July 16, 2025 • 11 mins
We’re keeping the mutant energy going strong! In this episode, Jesse continues his X-Men 25th anniversary celebration with a solo breakdown of the X-Men Movie Prequel: Rogue comic—released alongside the Wolverine prequel back in August 2000. This one’s all about Rogue, and folks… it gets wild. From teenage angst and awakening mutant powers to high-speed truck thefts and secret mutant prison labs, this comic gives us a totally fresh look at Rogue’s backstory leading right up to her first big-screen appearance.
Jesse walks us through the gritty events that unfold after Rogue’s powers first manifest—she’s on the run, trying to survive, and eventually finds herself locked in a shady underground facility performing horrific experiments on other powered individuals. Along the way, she meets an original cast of fellow inmates—Jed, Miguel, Billy, and Millie—and joins forces in an explosive escape plan that packs as much heart as it does mutant-powered action.
And just like the Wolverine prequel, everything wraps up in that fateful Alberta bar where Rogue and Logan first cross paths.
Jesse walks us through the gritty events that unfold after Rogue’s powers first manifest—she’s on the run, trying to survive, and eventually finds herself locked in a shady underground facility performing horrific experiments on other powered individuals. Along the way, she meets an original cast of fellow inmates—Jed, Miguel, Billy, and Millie—and joins forces in an explosive escape plan that packs as much heart as it does mutant-powered action.
And just like the Wolverine prequel, everything wraps up in that fateful Alberta bar where Rogue and Logan first cross paths.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good day time books around with hero Slade and Philly
take time. We're here to dissect the story. He's a
sub material bounty.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Live all right, looks like it's time to get into
the X Men movie prequel. Rogue dropped the same month
as our previous discussion X Men movie prequel Wolverine, August
of two thousand. Now we're gonna learn a little bit
about Rogue in this book. Our creative team here, Dan
(00:35):
Abnett and Andy Lanning on writing duty, Alan Evans penciling,
inked by Rob Nicolacaccus, Chris Eliopolis on letters, Atomic paintbrush
on color art. Here we go. So we open up
at a school in Mississippi. Sounds like we have Rogue
(00:56):
narrating here, talking about how there was some trouble at
the school dance. Oh yes, the old teenage girl in
high school dilemma where everybody's looking at her. She's getting
some sideways glances. People were telling her she should be
locked up, she should freak. And here we have the
pretty girl in the jock. They're all trying to figure
out why she put I guess her boyfriend in the hospital.
(01:20):
And here she is dressed up in a red hoodie
on a greenland like the movie. Jock puts his hand
on her shoulder and she flings him like he's weightless,
and Rogue cannot comprehend she's able to do that. She
takes off running and we're flashing back where Sean asked
her to dance. She leaned in for a kiss. At
(01:42):
this point her this has got to be right. When
her powers manifested. She's talking about how when she kissed
Sean she absorbed his abilities because he was really good
at karate. But I guess it started out as a
static shock and then it's been manifesting more more and
getting worse. Oh, this jock has come back for some
(02:04):
payback here. No one does that to me, girl, or no, girl,
You're gonna pay for that. And she is escaping by
climbing what appears to be a catwalk, balancing on some
steel beans. Again she's channeling whatever she learned from Sean,
and then she falls. She's lost this power and this
jock and his two goons grab a hold of her
(02:26):
and they make the mistake of touching her skin and
she's left them prone on the floor. The cops got
called and big black truck rolls up with a circle
with an X inside on the license plate and out
comes Jean Gray Storm and Cyclops. Rogue sees this and
thinks they're the FEDS, and she takes off. The X
(02:47):
men asked for some help from Professor X to try
and nail down where she went. He can't get a
good reading on her, so they decided to split up
and take a look for Storm found her in a
basement hallway maybe or maybe this is upstairs. She's locked
herself in a boiler room. Now Cyclops is using his
I beams to kind of cut open a spot on
(03:09):
the door, but Rogue escapes through a hash that leads outside.
Rogue's running thumbs down a semi, hoops on a semi
and takes off. Now she is in Virginia. Six weeks later,
she's got another I guess hitched another ride with a
truck or this guy has some bad intentions. And this
guy was drunk, and of course he thinks he's gonna
(03:31):
she's asleep in his cab and he thinks he's gonna
go get lucky, and he touches her, and sure enough,
he gets knocked out while she becomes drunk. So she's
decided to steal the semi truck. Not uneasy feet, lots
of lots of gears you gotta be thinking of there. Oh,
(03:53):
the cops are on her trail and she is drunk
driving folks, she's taking him out, taking out cop cars.
