Rogue X-Men Costumes Ranked

The 2nd installment of Russel Dauterman’s “costumes throughout the years” series features Rogue, and it was the variant cover for Excalibur #18.

In this cover we get to see almost all of Rogue’s costumes, starting from her rough days with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, all the way through her iconic 90s and down to some of the more contemporary stuff she’s been wearing.

Tabla de contenidos

• 17. Ultimate Rogue
• 16. X-Treme Rogue
• 15. Death Touch Rogue
• 14. Revolution Rogue
• 13. Utopia Rogue
• 12. Brotherhoodie 2.0
• 11. Brotherhoodie 1.0
• 10. Age of X Rogue
• 9. Shi’ar Rogue
• 8. Pantsuit Rogue
• 7. Orange Tunic Rogue
• 6. Muir Island Saga Rogue
• 5. Savage Land Rogue
• 4. AoA Rogue
• 3. Outback Rogue
• 2. Aerobics Punk Rogue
• 1. 90’s Blue Team Rogue

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I count a whopping 17 costumes in total on this cover, and in this blog article I’m going to rank each and every one of them, starting from my least favorite to my most favorite. I’m also going to be giving a little bit of herstory about each of the costumes, and going into who Rogue was during those eras. 

Some of the other covers in this series feature Jean Grey, Psylocke, and Storm, and I already have rankings done for some of them, so be sure to check those out, too.

In terms of my overall opinion of Rogue, she’s never been like a favorite character of mine, but I do think that she’s one of the most compelling ones. I’ve always enjoyed the contrast of her having a sweet, affectionate, southern belle style personality, with an uncontrollable absorption ability that stops her from ever being able to get close to anyone.

It’s a tragic fate, but tragedy is what makes a good character great!

All Rogue has ever wanted was to be loved by others, but the poor girl has been used by people – and has unintentionally hurt people – so often that it got to the point where her character felt like it was destined to always jus have to make the best of a bad situation, but never truly get to experience her own happiness.

This changed over time, though, and Rogue eventually learns to control her abilities, where she becomes much more of a confident, self-assured, capable leader-type of character. It’s an evolution that is certainly a lot more refreshing than just watching her cry over not being able to touch her boyfriends all the time.

Rogue has charisma out the yazoo, and she’s got one of the most defining speech patterns of all the characters with that casual southern accent of hers, so even though she’s not an all-time favorite of mine, it is always a treat when a well-written Rogue’s Mississippi sass graces the page.

But enough about that, let’s get right into the ranking! 

Here are 17 Rogue costumes ranked from my least favorite to my most favorite.

17. Ultimate Rogue

I didn’t read much of Ultimate X-Men, but from what I’ve gathered, Rogue had a pretty interesting run in it. 

Much like her 616 counterpart, the Rogue in this reality was used as a pawn for villainous organizations upon her debut, starting with the Weapon X program and then later with the Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy

But as all Rogues do, she eventually joined up with the X-Men, and this was the costume she wore when she did.

It’s pretty much a part of the overall Ultimate team aesthetic, where everyone was wearing Blue & Yellow costuming similar to this one.

Seeing the team in these matchy-matchy outfits reminds me of the old Jim Lee training uniforms that the X-Men sometimes wear in the regular reality. We’ve only really seen Rogue wear a 616-training style outfit for the briefest of moments, and even then, it’s a training outfit that – in my opinion – is far more interesting than this costume is.

My criticism with this outfit is the same as when I criticized some of the other Ultimate outfits in previous posts; It’s kind of just boring without much distinctive personality.

Rogue’s is a smidge different than the other female members’, like Jean & Storm’s, though, in that Rogue’s is like a full-body suit whereas theirs were just crop tops. But I wouldn’t say that difference does Rogue any favours here.

Rogue is covered up in almost all of her outfits anyway, so her not being as scantily clad as her other teammates here, really isn’t much of a distinguishing trait for this list. 

I think the yellow straps across her chest are one of the more unique things about this outfit, but at the same time, they’re also kind of ugly. The straps just make her look as though she has a parachute strapped to her back and it’s waiting to be dislodged, so again, not doing her any favours. 

