I was bored and couldn’t
sleep, this is the result, I apologize in advance.
Rogue’s my favourite X-Men,
I’ve gone into it before but the combination of wanting to hug her, her nice
hair and enjoying seeing her kick arse makes her number 1 in the world of AFB,
X-Men wise. She’s had a lot of looks,
all the X-Men have, even ones you’d never think like Iceman, she’s changed body
types (and then changed back for some non-comics media), she’s had a whole slew
of hairstyles (and nicely she actually just grew her hair out as Uncanny X-Men
progressed, no big jump, just a gradual growing of hair – just like a real
person) and she’s had a lot of costumes. I was thinking about my preferred
look/costume for various characters today because…I have no idea why, I was spending
the whole day shifting furniture on my own with no music, my mind had no
distractions and wandered to all sort of things. Anyway, with some characters
there’s either no debate and no competition for me (She-Hulk, it’s all Dan
Slott-era purple) or not a lot of choice at all (Blue Beetle II & III) but for
some characters there are multiple looks or costumes I like and I like ‘em all
a real lot < I decided on this sometime between the mattress and the second
glass cabinet.
One of the characters that’s
true for is Rogue, in fact I ended up with 6 looks and decided to make you a
countdown, I’m sure you’re delighted. So just to get you up to speed if you’re
not: Rouge is a Mutant from Mississippi who ran away after her mutant powers
kicked in while kissing a boy she liked (Cody) and was adopted by villainess
Mystique and her lover Destiny. She absorbs someone’s psyche, skills, physique
and (if appropriate) powers through skin-to-skin contact - this is (usually) something
she cannot control and were she to touch you for too long it could kill you -
so she can’t risk any accidental skin-to-skin contact – this has left her with
a few issues. After touching Ms. Marvel for too long she permanently absorbed
her physical powers – flight, invulnerability, strength – and got even more
guilt. Mystique sent Rogue to the X-Men to help her control her powers and
she’s stayed with the team pretty much ever since, even leading her own squad
at times. With that are you sitting comfortably? Then this won’t take long,
don’t worry.
6. X3: The Last
Stand (X-Uniform)
Debut: X3: The Last Stand (20th Century Fox)
I didn’t get Anna Paquin’s
casting when it was announced, over a decade and a half’s worth of comics
portraying Rogue as a leggy Amazonian made hiring this little cute girl seem
ridiculous to me but looking back at Rogue during her early days with the team
(when the first X-Men film was set and when she was a similar age),
specifically how Paul Smith drew her during that time, Paquin’s a pretty decent
fit - especially facially. Thus my love affair with Anna Paquin began (True
Blood is like a dream come true, it’s like a month worth of Anna Paquin).
Anyway this is pretty shallow really but I just like seeing Anna Paquin poured
into a mock-leather all-in-one jump suit, I’m such a sad little perv for Anna
Paquin in this get-up that it gets voted above other outfits and looks that
many fans would consider classic, pathetic I know. I choose this particular
movie’s version of the look even though the costume’s pretty much the same as
it was in the previous film1 for the following reasons: Anna Paquin
had matured considerably since her debut as the character with a body and more
so a face that’s a closer fit to the Jim Lee/Andy Kubert/Brian Hitch drawings
of Rogue that I think of when I think ‘Rogue’ (mostly because of my age and
when I came into the franchise I grant you) and her wig had gotten much longer
with a lot more white stripe and was being worn down - again making it a closer
fit to Lee/Kubert 90’s Rogue but and also just being something I find more
attractive than having it up in a ponytail like she did when in-costume in the
first two films2.
5. Nation X
Debut: X-Men Legacy issue 228
Shit Rogue used this look a while; she debuted it in the Nation X
event and dropped it for Uncanny Avengers,
that’s about three years and about two more than I thought. Anyway there seems
to be a bit of a tug-of-war between green and yellow and green and white when
it comes to what artists think is Rogue’s definitive colour scheme and I’ll bet
you it’s almost entirely based on their age and when they came into the X-Men,
to prove my point I came into the X-Men with the ’92 cartoon series when I was
about 6 so I prefer green and yellow – except here. Why? Well I’m trying to
come up with something more than ‘it looks very stylish’ and ‘it’s probably the
scarf’ and trying to avoid ‘because it’s tighter and often shows more cleavage’
because I’ve already made myself look like a knuckle dragger in number 6 but
all of those things are part of it, another is that it just incorporates a lot
of things I find attractive when worn by women; little sleeves, long gloves,
Golden Age of Hollywood worthy scarves and generally speaking I think it looks
good when you have that little bit of shirt below the belt, like a skirt but it’s
actually part of the coat/shirt/jacket? I just think it’s a nice design choice.