Finally a cop gets smart and blows the tire out
on her rig. She gets out of the cab and
they go to arrest her, and one of the cops
touches her and he's zapped. Well, there's a guy that's
come with them who's got some kind of special gun
(04:13):
and knows that she's a mutant, and he zaps her.
Now we switched to a different locale. Here looks like
some type of forest by some mountains. Neat looking facility
with a helipad in the middle of the lake. Off
the helicopter steps mister Gyrich. He's meeting up with mister Sherman,
and mister Sherman says, the Senator's vision of our nation
(04:36):
is completely in step with mine. Mister Gyrich, I wholeheartedly
pray his mutant registration bill is passed. As they're traveling
down to a level called the Gamma section, they are
doing some nefarious things with mutants. They're trying to make
drugs out of their powers or something. Now they're looking
(04:57):
in on these cells that contain mutants. Here there's this
one who has four legs and four arms with like
claws instead of hands. Don't know who this is. This
is where they're taking rogue. Rogue wakes up in a cell.
She's now in some type of prison gear. She's been
given a barcode on the back of her hand, and
(05:18):
she's set next to the cell. I think of the
forearm four legged guy. His name is Jed. He's trying
to figure out what her power is. We got Miguel
the prisoner here. He can do stuff with the force
of gravity. That's his thing. Billy has this twister thing
he does like a human tornado. When then Field isn't
on him, of course, and then his sister Millie, she's
(05:39):
like living water. When the door opens, out walks what
appears to be some type of doctor. I want you
all to remember how you're helping mankind and giving your
pathetic mutant lives some meeting. So, of course they're running
experiments and trying to figure out what makes mutants tick.
And the doctor's reporting to mister sherman, and the doctor's
(06:01):
very interested in Rogue here, believing that she can offer
a lot. So I don't recognize any of these mutants here.
There's a possibility they have some type of comic book lore,
but yeah, I don't recognize these other people she's in
prison with. So our mutant friends are coming up with
an idea on how to get out. You would think
(06:21):
they would have kept everybody separated so they couldn't see
each other nor talk to each other. Rogue's coming up
with a wafer Miguel to us his gravity powers not
in his cell, but other cells. They freed Milly and
they're trying to get her to get up. Rogue has
reached out to her, grabbed her hands and has become water.
(06:41):
And the alarm is sounding as our prisoners make their
escape and the soldiers are called in. But now it's
time for the mutants to cut loose. Well. Jet has
found the doctor that's been doing these experiments on him.
He's got his claws wrapped around his throat. I guess
his name was doctor Teed or something like that. Rogue
talks him out of killing him. Ooh. Some soldier shows
(07:03):
up behind Miguel, who has got Millie in his arms
and shoots Miguel in the back. They take the soldier
out and then pick Miguel up. They are at the
door to escape to the outside, and here comes mister Sherman.
I own this place. I own you. You leave when
(07:23):
I say and I say never, and he begins to
turn into well, at least one arm turns into some
type of tentacle. This is not going to be good.
He's a mutant. Ted can't figure out why a mutant
would be imprisoning other mutants, and Dawn experiments on him.
He says, you're like us, and he's like, oh, I'm
not like you at all. I don't revel in my
(07:44):
genetic disfigurement. I want to be cured of it. So
that's what he's got them down there for. He's trying
to find a cure for his own mutation, and probably
for a mutation all over. Miguel, with his dying breath,
gave Rogue his gravity powers and she is cutting loose
on mister Sherman. Here, Rogue has flung mister Sherman to
(08:05):
the side, and she's contemplating crushing him, and then she
says she will not do it. The world will know
who the real monsters are when the truth of what
you've done here gets out. He says, the world, you fool,
will never know. And he pulls out what looks to
be in a universal remote. I am not kidding you,
(08:26):
Universal remotes with the keypad that glows. I am not joking,
and he clicks like the play button. The buttons you
can't tell what they are. There's just a bunch of
little rectangles that are glowing. But he presses the main
button and the world will never know. And there is
a massive explosion. The whole place is coming down and
(08:49):
Rogue is trying to contain the blast with her gravity powers,
and it looks like she's able to Billy, Jed and Milly.