Even though I don’t think Blue and Yellow look great on Rogue here, she has shown that she CAN look good in those colors, but I don’t think that THIS COSTUME in particular is one of those moments.

16. X-Treme Rogue

This was the costume Rogue wore when she was a part of Storm’s X-Treme team. This team was primarily charged with locating and retrieving Destiny’s 13 prophetic diaries, but they also did a bunch of other non-diary related stuff to, like fight aliens, which is kind of like an initiation practice for any new X-Team it seems.

Everyone’s costumes were a little extra around this X-Treme time in my opinion. I can get down with some of them, like Storm’s is fine and Psylocke’s is ok, but Rogue’s is one costume that I actively do not like.

The sleek bodysuit design is fine overall, but every time I look at it I’m like – is she suiting up to go scuba diving? Something about it just throws me off from thinking of it as a superhero crime-fighting costume, and instead makes me think she’s about to go swim with some dolphins.

The colors of this outfit also drive me nuts. Unless she’s about to announce that she vants to suck my blood, I just don’t think the color scheme of fire-engine red and dark blue works well on anyone.

The X-Treme team also wore cybernetically-enhanced red spectacles around this time. They gave the team access to some on-the-spot computer technology, and kept them in touch with one another sort of like a walkie talkie.

Rogue’s glasses had dual purpose, though, as they were made out of ruby quartz and they kept her from accidentally injuring her teammates with Cyclops’ optic blast. She was able to manifest any power she had previously absorbed around this time, thanks so a power boost by Sage, and so these glasses – fashion faux pas that they were – at least had some necessary functional use for her.

I liked Rogue in general around this era, and although I thought giving her access to the menagerie of powers within her body was an interesting twist, I also thought it overpowered her, and unfortunately nothing is more boring than an overpowered X-Man.

Her upgrade didn’t last too long though, and she soon lost all of her powers including her absorption powers, and so she ditched the X-Men and thankfully, this costume as well.

15. Death Touch Rogue

This was the costume Rogue wore when she was the leader of one of the strangest X-Men lineups ever. 

Cyclops gave her carte blanche to form her own team, and alongside X-Men mainstays like Cannonball and Iceman, she also drafted wildcards such as Mystique, Omega Sentinel, Lady Mastermind, and Sabretooth.

It was a very weird time, but it all kind of worked, because there was inherent conflict within the team, and made for for interesting dynamics.

When it comes to this costume, I don’t mind it overall, but I just think it’s a lot to take in with that hooded cape. I love a cape on a superhero, but I much prefer it to be something that billows as opposed to something that drapes long a heavy, and that’s kind of what this one looks like to me. 

The green and white bodysuit underneath it is fine, and she’s worn a variation of it in a lot of her other costumes too which I’ll get into later, but I just think that this giant blanket she’s wearing as a cape was an unnecessary addition and maybe should have been a bit tailored before she put it on.

Rogue’s powers took an interesting turn around this era as well, as she developed her Death Touch ability. She was injected with the experimental Strain 88 courtesy of Doctor Pandemic, and it essentially threw Rogue’s powers into overdrive, where instead of just temporarily absorbing a person’s powers and psyche, the slightest touch from her would instantly absorb everything about them and wipe out their existing essence completely.

It was not a fun time for Rogue, and she was forced to absorb 8 billion minds with her augmented power when the Hecatomb threatened Earth, and so needless to say she went a little crazy with all those voices in her head.

Even though I don’t really care for this costume, I did really like Rogue around this time, and I thought that her Death Touch was an interesting way to level-up her no contact policy.

14. Revolution Rogue

The Revolution Era was Chris Claremont’s return to the X-Men after being away from it for like like a decade or so, and he shook a lot of things up with the line, starting with giving everyone a totally new makeover.

I’m lukewarm on a lot of the designs of this era, but Rogue’s outfit is probably one of my least disliked one; I think it really works for her. It’s got her trademark green-and-yellow colors, and even though that giant X across her chest is a bit ostentatious, I don’t mind the branding, and I think the overall design is complementary to Rogue’s usual covered-head-to-toe schtick.

