We are in a Rogue Renaissance. 

X-Men ‘97 was recently nominated for an Emmy, granting broader recognition for the 1992 animated series that helped advance and transform television animation. Right now, Rogue is helming an X-Men team of her own in Gail Simone’s Uncanny X-Men. Marvel’s Southern Belle had never truly been out of the limelight, but it’s still been a while since she’s been given a chance to shine. Largely backgrounded during the recent era of X-Men comics, she had a series of back-to-back adventures with Gambit in Rogue & Gambit (2018) and Mr. & Mrs. X (2019). She didn’t appear regularly again until 2023.

In a medium famous for trying to keep its characters static, Rogue’s never stayed still. Over the years she’s learned to control those powers that kept her distant from her loved ones, and her long-time “will they, won’t they” romantic tension with Gambit was resolved with wedding bells (and unlike most comic couples, no indication editorial will sell their marriage to the devil anytime soon). Even as the characters around her go through the motions and fall into old narrative traps, Rogue is dynamic, always developing. Unlike, for example, Spider-Man, she isn’t trapped in an endless parade of changes that ultimately mean nothing. She is still growing and expanding as a character, at the center of a real arc still evident from her earliest appearances to today.

But there’s one thing that writers and artists alike simply refuse to move on from: Rogue’s trip to the Savage Land. For the final pages of Uncanny X-Men #269 and a single full issue continuing that storyline (Uncanny X-Men #274), Rogue is trapped in the dinosaur-infested jungle, and forced to wear the remains of her normal costume (a “tattered bikini” as Tim Steely, writer of Rogue: The Savage Land, puts it). The moment she links up with other characters, she’s given SHIELD armor she wears the rest of the storyline.

But you wouldn’t know that from the variant covers. Rogue is featured as the solo star on five variant covers for Uncanny X-Men #1 (2024). Only Luciano Vecchio and Ivan Talavera depict Rogue in her current costume from this series. Despite being the team leader and central character, the other three depict her in her “tattered bikini.” Most variants featuring a solo Rogue place her in her Savage Land costume. She’s often left out of X-Men variant cover lines, often only appearing in group images (the Godzilla line of art is a welcome exception). Within the last few years alone, there’s more covers depicting Rogue in the shreds of her clothes than pages of the comic she’s depicted as wearing it.

The worst part of the Savage Land costume is that it tells us nothing about Rogue as a character. Since Magneto’s clothes don’t disintegrate, it doesn’t even tell us something about the Savage Land’s environment. It’s a naked attempt to put something sexy on the page without any further thought, and that thoughtlessness is regurgitated over and over.

And yet, Rogue has been given so many stunning and sexy outfits over the years, ones the character would have chosen for herself and illuminate her characterization. It says something about Rogue when she is almost completely covered for missions, but wears as little as she can get away with in her free time. What does it say when a woman whose touch is death chooses to wear dangerous lace dresses to parties or wear daisy dukes and tiny tops on dates or on a road trip, but ensures she can’t touch someone in battle? All of the outfits I’ve described look far better than the Savage Land costume, and are either perfectly normal clothes women are wearing right now, or are high fashion creations that translate gorgeously from page to life. Lenore Zann, who played Rogue in X-Men: The Animated Series and reprised the role in X-Men ‘97, wore Rogue’s Hellfire Gala dress to the Emmys. It looks incredible. So, why do the variants always pick the one where Rogue’s clothes were torn up in the jungle, and not the outfits she picked for herself?

Compounding the problem, Marvel has announced a new miniseries that “Uncovers Rogue and Magneto’s Secret Saga” in the form of Rogue: The Savage Land. The marketing already offers plenty of promises for “scantily clad heroines (And heroes!)” and “honoring the impossibly sexy and epic classic tale of young Rogue.” 

There’s a lot of problems here. Let’s tackle the worst first. Rogue’s age is a nightmare at the best of times. While her characterization is consistent, she has been subject to multiple retcons changing her age. She was conceived of as a much older, elderly character; her creator changed his mind, and aged her down to roughly sometime in her twenties or thirties when she joined the X-Men. Then, her age shifted to 18 in Uncanny X-Men #182 (dozens and dozens of issues before her Savage Land excursion, which is written to be consistent with that age). After Claremont departed, her age advanced rapidly, and she eventually began to progress in roughly real time. Many years later (in X-Men Legacy, possibly as a misguided bid to have synergy with the Fox films), Marvel editorial aged her down further, so that she was somehow only 23 years old and the majority of her appearances had retroactively featured a very young teenager. Her age has once again progressed, but many of her early adventures all still happened to an underage teenager. This makes the sales pitch promising an “impossibly sexy” comic very uncomfortable reading. 

Tim Steely has explained on Twitter that despite the covers, despite the continuity—and despite the sales’ copy insistence she’s young—that Rogue is definitely past the age of consent in his comic, and in fact he’s writing the earlier Rogue who was somewhere in her thirties or older. This doesn’t work. Even in the original issue itself she is depicted as younger, as the captions remind us, and she is clearly eighteen from context. When you need to assure readers that she is of age, something has gone very wrong, and perhaps the comic as a whole should have been reconsidered.

Making matters worse, this comic only exists because of the popularity of X-Men ‘97 and the perceived popularity of the Rogue and Magneto relationship. For as many things as the show did right, it still got trapped in the stale Savage Land romance; the show attempted to make it central to both characters, instead of leaving it behind as a very brief moment that both characters ultimately reject. The young Rogue, who once again required the writer involved to clarify she’s definitely of age, wore a costume reminiscent of her Savage Land outfit to prove the connection.

This is all particularly uncomfortable because the television writer in question is Beau DeMayo, who was terminated from Disney in March 2024 due to the “egregious nature” of the internal investigation findings.

The Savage Land storyline represents a dead end for Rogue, one which was summarily resolved by the end of the storyline and ignored for decades. The Savage Land’s tatters are one of her few outfits she didn’t decide to wear herself. The Savage Land “romance” barely existed in the original storyline, was quickly rejected, and is now inescapably caught up in questions of her age. 

Without a writer waving a magic “You are 18 or older” wand, Rogue is underage in the X-Men ‘97 flashback. Without a writer waving a magic “You are 18 or older” wand, in new continuity Rogue is underage or in old continuity Rogue so recently turned 18 that the distinction hardly matters for Rogue: The Savage Land, should any relationship be presented or teased. Even with the writers’ magic wand ensuring she’s of legal age, any relationship presented between them is someone just barely old enough to start college and someone old enough to be her grandfather or great-grandfather. This is a nightmare. This is horrible. This should be condemned. 

So let’s retire Savage Land Rogue. Not just the outfit, let’s retire any attempt to revisit a storyline that was ultimately meaningless to Rogue or Magneto, and failed to advance either character. 

Rogue does not lack for meaningful, interesting storylines that can be expanded. She certainly doesn’t lack for new directions she can go. And, who knows, maybe next time she’ll finally get a solo series that doesn’t revolve around her relationship with a man…

Featured Image: Marvel Comics

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