So's Billy and Milly. It's about as bad as Jimmy
and Bemmy, Billy and Milly have well. Rogue wakes up
on a box car on a train that's leaving the
area and Billy, Milly, and Jed have apparently rescued her,
(09:12):
and they've stowed away on this train. So Milly was
apparently rescued from a circus. She is offering Rogue a
spot on the traveling show Here Rogue has turned her down.
I need to go someplace I can live a normal
life again and find out who I am. She's head
into Canada. I bet we flipped back to Magneto and
(09:34):
the Brotherhood, who are watching this report. I knew this
would be in there. They're watching this report on Sherman's
facility that is burning the Sherman Chemical plant. Put that
in quotes. Magneto goes, I've been aware of Sherman's connections
with Kelly for quite a while. This new development, that's interesting.
Go and see what you can sniff out. He's talking
(09:55):
to Sabertooth. It is possible that we might be able
to recruit for the battle ahead. All right, And here
we are, just like those last pages of the Wolverine
X Men movie prequel book where Rogue is at the
bar the lions Den, which is the name of an
adult bookstore about twenty miles from here. But Rogue's in
(10:19):
the bar and Logan's at the bar, and we get
the guy who's telling her you need to go get
us some more beers, and she's like, I need to
use ladies room anyway. She stops by Pat's Wolverine, who
almost looks like an old man logan when you get
a look at his face. My goodness, she says, listen,
can you help me? And we didn't get this little
(10:39):
bit at the end of the last book, but Wolverine
looks at her and says, I doubt it, and that
is a beginning. Well, there we go, folks, the X
Men movie prequel Rogue. We have one more to go,
the book that focuses on the villain of this movie, Magneto.
So tune in tomorrow as we finish out this celebration
(11:03):
of the twenty fifth anniversary of Fox's X Men film.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Thanks for joining us. All of this would not be
possible without w twom net dot com, so make sure
to seek them out for more podcasts. If you enjoyed
what you heard today, please feel free to share, and
we look forward to entertaining you again soon
Good day time books around with hero Slade and Philly
take time. We're here to dissect the story. He's a
sub material bounty.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Live all right, looks like it's time to get into
the X Men movie prequel. Rogue dropped the same month
as our previous discussion X Men movie prequel Wolverine, August
of two thousand. Now we're gonna learn a little bit
about Rogue in this book. Our creative team here, Dan
(00:35):
Abnett and Andy Lanning on writing duty, Alan Evans penciling,
inked by Rob Nicolacaccus, Chris Eliopolis on letters, Atomic paintbrush
on color art. Here we go. So we open up
at a school in Mississippi. Sounds like we have Rogue
(00:56):
narrating here, talking about how there was some trouble at
the school dance. Oh yes, the old teenage girl in
high school dilemma where everybody's looking at her. She's getting
some sideways glances. People were telling her she should be
locked up, she should freak. And here we have the
pretty girl in the jock. They're all trying to figure
out why she put I guess her boyfriend in the hospital.
(01:20):
And here she is dressed up in a red hoodie
on a greenland like the movie. Jock puts his hand
on her shoulder and she flings him like he's weightless,
and Rogue cannot comprehend she's able to do that. She
takes off running and we're flashing back where Sean asked
her to dance. She leaned in for a kiss. At
(01:42):
this point her this has got to be right. When
her powers manifested. She's talking about how when she kissed
Sean she absorbed his abilities because he was really good
at karate. But I guess it started out as a
static shock and then it's been manifesting more more and
getting worse. Oh, this jock has come back for some
(02:04):
payback here. No one does that to me, girl, or no, girl,
You're gonna pay for that. And she is escaping by
climbing what appears to be a catwalk, balancing on some
steel beans. Again she's channeling whatever she learned from Sean,
and then she falls. She's lost this power and this
jock and his two goons grab a hold of her
(02:26):
and they make the mistake of touching her skin and
she's left them prone on the floor. The cops got
called and big black truck rolls up with a circle
with an X inside on the license plate and out
comes Jean Gray Storm and Cyclops. Rogue sees this and
thinks they're the FEDS, and she takes off. The X
(02:47):
men asked for some help from Professor X to try
and nail down where she went. He can't get a
good reading on her, so they decided to split up
and take a look for Storm found her in a
basement hallway maybe or maybe this is upstairs. She's locked
herself in a boiler room. Now Cyclops is using his
I beams to kind of cut open a spot on
(03:09):
the door, but Rogue escapes through a hash that leads outside.