This outfit is what Rogue wore during one of her first formal leadership roles within the X-Men. She was voted to be team leader during the Revolution era by the other members of the team, even though it didn’t seem like it was something she really wanted to do, and she was more-or-less forced into it.

There wasn’t like an election or anything, and she only became the leader by default because everyone else was too busy to do it, so to me it all felt a little weird, because it kind of felt like the gang was being all “well you’re not our first choice, but you’re our only choice, so you’ve gotta do it”

The revolution era is also when Rogue first began manifesting the powers of all the abilities she had absorbed in the past. This happened because she absorbed a Skrull, and the Skrull dna mixed with the Kree dna she had previously absorbed from Carol Danvers, and it just created a totally adverse reaction on her own DNA.

She was initially manifesting these powers totally uncontrollably and at random times, so it was really chaotic and it’s why she had to give up her leadership role with the X-Men, but after some time she gained a pretty good measure of control over it, but then she got depowered and lost everything before her natural abilities of absorption eventually reasserted themselves, but as a blank slate. 

The one thing I really don’t like about this design is her hair. I HATE her pulled-back, limp-looking pony-tail! Rogue has worn ponytails before, and I’d say she’s worn them much more successfully than this, because here her hair is just falling here like it has no body or support or anything.

If she’s gonna rock a pony, then it’s gotta be a high pony that bounces around when she flies, y’know, something with LIFE and not some dead-looking thing that just crawls down the back of her neck looking like a wet swamp rat.

13. Utopia Rogue

Speaking of Ponytails, Rogue also wore one during her time spent on Utopia, and in my opinion, it – and her costume – was marginally better than her revolution one.

I think her Utopia costume had a very cohesive overall “look”, in that it wasn’t competing with itself for attention. It was like an emerald green with white accents, so none of the colors popped too much over one another, though I will say that I think it was certainly one of her bustier outfits.

Even though it wasn’t revealing in the traditional sense, like how say a Psylocke or Emma costume is, she seemed to always have her cleavage super on-display, which I thought was funny, given that her role on Utopia was as the counselor to the kids.

Even though she could cover it up now and again with that scarf she always wore, it seemed like the girls were just always out on display, and you know what? I’m ok with that.

Rogue was pretty much the star of the X-Men Legacy book during her time on Utopia, and she exhibited complete control over her abilities, doing lots of cool things with other peoples’ powers. She no longer had her Ms Marvel abilities, so flying and super-strength were off the table for her, and it was interesting watching Rogue be less of a powerhouse and showcase more vulnerability physically than we are used to seeing her do. 

At the very least, being a regular-strengthened person forced her to rely more on those actual mutant abilities of hers, and she used her absorbing powers more as a tool and less as a curse, which was what they were to her for so many years. 

One of my least favorite Rogue panels of all time actually occurred during this Utopia run. I hate it when Rogue absorbs a multitude of powers at one time and chooses to express them all simultaneously; I always think it looks super-ugly in the art, even if the intended effect is for it to look cool. 

She did it here during the Second Coming arc, after she simultaneously borrowed the powers of Colossus, Psylocke, Angel, Wolverine, and X-23 in order to fight off Bastion’s Sentinels. 

From a story standpoint, sure, great thing to get her to do, but ughh, just looking at it makes me cringe. It reminds of that Combo-Man character from the Marvel ads in the 90’s. He was like a joke character who had like all the powers of various Marvel characters, and so stacking Rogue up like this just gives her that Combo-Man appeal to me which is, ugh, so cringey.

12. Brotherhoodie 2.0

Rogue wore her Brotherhood Jumper both when she was a villain as well as when she was a hero. It’s essentially the exact same Hoodie both times, except for the fact that she had longer hair and less villainous makeup when she wore it as a hero, and it was more of an emerald green as opposed to the lime green that was when she wore it during the Brotherhood.

I kind of think putting this outfit on this cover twice is a waste of space, when one of them could have gone to a more unique-looking design, such as perhaps the Brotherhood outfit she wore during the X-Men Adventures comic series that was based on the Animated Series. I always really liked that one and thought it was cool.

