I've often enjoyed Mike Carey's run on X-MEN. It had the advantage of being something fresh an exciting in the long history of the book, which was even more astonishing when you consider that M-Day all but murdered the forward momentum of the entire concept for no real upside that I've been able to discern.
Naturally, Carey was punished for this and X-MEN was turned into a continuity clean-up book, which--don't get me wrong--has been nominally good, but hardly seems worth the trouble when you get right down to it.
Anyways, of late, Carey's been on a mission to fix Rogue, who was one of the later newer X-Men to really break out. Part of that was because of Rogue's gradual prettifcation (eventually supplanting Kitty Pryde in the Which X-Men Do Maladjusted Fanboys Crack One Off To Sweepstakes) but mostly it's because her character is naturally compelling.
As with the best X-characters, her power is her curse--sure, she can steal people's powers, but she also steals their memories in a violent, invasive kind of way. Over and over, stories involving how bad Rogue has it involve her stealing someone's memories, often finding their innermost secrets or, more recently, losing her mind or going catatonic or whatever.
The blueprint of this trope of hers is best exemplified by her first opponent, Ms. Marvel. For years onward, the repercussions of her stealing Ms. Marvel's powers (apparently permanently) was, basically her storytelling engine. And it was a damn good one, because in addition to not being able to touch anyone without essentially brain-draining them, thus isolating her within herself, she now had the added burden of trying to be a hero with a pretty serious black mark on her record (I mean, for all intents and purposes, by invading her mind--and permanently stealing her memories--and taking her powers, she's committed the superhero equivalent of rape, hasn't she? Never mind she didn't know any better, she was being manipulated--the assumption of guilt's the same no matter the mitigating circumstances) which means her ongoing search is for a way to live some kind of a normal life, but also to redeem an irredeemable act.
(Mind you, given how ham-fisted this kind of thing is treated in superhero comics today this may be opening a Pandora's Box to look at what Rogue did in these terms, but ah well, we can dream we have writers who can rise above the juvenile, can't we?)
Because it's so heinous however, Rogue, like Batman, is destined never to fully redeem herself, but that's what makes it an evergreen storytelling engine, dunnit?
Had no real beef with anything Carey mentioned in the article above--reading it simply meant I could serendipitously share my thoughts on the character with y'all.
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I admit I was a bit skeptical when Carey started piling the tragedies on Rogue - Strain 88, then the Hecatomb, the disintegration of her team - but his decision to clear Rogue's mind of everyone except Mystique? Brilliant. It shows that he gets the character, and... well, it's a lot, especially in comparison to his contemporaries.
Yeah, that initially made me wonder--he'd done such a good job of setting her up as a competent leader and it felt like he kept sidelining her, but now I can kinda see it worked to a larger purpose.
Especially by tying her more inextricably to Mystique. Even in the early days, their weird mother/daughter relationship was such a compelling part of Rogue's origin, I thought.
A Rogue solo book that won't implode due to its own suckiness. We truly are living in strange times. :)
And of Mystique's as well - I think it went a long way towards humanizing her, at precisely the right time: she'd still been a relatively new character when Rogue joined the X-Men.
Not being written by Robert Rodi or Fiona Avery helps, I'm sure. :)
And Mystique needs all the help she can get, as when she was stripped of her relationship with Destiny and Rogue, she soon metamorphosed into (and still is, in a way) the least credible mastermind in comics, as every illogical and out of character thing she ever did was somehow finessed into being All Part Of The Plan. Be nice to see that nonsense in the rearview mirror.
Ah, Robert Rodi. One of the more puzzling writers in comics: I always got the sense that he knew how to write stories and create believable characters, but for some reason that never actually happened on books like "Elektra" or "Rogue". (Although he did do a decent job with that Loki miniseries.) As for Fiona Avery, I'd say Arana killed what little credibility she had to begin with...
Arana means "credibility killer" in Spanish, so no surprises there. :) I don't think I read his Loki series--pretty much everything I read from him I found dreadful and nigh-unreadable as nearly all those neophyte writers from the tail end of the Jemas era struck me.
Bearing in mind Marvel were touting her as Straczynski's protege around the time he was telling us how Gwen Stacy used to play Hide the Glider with Norman Osborn, she wasn't exactly starting off on the right foot either. :)
They were a rather unpleasant batch... of course, everyone else had already defected to DC over Jemas' behavior, so it was hardly a surprise.
Well, I'd already had a chance to see her writing--she did an episode of Crusade which I thought was quite good (mind you she was under JMS' direct aegis at the time, so make of that what you will) and she had one in the script stages that had potential as well. Then I thumbed through the Rogue mini and I was like, "Jesus, what happened?"
Yyyyyyeah. That's one of the reasons I'm still a bit ambivalent about the Jemas era--I kinda liked my Agent X.
Oh lord. So she was yet another TV writer coming into comics. Well, that explains everything.
Agent X, X-Statix, New X-Men, "outing" Daredevil, early Ultimate Spider-Man... that administration had its moments. Few and far between, perhaps, but certainly more than the current group of twits.
Well, she'd done some X-men annual right before the big flip came in, I think, so she was right on the leading edge of that trend.
Oh yes. Sadly, I think the Disney buyout puts paid to the possibility of that happening again, I'm afraid. We'll have to wait and see, but I always had this feeling that the reason they could occasionally go off the beam like that was due to the fact that weren't plugged into some uber-corporate entity.
Mind you, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. :)
I'm not rushing to conclusions re: Disney - there are too many variables at work to try and predict their next move. My guess is they'll either make with the censor bombs or leave the actual comics alone so long as they continue to generate IPs for movies.
That said, I agree that Marvel has, in the past, benefited from the perception that their creativity flourished thanks to the lack of a corporate leash. On the other hand, looking at where all that freedom led them, getting reined in might not be the worst possible outcome...
Yeah, I think there's little to be gained by speculation at this point as, really, until the deal's finalised we won't really know how things are going to jump either way.
Well, they've had corporate leashes, but not as big as DC's had heretofore. And while I agree a firm hand could help things immeasurably at Marvel, it depends on how heavy that firm hand is . . .
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