UNCANNY X-MEN #359: Power Play

Rogue learns the terrible truth about Dr. Agee!

Originally Published September 1998

We begin with a touching dream.

That is to say, a dream about touching, as Rogue fantasizes about what it would be like to have skin-to-skin contact with an unspecified stubbly, possibly Cajun fellow X-Man. Her reverie is interrupted by a nurse, who informs her that Dr. Agee -- the totally-trustworthy mutant-curing doctor, is ready for her.

Speaking of Docs, in Alaska, Jean is receiving some treatment from Dr. Michael Twoyoungmen -- known to us as the Shaman of Alpha Flight. He's not with Alpha Flight right now (and anyway, they're in Alaska, not Canada) but you should definitely be reading Alpha Flight -- you know, if you're impressed with how well Steve Seagle has written Uncanny and want more of it.

In between plugging the moribund spinoff, Jean reveals that, shock and gasp, her psychic powers seem to have left her.

In a shadowy room above his operating lab, Special Agent Henry Peter Gyrich growls at Dr. Agee, "Rarr, we in the government are paying you to cure mutants, rarr."

 

Also present is one Senator Brickman (R-North Flyoverkota) and his big-haired wife Mallory.

Dr. Agee readies Rogue for the procedure...

But before he can so much as scrub up, he's attacked... by his own nurse!

Rogue shields the Doc from what turns out to be a shapeshifter, and I don't just mean because the comic is no longer being drawn by Chris Bachalo. It's Rogue's own foster mom, Mystique!

Ironically, up in Anchorage, Jean is having some feelings about her own powers or lack thereof.

Rogue and Mystique retire to Raven's penthouse, where she explains she had gained access under the guise of Mrs. Brickman, and was alarmed to find that Agee's guinea pig was Rogue. They bicker over what rogue wants for herself versus what Mystique does.

It's the old "I should be able to go through life without being a walking weapon" versus "No you shouldn't." Both sides have a point, right?

Mystique likens it to being black but getting surgery to become white... which is always... a take...

It is the position of this blog that no, it's not.

Mystique then twists the knife further by shifting into Gambit. She lashes out and says how hard it was to leave him in Antarctica -- but that the self-flagellating voice of Remy in her head told her to.

Rogue then cuts loose, touching Mystique to knock her out and absorb her powers/psyche. She tracks Agee and Gyrich to the headquarters of Mutopia, the shady mutant-curing group that Agee swore he was totally not affiliated with, prepared to wreak havoc.

She wrecks the place and thwarts all of the countermeasures designed to oppose her. Mystique, having awakened from her nap, also arrives. 

Finally, Rogue is able to question Agee directly as to the nature of his machine -- naturally, she chooses the only method of interrogation guaranteed to cut to the truth (or at least the truth as Agee sees it) by absorbing his memories.

Rogue is privy to the entire wild and wooly history of the machine, including what may or may not have been a fatal error that may have cost the life of Agee's sister Rebecca, but eventually determines ... it works!

Faced with the possibility of getting her heart's desire, Rogue makes a decision -- that as much as she wants her accursed mutant powers taken away, she couldn't live with herself being a the beta tester for a process that may be used against other involuntarily. She destroys Agee's life's work and admonishes him to go take care of his sister and get out of the mutant-curing business.

Up in Ptarmigan Creek, Scott and Jean determine they do have to stay in Alaska after all, and that whole business about moving back to New York and making some kind of change to Xavier's dream is put on hold. Thanks for wasting everybody's time I guess.

And back at the mansion, Wolverine is not even mad about being attacked by Rogue -- he's just glad she learned a valuable lesson or whatever.

Further Thoughts:

I don't know if this is on purpose or not but Rogue literally does have a seventh sense -- sometimes

"Rogue struggles with her powers" is certainly a story you can tell. It's valid, but it certainly doesn't do anything to counter the idea that Steve Seagle's Uncanny X-Men is bankrupt of ideas. Though we have actually never gotten a real story about this in the pages of X-Men, it cribs heavily from an early arc on the 1992 animated series, where the "mutant cure" was just a front for Apocalypse. By this point it really does just feel like a replay of that, another example of "This is something the X-Men do, right?" It's also times like these when the mutant metaphor awkwardly collides with reality -- in Rogue's case, her "race" is also a debilitating illness from which there is no relief. A tough sell on why she shouldn't want a cure.

The whole Agee saga was not all that interesting or well-dramatized, and in the end I'm not even sure what the deal was with his sister -- was she cured or not? Rogue seems satisfied that the "cure" did work, or would work, but maybe not on her sister, as Agee insisted it had. Maybe I'm just a dummy, but I feel like that needed to be explained more thoroughly. The issue itself certainly does not benefit from the clashing styles between the two artists, but even page-to-page Ryan Benjamin's output is inconsistent in quality. And considering how forgiving I am toward Chris Bachalo's, shall we say, elastic concept of reality, that's saying something.

As for Scott and Jean, I'm getting whiplash trying to keep track of whether they're re-joining the team or not, but I suspect this is the last of that. Ultimately we never get to find out what Scott's "new" dream was or would have been, after he seemed to be making such a big deal about it. 

Thus the decks are seemingly cleared -- next month we are starting off in a new direction, as teased by the preview panel at the end.