But whatever, we have the same thing on here twice, and at least she wore them during different time periods of her life. The one here at number 12 is meant to represent the time she wore the Hoodie as a hero, shortly after Operation Zero Tolerance and right up through The Twelve saga.

This was kind of like Rogue’s heartbreak outfit, as it’s what she wore after she found out about Gambit’s involvement with the Mutant Massacre and took some time to sort out her feelings.

There wasn’t really anything too defining about Rogue during this era in my opinion, other than her being somewhat caught up in Gambit’s drama. Rogue is strongest when she isn’t tied romantically to a man, be it either Gambit or Magneto or anybody else, so this whole ‘broody’ Rogue era wasn’t really her greatest arc character-wise, but I think it made sense in her regression to go back to this outfit.

It felt like she was trying to make sense of everything she thought she knew, or like she had to re-learn and re-trust her relationships with people, so I guess having her wear an outfit that she once wore while she was figuring herself out, just lends itself to some nice poetic storytelling.

11. Brotherhoodie 1.0

Her original Brotherhoodie sneaks ahead ever so slightly in this list, if only because I like this color scheme a bit more than the other one. I also think she was a more robust character during this incarnation. Here she was only living for herself and didn’t have no man to fret about. She was a member of her mama Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and went around terrorizing everybody from the Avengers to the Dazzler, to ROM the Space Knight! 

There’s an alternate version of this costume that uses a green striping instead of a white striping, and I actually wish that was the version that was used on this cover instead, because at least then it would have given some more differentiation between these two very similar Brotherhood outfits.

I think she was only supposed to be like 17 years old while she was a member of Mystique’s Brotherhood, but oftentimes it felt like she looked a lot older thanks to the way she caked on her make-up and styled her hair, and I thought that was just so fantastic. Villainy was not a good look for Rogue, but it was so bad that I LOVED it. 

This was the outfit she wore when she ruined Carol Danvers’ life by stealing her powers and her memories, and it was also the costume she was wearing when she ditched Mystique’s Brotherhood and showed up on the X-Men’s front door looking for sanctuary.

She’s done a lot of life-defining things in this outfit, and it’s the one that gave her green as a trademark color. It’s a pretty simple outfit, but she wore it during a simpler time, and all-in-all I have to say it’s really not too bad.

10. Age of X Rogue

Kicking off the top 10 of my Rogue costumes is her Age of X outfit. This was the outfit that she wore when Legion created his pocket universe, and everyone on Utopia forgot who they were and were instead given new identities and new histories.

They were fighting an endless war where day after day the humans would try to invade their Fortress, and while mutants inevitably successfully fended them off, there were the occasional casualties.

Rogue’s main function on the team was to act as a reservoir of memories, of sorts, for all the teammates who did fall in their never-ending war against the humans. She would essentially absorb a person’s entire psyche as they died so that they could figuratively live forever within her, and thus never be forgotten. 

Because of this, she was given the codename Legacy, and she wasn’t really allowed to participate in any battles because the cargo she was carrying inside of her was way too precious; If anything happened to her then everyone she absorbed would be toast as well.

I really like this outfit and I thought it was one of her better, more functional ones. I really like seeing Rogue in black, and pairing it with her trademark green works surprisingly well in a way that we don’t see a ton of these days. I think she also looks really militant here, but not in a super front-lines-y kind of way. It’s like a super-hero version of a war costume, and I dig it.

I kind of dissed Rogue wearing a cape when I talked about her Death Touch outfit earlier, but this Age of X costume is an example of a time when I think a cape works for her. Her unofficial nickname during this story arc was Reaper, so I mean, the cape is obviously a nod to the Grim Reaper reference, but that aside, I think it also just looks really nice aesthetically here because it doesn’t gobble her up the way her Death Touch robe did. It’s more stylish and has life to it, which is ironic, given that in this world, she’s essentially the angel of death.

9. Shi’ar Rogue

Rogue debuted this outfit during one of the X-Men’s many jaunts out into space. The Shi’ar needed the X-Men’s help against the Phalanx, and the whole team got the royal Shi’ar wardrobe treatment, including local reporter Trish Trilby! 

