Episode #22 - A Rogue's Tale
Original Airdate 8th January 1994

Rouge begins to hallucinate about her pre-X-Men days, and her run with Ms. Marvel. Will her guilt her drive her mad?

Credits
Written By: Robert N. Skir and Marty Isenberg
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy
Animation Services By: AKOM
Guest Starring: Christopher Britton as Mr. Sinister, Rod Coneybeare as Avalanche, Graham Halley as Pyro and Roscoe Handford as Ms Marvel

Review: An interesting take on Rogue’s salty past, which greatly helps develop her character and the problems her powers have caused her throughout her life, as well as her introduction to Professor Xavier.

I’ve always liked this episode, if only because we learn a lot more about her relationship with Mystique, which I find to be one of the best things about Rogue’s character. It was also pretty cool seeing Ms. Marvel in her role as the bitter hero, now powerless after Rogue absorbed most of the life out of her, leaving her in a coma, and Rouge with most of her powers on a permanent basis.

This seems as good as a place as any to say that this show’s version of the Brotherhood is about as unthreatening as you get. After over 20 years, it’s still baffling as to why Blob’s best animated adaptation is probably Pryde Of The X-Men is beyond me. Avalanche has always been lame anyway, and Pyro came off a lot better over in X-Men: Evolution than he did here. The Brotherhood are used as little more than comic humour in this series, which is a little disappointing consider how

A) They were rarely funny

B) They were in a good number of important episodes lacking great fight scenes

C) They could’ve so much cooler, had they been used as threatening villains.

The odd lame fight sequence aside, this episode probably stands as the best Rogue focused episode, and is easily the episode that defines her most.

I’ve never had any great problems with this cartoon’s version of the Southern Belle, and for such a powerful character, they actually managed to make her a powerful presence on the show, without having her becoming too powerful (which happened a few more times than I would’ve liked in X-Men: Evolution)

Not an episode of outstanding brilliance, but not too shabby either.