It’s kept down through the sheer amount of competition not because of the
colour scheme – which I like here (I think it’s the use of lower contrast
greens, goes better with the white) and because while she always wears it well,
I just prefer Rogue when she has her hair down.
4 Outback
Debut: Uncanny X-Men issue 230
Right, I’ve read the
Australia era of X-Men a lot and I can say with almost certainty the following:
this outfit is not one jumpsuit with a black and green design but rather a
black body suit with green gloves, boots and ‘swimsuit’ over the top. If it’s
not a swimsuit type ting then it’s at the very least a piece of fabric on top
of the black leotard and not printed on. Marc Silvestri seems to have two
fetishes or did in the late 80’s when he was drawing X-Men: big hair and
covering up the girl as much as possible but making it skin-tight, the latter
however works perfectly if you have a conventionally sexy character you want to
look conventionally sexy but can’t really have any skin on show below her chin,
the former is a great idea if that character has a unique element to their hair
– say a skunk stripe – and you want to draw attention to that so they can be
picked out easier – I very much doubt Silvestri thought of either of these
things, he just wanted to draw Rogue in a skin-tight thing with lots of hair
because he likes that shit but fuck it, it works and it works for those
reasons.
Rogue used this outfit for
her whole time on the team when they were based in Australia (with the
exception of her final two issues where Ms. Marvel’s psyche was in control and
she dressed the body up to match the mind in the classic ‘black with sash and
lightning bolt’ Ms. Marvel/Warbird costume), Rouge must have been bloody hot, I
guess it must breathe really well? There’s a couple of reasons why this isn’t
quite as high as another look about which the same things could be said, I’ll
get to them when we get to that look though, for now I’ll just say that it’s
higher than number 6 (another largely black outfit) because it incorporates
more of Rogue’s signature colour (green) and it’s being worn by Rogue the comic
character in her Amazonian physique (I think Silvestri was the first person to
give her that actually, though she’d been going more and more that way under
the likes of Romita Jr), and it’s above number 5 because I prefer the black and
green look for Rogue over the green and white and because I prefer the hair
here.
3. Savage Land
Debut: Uncanny X-Men issue 269
It’s Jim Lee’s Rouge, so
it’s just the Rogue we saw in the ’92 cartoon and all through the 90’s, MY
Rogue, the Rogue I first met, with the same physique and hair and my preferred
colour scheme for the character, only she’s dressed like a cavewoman themed
1980s pin-up dancing in a Madonna video. It’s sexy as hell and yeah that’s why
it’s this high, I’m being totally fucking shallow here, I like this version of
Rouge running around in sexy tatters with lots of hair. She appears in this
costume in two issues I think (Uncanny X-Men 269 & 274) but this remains –
at least amongst fan artists – one of her most popular looks and that’s because
it’s sexy as hell, or I guess it’s conventionally sexy as hell and with that PC
clarification I’ve run out of things to say, I like it for obvious, shallow and
pervy reasons but at least I’m honest about it, I own my obvious, shallow and
pervy side – when it comes to X-Men
2. Mutant Genesis
Debut: X-Men issue 1
For me this IS Rogue, this
is the Rogue I instantly see when someone says ‘Rogue from the X-Men’, green
and yellow, long legs, lots of hair, a very pretty face and a random brown
leather jacket. I shall now justify the jacket in the context of Rouge: Rogue’s
original costume used a jacket (with hood) and she has typically worn something
over her tighter fitting leotard for all of her costumes up to this point, be
it a jacket, vest top or whatever the swimsuit thing is in number four, so it
fits with the character’s design up to that point, Rogue’s a flier and it’s
sort of a flying jacket (streeeetcchhiiing) and girls in jackets with the
sleeves rolled up to the elbow/three quarter length sleeves really do it for
me.