Rogue’s outfit was the only one that really made an impression though, as it had a thin forcefield around it that let her kind-of touch people. Even though she couldn’t make actual contact with them, it was still closer than she could usually get to people, so she kept the outfit after leaving space and used it as a her regular crime-fighting apparel for a while. 

I have a mega spot for the Rogue Shi’ar costume. The purple and yellow combo is unlike anything she’s ever worn before colorwise, and even though I think it borders on being a bit garish because both of the colors are so bright and Easter-y, I do really like this whole thing on her.

The pointless accessories like the elbow pads and shoulder pads and hip pads are all 90’s essentials and I live and die by them.

This costume happened around the mid-90s, right around the time young people like myself were discovering the internet and X-Men fansites were being created all over the place. Even though I wasn’t collecting the current monthly issues where Rogue was wearing this costume at the time, I remember seeing it all over the internet on like every website and message board and altavista search, and I have a vivid memory of wasting all the magenta ink from my Dad’s printer by printing an oversized copy of her in this costume and taping it to my bedroom wall.

I just thought it was such a super cool costume, and I was drawn to it I think because it was so different for her, but still looked like it belonged to her.

8. Pantsuit Rogue

This is such a great costume! Rogue wore this for a pretty brief stint in the 80’s shortly after joining the X-Men. I think it only lasted like 5 issues or something while Rogue was trying to discover her identity as a hero. 

Even though it’s hard to call this like a traditional super-hero costume, I give it a lot of props for going the fashionable route as opposed to the tights-and-cape route. I mean who doesn’t love pants and big belt? But is this outfit practical for fighting supervillains? Eh, Probably not. 

I can understand why it only lasted a few issue though, as repairs must have cost her a fortune. It looks like it is something that has been tailored completely out of non-stretch fabric, so even the slightest punch or kick would tear a hole right into the seams of it. 

Nothing about the outfit looks imposing from a superhero standpoint, but I like that Rogue chose fashion over ego, and with a rather masculine dress-style as well. 

It’s just something really different that I enjoy when stacked up against all of her other costumes, and honeslty the more these outfits play with dimensions and shapes and give interesting silhouettes, the more I’m interested in them as opposed to just the usual skin-tight spandex fare we get from most super-people costumes

7. Orange Tunic Rogue

Rogue’s Orange Tunic phase was another strange costuming blip that just sort of happened for a while until it didn’t anymore. It was the first costume she debuted with the X-Men after joining their ranks, and I guess was her first official superhero costume after ditching the Brotherhood romper.

I kind of put it up there with her Shi’ar outfit and her pantsuit outfit as being one of the more unique outfits she’s worn. This one is a cut above the those ones for me though, as even though the Shi’ar suit had an interesting color scheme and the pantsuit overalls had an interesting tailored cut, this one has both.

There is not a single other outfit here that uses the same kind of silhouette that this one opted to use. The tunic kind of creates like a webbed wing moment under her arms since I guess the fabric is so bulky that it buckles in an up over her belt. Maybe that was useful to her for when she was flying or something? Like it helped her capture the winds and soar on them?

ut just like the pantsuit, I think the outfit had too many impracticalities to make it worth wearing. Her wingspan is obviously hindered by the tunic and it looks like she’s only able to extend her arms so far before the entire garment would either ride up or rip off.

I think in the smorgasbord of Rogue costumes, this one either usually gets totally forgotten about or is reviled amongst most Rogue fans. And at first glance I totally thought it was horrendous, too/  But then the more I looked at it, the more I started to appreciate it, and even though orange is so not a Rogue-centric color by now, I wouldn’t be mad if this tunic just happened to resurface among her other old costumes on Krakoa!

6. Muir Island Saga Rogue

So speaking of costumes Rogue only wore for a brief period of time, this Muir Island Saga outfit I think was literally only worn for one or two issues at max.

She wore it shortly after she visited Muir Island on her hunt to find the rest of the X-Men after everyone travelled through the Siege Perilous in Australia. Unbeknownst to her, the Shadow King had latched his hooks into everyone residing on Muir Island, and he soon had his hooks in her as well.

