more cool. Gambit is also here. 

How Murewa Ayodele lays out this issue, and the mini as a whole, is in the framing of a story being told by some omniscient narrator than any particular character’s point of view, which constantly shifts due to the various time jumps. This isn’t a bad approach, but it veers into the territory of the characters feeling more like devices than actual participants in the plot. That approach is the norm for novels, but in comics not so much where we can physically see what is happening through the art. 

As for the art, Roland Boschi more than pulls their weight when it comes to the visuals. He does an excellent job of weaving the constantly shifting POVs in Ayodele’s narrative into his pencils and the three colorists help highlight them as well. I’d argue that the art is the highlight of this series as a whole. There is a very well drawn set of panels here between Storm and Rogue Red that draws some honest emotion from the script, and a few spreads that do a good job of showing the sense of scale necessary to illustrate just how big Eegun is.