Some of that should explain
why it’s above 4 which is pretty much the same concept: a tight body suit to
keep a conventionally sexy character looking conventionally sexy when she can’t
show any skin below the neck, if it doesn’t I’ll try and be more lucid here:
some of it is just personal preference and that this is the look that Rogue
wore when I came into the series so I have extra affection for it because of
that and some plain ol’ nostalgia; I have a thing for short jackets with the
sleeves stopping around the elbow as I’ve just gone into (and I can’t promise
you that Rogue isn’t the source of that, honestly I’ve never thought about the
source of it before today but I bet she’s at least half to blame) and this has
that while the Outback outfit doesn’t. I prefer the hair here, I just prefer
the long hair that hangs down over big poofy ‘do Silvestri gave her but you
know what really seals the deal? Her gloves. On the Outback costume (and the
Utopia costume too) Rogue has long gloves that go up to be her biceps, they’ve
very sexy yes but they make very little sense when you take into account taking
them on and off regularity – in battle – the smaller gloves used on this outfit
can be slipped off - and more so slipped back on - easily and quickly.
Buuut, if this is, to you, the definitive Rogue look
why isn’t it number 1?
1. X-Men Evolution (Civvies)
Debut: X-Men Evolution Season1 Episode 3 ‘Rogue
Recruit’ (Marvel Studios)
Two reasons: 1: it’s my
definitive Rogue look for the comic books; such definitions mean a lot to sad
comic fans, and two: plain ol’ bias for counter-cultures. I admit it; I am
completely easy to manipulate - just add Goth Girl. But really Goth, Metal,
Punk, make a character counter-culture and make it semi-believable and I will
not only prefer that character to everyone around her and almost certainly
fancy them, but do what she says. And it just makes so much sense (to me) to
turn a teenage version of Rogue into a Goth, she’s this sympathetic, angsty,
tortured outcast with odd hair colours for fuckssake – stereotypical it may be
but still pretty logical it is also (to me) - and her outfit was done
perfectly, at least her civvies (I’m not that mad on the standard X-Uniforms
for Evolution, they hit as much as they miss). We have all of these design
elements that Rogue has in the source material that just translate to the style
of dress perfectly; the whole outfit: a tight outfit that covers her up, with
boots and gloves and an baggier top of some kind, that’s true for all her looks
up to this point bar the pink Shi’ar suit and the Outback one above, and only
then because that had her wearing a tight thing over the top rather than
baggier jacket/top. And while I think a
lot of X-Fans associate Rogue with either green and white or green and yellow
she used green and black for the whole time between ditching her original
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants costume to bumming around the Savage Land looking
like a music video (with the odd bit of orange thrown in), well over half the
1980s. So not only do I find it exceptionally sexy but it doesn’t make my inner
nerd pipe up with ‘It’s not like the comics’ either, I do wish she was a bit
more statuesque because I prefer that physique for the character but it’s not
such a great fit for this sort of design and just like Anna Paquin it’s not inaccurate
to Rogue when she was young3, honestly I only have one complaint:
why do her gloves have holes in the back? Aesthetics yes but it makes no sense
otherwise, any skin contact from Rogue will do you harm including brushing
against the back of her hand.
So there you are, you now
know what looks and costumes I prefer for Rogue, I am so gonna do one of these
for Storm, I’m sorry.
1 I
honestly can’t remember if she suits up in this film or if it was only in
promotional images, I’m not rewatching X3 to find out, sorry, I’m not putting
myself through that for a post this short and irrelevant.
2
again I honesty can’t remember if she suited up in the first film, she had a
figure that was in an X-Uniform and had promotional shots in one but she was
still in civvies during the Statue of Liberty climax, did she wear it at the
very end maybe? Like the last shot or something?
3
often missed fact, Rogue was pretty young when she came to the X-Men - in her
teens, I think she was 19 around the time of Inferno - I have this pet theory
that her change in body shape can be explained in-universe as a side effect of
her powers, especially holding onto Ms. Marvel too long (obviously it took a
while to come out – as a permanent change - because she was still young, Ms.
Marvel was in her 20s when it happened I think).
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