He was bringing out everyone’s negative traits, and everyone was acting very out of character, especially their leader Moira MacTaggert, who had organized a tournament where these Muir Island X-Men would fight each other, and this was was the outfit Rogue wore while she beat the crap out of Strong Guy.

I loved the Muir Island Saga, and I thought it was a great way to give some limelight to some lesser-used characters at the time, while not completely removing the main characters of the x-line from the narrative. 

What I like about this outfit on Rogue is that it’s a way for her to wear the traditional blue & yellow X-Men colors but with an updated vibe. It’s kind of like her Ultimate costume in that way, although I think this costume successfully uses the colors and the garments in a way that complement Rogue, whereas the Ultimate costume just looked kind of blah.

This costume also has elements of her tailored pantsuit costume that I love, like the lapels at the top, but my favorite part is actually her headband. It’s very like karate kid or it reminds me of something that one of the Lost Boys from the Peter Pan movie Hook would’ve worn. The Muir Island X-Men team was kind of like a troupe of lost boys (at least spiritually), and I loved the movie Hook, so that kind of energy coming off of this costume is something that I can really fly with.

5. Savage Land Rogue

The Savage Land costume is probably one of Rogue’s most iconic outfits.  It’s definitely her most cheesecake outfit, but given the circumstances of why she was wearing it, I think we can give the girl a break. 

After travelling through the Siege Perilous with all the other members of the Australian X-Men team, Rogue was the only member who retained all of her memories and life experiences from it, and it was probably in no short order thanks to her psyche having been bonded with Carol Danvers. 

The two of them had a bit of spat since the Perilous tried to separate them, but it turned out there was only enough life energy for one of them to survive, and so Rogue ran away from Carol not wanting to ‘kill’ her again. She ended up in the Savage Land, where Carol followed her, and even though it looked like Carol might win, Magneto eventually surprised Rogue by showing up and saving her and eliminating Carol from the equation. 

Rogue’s absorption powers had been neutralized by some sort of feedback from her spat with Carol, and so for a while she could freely touch people without fear of draining them, and thus her on/off romance with Magneto began.

The two of them teamed up with Ka-Zar and the local Savage Land tribes to fight off the evil Zaladane and her Savage Land Mutates, and they won too, but Magneto’s true bloodthirsty colors turned Rogue off from him, and she left the Savage Land shortly after her powers returned. 

What I like about this costume is that it’s Rogue finally being unabashedly free. It’s sexy as hell, and that’s a bonus, but overall what it says to me is that Rogue no longer has to be afraid of anyone touching her skin, and so why not enjoy that for a while.

Rogue is always covered up worrying about other people touching her, hoping to save them from the distress it might cause, but here she is finally able to do what she wants for herself, and what she wants is to wear this tiny tattered bikini rag number. 

The overall vibe of it is like super Tarzan & Jane – like it’s totally got the Savage Land aesthetique down, and even though it looks like she was scampering to gather any rags she could, she managed to find green & yellow ones which would soon become her trademark colors!  

This is Rogue’s most revealing costume of them all hands down, but I dare say that it’s also her most liberating one. Even if she does fall prey to the male gaze while she’s wearing it, I can at least appreciate that there’s purpose behind it, and that I think that her being able to wear something this revealing helped to boost her confidence a bunch, compared to when she is just forced to wear chin-to-toe onesies and not express how she really feels through her costume.

4. AoA Rogue

There’s not really an Age of Apocalypse outfit that I don’t love, and Rogue’s is no exception to that.

The AoA was an alternate timeline that was created after Professor X’s son legion went back in time to kill Magneto, but accidentally ended up murdering Xavier instead. It created a splinter world of what would have happened had Xavier not been around to pedal his dream of human/mutant co-existence, and the result was a dystopia ruled by the immortal fist of Apocalypse.

In this reality, the X-Men were still freedom fighters for the cause, albeit their number was severely diminished and they were led by Magneto instead of Professor X.

Rogue was one of the main characters of this reality, but instead of having Ms Marvel’s flight and super-strength, she had half of Polaris’ magnetism. So she could still levitate herself by manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum around her, and somehow the magnetism also gave her a degree of invulnerability and augmented strength as well.

