ROGUE STORM #1
“Deicide”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Roland Boschi
Colour artist: Neeraj Menon
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: A split image of Storm and Rogue, with Storm in what I’m guessing is a savannah, and Rogue in what looks like the Arctic but… well, we’ll come to that. Rogue is wearing the knuckledusters that Storm gives her in flashback during the story.

This is the stand-in book for Storm during “Age of Revelation”.

PAGE 1. Montage: “Five years into the Age of Revelation.”

The main time frame for “Age of Revelation” is ten years, so this is effectively a flashback.

The first panel shows a shattered Mjolnir in orbit, presumably to do with the fate of Thor in this timeline. We don’t know yet what might have happened to him.

The second panel is captioned as the Sahara Desert, but the art shows a snowy wasteland. We’re told later in the issue that Storm has frozen the desert.

The third panel shows the ruins of Atlanta, where Storm is based in her present day series.

The fourth panel shows the Amazon Rainforest on fire, for reasons to be revealed.

PAGES 2-3. The Sahara Desert.

This shows four giant robot things guarding a sort of pyramid with Storm shackled inside. The next scene establishes that this is actually her base, and that the robots are protecting her from interruption while she works on what they understand to be a scheme to save the world: “She alone can halt the slow advance of armageddon.” They call her “the Mother”.

Later in the issue, these robots are identified as the Storm Engines. The term “Storm Engine” was used in the regular series to describe the harnessed alien engine from Storm #1 that was eventually used to power the Storm Sanctuary.

The narrator tells us that Storm suddenly went mad one day, and has to be contained or even killed. The narrator isn’t identified (and certainly isn’t Rogue, because he refers to her in the third person later in the issue). It may just be a third person narrator doing an unusual degree of thinking aloud.

PAGE 4. Symbolic splash page.

As with regular issues of Storm, this has a symbolic splash page which isn’t part of the story. This one shows what seems to be the bleached bones of a creature in the desert, and the remnants of a human skeleton with a skull wearing Storm’s headdress.

PAGE 5 to PAGE 12 PANEL 1. X-Force attack Storm’s ice desert base.

This group identifies itself as “the Uncanny X-Force” – Uncanny X-Force was the title of two volumes of X-Force, the latest being in 2014. They’re working on the basis that Storm has gone mad and threatens the world, and so they’re simply here to stop her. The members of this group are:

• Rogue, specifically “Rogue Red”. We’ll come back to that.
• Gateway, who seems to be here mainly to call in reinforcements. He’s been hanging around at the Sanctuary in regular issues of Storm and given his usual “wise elder” role, his presence here seems to reinforce the idea that Storm has genuinely gone mad, or at least that everyone genuinely thinks so.
• Warpath. He’s recognisable and associated with X-Force. He also has vibranium knives which were given to him by Storm – that happened in Uncanny X-Men #475.
• Iceman. An obvious choice for a mission in an ice desert.
• Fantomex. Another character previously associated with X-Force. It’s maybe worth mentioning here that in Uncanny X-Force, his personality wound up being split among three bodies. This has some parallels with the back story we’re about to get for Rogue. The “Lady Fantomex” version of the character appears over in Sinister’s Six #1 this week.
• Akujin. Apparently a new character, with four arms and carrying swords. She’s somewhat reminiscent of Spiral, but Spiral has six arms and white hair. The name is Japanese and means something along the lines of “evil god” or “demon”. She’s presented as the most bloodthirsty member of the group but still shows apparently genuine concern for her teammates.

They’re accompanied by a bunch of war-enthusiast rhino-type aliens, who seem to be new. By all appearances, they’re simply mercenaries who are happy as long as they get a fight.

PAGE 12 PANEL 2 to PAGE 14. The origin of Rogue Red.

We’re told that Rogue was “splintered into two personalities” while trying to rescue “those in her care” from the Collector. The details of this mission probably aren’t important; rescuing people from the Collector is a pretty standard plot for his stories. Anyway, this “splinter[ing]” results in two Rogues, “Rogue Green” and “Rogue Red”. Rogue Green is the version seen in Unbreakable X-Men, while Rogue Red is the one in Rogue Storm. Her red costume seems to be based on her X-Treme X-Men uniform.

The narrator tells us that Rogue Green is “the original” and Rogue Red is “the copy”, but that sits a little oddly with the claim that Rogue was “splintered”. Nor does there seem to be any actual difference in personality. Instead, both Rogues apparently have the memories of their life up to that point, but Rogue Red doesn’t get the powers – or at least, doesn’t get the flight and strength powers that Rogue had absorbed up to that point. (We don’t clearly establish whether she has Rogue’s base mutant power to absorb other powers by touch.) This might be the reason why everyone regards Rogue Green as the original.

The two Rogues seem to get along just fine, but Gambit remains with Rogue Green, and so the heartbroken Rogue Red leaves Haven and moves into the Storm Sanctuary. Storm does treat Rogue Red as an authentic Rogue who has lost her powers, and draws a comparison with the period in the 1980s when she lost her powers. To help out, Storm gives Rogue Red knuckledusters made of “enisium”, an alloy of adamantium, vibranium and mysterium. Storm claims that this was made from “the remains of my god armour”, presumably the armour she was wearing in recent issues of Storm.

Compared with regular issues of Storm, by the way, all of this is explained very straightforwardly.

PAGES 15-16. Rogue defeats the Storm Engines.

She does so by beating up the humanoid robot who represents their “joint consciousness and operating system” in a fight. This seems like poor robot design, but the idea seems to be that the others are effectively just puppets being controlled by this more conveniently punchable robot.

PAGES 17-19. “X Years Later.” Storm hunts down “murderers”.

“X years later.” This is probably meant to be the main Age of Revelation time frame, though it doesn’t say so in terms.

The Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove. This is a real place; it’s a sacred grove in Yoruba culture, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Storm still has a small X-symbol on her costume. She’s apparently hunting for “murderers” sheltered by a mysterious underwater race living in the river; the narrator implies that this is Storm taking her revenge after X-Force failed to kill her.