The third volume in Aconyte Books’ Marvel: Heroines series, Alisa Kwitney’s Rogue: Untouched offers a modern origin story for one of Marvel’s most famous X-Men. In Peck, Mississippi, population 1,063, Anna Marie (or Marie, as she prefers) works diner shifts to try and earn enough to get out and make a better life for herself. Life is tough for a young woman on her own, not least when she has a history of strange things happening around her, but little does Marie suspect that latent mutant powers are to blame for many of her difficulties. Things start to change, however, when she meets charismatic Cajun thief Remy and rich businesswoman Lucretia, both of whom seem to understand what she’s been through, and learns for the first time about her mutant nature. An unexpected new opportunity quickly turns into more trouble than ever before, but if only she can find a way to survive she might at last be able to choose who she wants to be.
The established character of Rogue may be well-known to Marvel fans but here we get to see her at a particularly interesting point in her pre X-Men life, taking her first tentative steps into a world of mutant powers and deadly enemies. Sure, it’s an introduction to Rogue, but really it’s Marie’s story, touching lightly upon her life up to this point (an absent mother and strictly religious aunt, an unpleasant incident with a boyfriend ending up in a coma) but dealing much more with who she is as a person and the struggles she faces just to be herself. While the usual mutant prejudice angle is only lightly touched upon, Marie feels a similar sense of estrangement just from being a regular outsider, in a place which doesn’t know she’s a mutant but has pigeon-holed her as strange and ‘other’ regardless. Meeting Remy and Lucretia, and learning that she herself is a mutant, is like the tantalising sight of a better future she could never imagine, one that’s then torn away (for reasons too spoilerific to mention) as she’s thrown into a situation in which she’s out of her depth and doesn’t know who to trust.
Set entirely in small-town Mississippi and very much in the here and now, there’s an endearing sense that this is its own, self-contained story despite being part of the wider X-Men universe. There are plenty of other interesting characters introduced along the way (mostly mutants, including names like Toad and Pyro that will be familiar to X-Men fans) but the main focus is on Marie and Remy (Gambit), and to a lesser extent Lucretia, and Kwitney spends more time exploring their fundamental characters than their mutant powers. Of course, there’s lots of fun to be had when the flashy powers do come out, and Marie’s particular powers work brilliantly for this sort of ‘what the hell is going on’ story as she tries to figure out what she’s capable of and how to control it. As powerful as we the readers know she will become in future, here she’s just starting off, and she relies as much on the observation skills instilled by her waitressing experience as anything else.
It’s all told with a breezy, natural momentum that feels easy to read and hard to put down, and the character-first approach helps to ensure it’s as accessible as possible irrespective of the reader’s existing knowledge of the Marvel universe. It’s paced in such a way that there’s a lot of gradual, characterful build up before an action-packed finale, and some might prefer a bit more lead-in for the climactic showdown, but the lack of preparation is reflected in-universe too, so it does actually (just about) make sense. All told it’s a fun, entertaining read that doesn’t quite have a YA feel, but hits that crossover sweet spot of appealing to both younger readers looking for a story featuring slightly older characters, and older readers happy to concentrate on if not quite a coming of age story then certainly one focusing on identity (as well as cool mutant powers). Anyone after a great comic book adaptation which shifts an intriguing origin story into the present era is likely to find a lot to enjoy here.
Many thanks to Aconyte Books, Marvel and Alisa Kwitney for providing me with a review copy of Rogue: Untouched, in exchange for my honest review. It’s due out in global ebook and US paperback in May, with the UK paperback following in July.
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