One of the stark differences though was that Rogue could touch at least one other person without fear of absorbing his psyche, thanks to the nature of her magnetic powers and his. That person was Magneto, and he & Rogue became a romantic item in the AoA, the two of them co-leading the X-Men and even having a son together whom they named Charles.

I really, really enjoyed Rogue’s portrayal during the AoA. I thought she was a badass character and a great leader and I really liked how she put her family first above all else.

Having a family and birthing a child just never feels like anything that will come to pass for Rogue in the real world, and this Rogue probably also thought she would never have a family either before she met Magneto, so when through a weird quirk of fate she was able to, it made sense that she would feel extremely overprotective of baby Charles, and that she’ll be damned if anyone’s gonna take that away from her.

In terms of this outfit, I think it’s another great example of a cape being worn to full effect. Of all the capes we’ve seen Rogue wear, this one is most definitely my favorite. It just has the most presence of them all, and It’s a crying shame that it isn’t being added to the recent AoA Rogue Toy that was announced from Hasbro. The look feels incomplete without it, in my opinion.

One of the best aspects of the cape is the bolted collar neckline that’s like there to hold it in place. It and the cape are both references to how Magneto classically wears his cape, and it makes sense that that would be the case, since she and Magneto were a thing in this reality. It adds like a fun element of industrialism to an otherwise very bright costume.   

I also really enjoy the big, puffy, ruched-up sleeves that she has going on here. They remind me of the sleeves of an 80’s oversized jacket that a girl might wear like over her prom dress or something. It’s like she’s cut the sleeves off that jacket and has just sewn them onto her costume for dramatic effect, because there’s really no other reason for them to be so gathered up other than for the drama.

Overall I think it’s a lot of nonsense in a costume, but it’s nonsense that just looks right. Even if the bright colors of the costume make no actual sense for her to be wearing in a dystopic future like the AOA, because she stands out like a sort thumb, I think for the sake of embodying superheroism in this bleak world, everything that she has going on works really well for her and she looks like a power boss leader.

3. Outback Rogue

This was the outfit Rogue wore while the X-Men were hiding out in the Australian Outback. Roma had just brought the X-Men back to life after they sacrificed themselves on live national television in order to stop the Adversary during the Fall Of The Mutants storyline, and they decided to strategically keep their resurrection a secret from the rest of the world as a means of getting the jump on their enemies, so to speak.

You’ll hear me say this all the time, but the Outback was my absolute favorite era of all my favorite X-Men eras, and so I’m hard-pressed to ever diss anything from those days.

One of the most interesting things to happen with Rogue during this era was that she and the Carol Danvers persona inside of her had kind of come to terms with one another in terms of sharing Rogue’s body. Rogue obviously felt super guilty about everything she did to Carol, and now with Carol finally re-asserting herself it only seemed reasonable that the two of them should have equal measure of living life, even if they did have to share the body.

I don’t think either of them particularly enjoyed doing this, and it was a pretty short-lived alliance before the two of them fought for body supremacy, but I still thought it was a really interesting plot point while it happened.

What probably irked Rogue the most was that Carol was actually able to control Rogue’s mutant abilities and touch people with her bare skin when she was in control of the body, whereas Rogue still could not. I can only imagine how extremely frustrating that must be for her, but at the very least it did show Rogue that her mutant power is controllable if only Rogue could figure out how to do it.

I think this might have been Rogue’s last costume to use black as a co-dominant color before switching over to her now-trademark yellow and green. I personally really like the black and green, and I think it gives her kind of like a female wrestler vibe just by the choices of which aspects of her costume are green and which ones are black.

Even though it’s a pretty simple costume when you look at the sum of its parts, I like the way the boots and the opera gloves are kept really long so as to cover up her skin and keep her cut off from people’s touch. That is kind of Rogue’s thing after all, and so like most of her costumes it is also reflected in this one, but here I just find it to be a lot more striking, and I think it’s because of the black and green color combo. It just pops really well.

And I mean, her hair. So big, so bountiful. It’s like double the size it usually is. It looks like a heavy mane for an otherwise petite girl, and I respect her for giving us the volume of our dreams.

2. Aerobics Punk Rogue

This is the period of time when Rogue started to really have a lot of fun with her costuming. She ditched the orange tunic and the tailored pantsuit, and picked up a black bodysuit instead and just went ham with the green accessories.

Sometimes it would be a crop top and a belt bottom, other times it would be an off-the-shoulder tshirt and a bikini bottom, you never really knew how she was going to dress day-to-day

I’d say this was Rogue kind of at her punkiest within the X-Squad. She was a full-fledged member by this point and was finding purpose with the team and feeling trusted enough to be able to express herself in fun ways like this costume. 

One of the best storylines to come from Rogue during this era was when Dazzler joined the team. Dazzler did NOT trust Rogue at all, as they had butted heads back when Rogue was a member of the Brotherhood and she almost killed Dazzler.

Alison had been using the danger room and she programmed Rogue as the antagonizing force for her work outs, and Rogue was not too happy when she found out. The two of them came to actual blows over it, but honestly, it felt like that’s what needed to happen before the two of them could finally find peace with each other and learn to behave as co-workers if not necessarily as friends just yet. 

What I like most about this costume is how casual but trendy it looks. I think it’s pure 80’s the way she just layers accessory after accessory overtop of that black onesie, but I think that alternative 80’s style is actually something that Rogue excels at. 

A lot of her greatest costumes according to me have a sort of 80’s look and feel to them, so it’s no surprise that I would find this one great as well . It’s probably her most 80’s right down to the aerobics instructor feel of it, but I mean if it works it works, and I think this costume most definitely worked!

1. 90’s Blue Team Rogue

As much as it kills me to admit the most obvious possible choice, I can’t deny that the classic 90’s Rogue look that she’s most well known for is also probably my favorite of the bunch.

It’s definitely the costume that defined her for like an entire generation, and even though the 80’s were paramount to her character development, she never really found her own voice until the team split up into Blue & Gold, which was when this costume was. 

There’s an argument to be made that this wasn’t really Rogue’s limelight period because she was so enraptured in Gambit for pretty much all of it, that her chasing that relationship overshadowed any actual time in getting to know her….and I see the value in that argument, but I don’t totally agree with it. 

I do think that Rogue spent a lot of the 90’s pining over Remy, but I think that through her relationship with Gambit we really got to explore a lot of Rogue’s inner-workings. It was the only time she was ever really vulnerable with someone romantically like that, and it let us see a lot of different sides of Rogue. 

Up til this point she had only really ever been guarded and kept people at a distance because of the uncontrollable nature of her powers, which is totally fair and valid, but now she was also happy and joyful and while still unable to experience everything she WANTED to experience, she was in the midsts of discovering a side of herself that she had never been able to explore before. 

I really like their relationship, and I think it’s especially interesting because of how volatile it is, but her romance with Gambit aside, I also just think this costume nails who Rogue is. It’s honestly pretty simple – it’s just a bodysuit with a belt and a jacket overtop – but Rogue is a simple gal and anything too ornate wouldn’t feel authentic. 

In this instance I think it’s the color design that really sell the garment. She’s worn a lot of bodysuits, but something about these earthy greens and yellow just really make this one pop. I think it’s also because she’s got that big, bountiful, curly hair going on too, and yes, even the undersized bomber jacket which was all the rage for some teams in the 90s, really is the final touch to bring this all together.

It’s an iconic costume that has a sort of ever-fashionableness to it. It’s like it’s plain enough so that it can pass as a modern-day outfit without standing out like something that was clearly a product of its time, like what some other iconic superhero costumes ultimately end up looking like. 

All-in-all, I think it’s the best costume Rogue’s ever worn, even if it did already have the popular vote even before I chimed in.

So that’s my list! I wouldn’t say that Rogue has had the most varied costumes out there, but there are definitely some hits and misses within them.

Let me know if you thought I got it right or wrong, and if you have a favorite Rogue costume out of all these looks. In case you missed it, you can check out the video version of this entire list at the link below or over at my YouTube Page. 

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