Rogue's running thumbs down a semi, hoops on a semi
and takes off. Now she is in Virginia. Six weeks later,
she's got another I guess hitched another ride with a
truck or this guy has some bad intentions. And this
guy was drunk, and of course he thinks he's gonna
(03:31):
she's asleep in his cab and he thinks he's gonna
go get lucky, and he touches her, and sure enough,
he gets knocked out while she becomes drunk. So she's
decided to steal the semi truck. Not uneasy feet, lots
of lots of gears you gotta be thinking of there. Oh,
(03:53):
the cops are on her trail and she is drunk
driving folks, she's taking him out, taking out cop cars.
Finally a cop gets smart and blows the tire out
on her rig. She gets out of the cab and
they go to arrest her, and one of the cops
touches her and he's zapped. Well, there's a guy that's
come with them who's got some kind of special gun
(04:13):
and knows that she's a mutant, and he zaps her.
Now we switched to a different locale. Here looks like
some type of forest by some mountains. Neat looking facility
with a helipad in the middle of the lake. Off
the helicopter steps mister Gyrich. He's meeting up with mister Sherman,
and mister Sherman says, the Senator's vision of our nation
(04:36):
is completely in step with mine. Mister Gyrich, I wholeheartedly
pray his mutant registration bill is passed. As they're traveling
down to a level called the Gamma section, they are
doing some nefarious things with mutants. They're trying to make
drugs out of their powers or something. Now they're looking
(04:57):
in on these cells that contain mutants. Here there's this
one who has four legs and four arms with like
claws instead of hands. Don't know who this is. This
is where they're taking rogue. Rogue wakes up in a cell.
She's now in some type of prison gear. She's been
given a barcode on the back of her hand, and
(05:18):
she's set next to the cell. I think of the
forearm four legged guy. His name is Jed. He's trying
to figure out what her power is. We got Miguel
the prisoner here. He can do stuff with the force
of gravity. That's his thing. Billy has this twister thing
he does like a human tornado. When then Field isn't
on him, of course, and then his sister Millie, she's
(05:39):
like living water. When the door opens, out walks what
appears to be some type of doctor. I want you
all to remember how you're helping mankind and giving your
pathetic mutant lives some meeting. So, of course they're running
experiments and trying to figure out what makes mutants tick.
And the doctor's reporting to mister sherman, and the doctor's
(06:01):
very interested in Rogue here, believing that she can offer
a lot. So I don't recognize any of these mutants here.
There's a possibility they have some type of comic book lore,
but yeah, I don't recognize these other people she's in
prison with. So our mutant friends are coming up with
an idea on how to get out. You would think
(06:21):
they would have kept everybody separated so they couldn't see
each other nor talk to each other. Rogue's coming up
with a wafer Miguel to us his gravity powers not
in his cell, but other cells. They freed Milly and
they're trying to get her to get up. Rogue has
reached out to her, grabbed her hands and has become water.
(06:41):
And the alarm is sounding as our prisoners make their
escape and the soldiers are called in. But now it's
time for the mutants to cut loose. Well. Jet has
found the doctor that's been doing these experiments on him.
He's got his claws wrapped around his throat. I guess
his name was doctor Teed or something like that. Rogue
talks him out of killing him. Ooh. Some soldier shows
(07:03):
up behind Miguel, who has got Millie in his arms
and shoots Miguel in the back. They take the soldier
out and then pick Miguel up. They are at the
door to escape to the outside, and here comes mister Sherman.
I own this place. I own you. You leave when
(07:23):
I say and I say never, and he begins to
turn into well, at least one arm turns into some
type of tentacle. This is not going to be good.
He's a mutant. Ted can't figure out why a mutant
would be imprisoning other mutants, and Dawn experiments on him.
He says, you're like us, and he's like, oh, I'm
not like you at all. I don't revel in my
(07:44):
genetic disfigurement. I want to be cured of it. So
that's what he's got them down there for. He's trying
to find a cure for his own mutation, and probably
for a mutation all over. Miguel, with his dying breath,
gave Rogue his gravity powers and she is cutting loose
on mister Sherman. Here, Rogue has flung mister Sherman to
(08:05):
the side, and she's contemplating crushing him, and then she
says she will not do it. The world will know
who the real monsters are when the truth of what
you've done here gets out. He says, the world, you fool,
will never know. And he pulls out what looks to
be in a universal remote. I am not kidding you,
(08:26):
Universal remotes with the keypad that glows. I am not joking,
and he clicks like the play button. The buttons you
can't tell what they are. There's just a bunch of
little rectangles that are glowing. But he presses the main
button and the world will never know. And there is
a massive explosion. The whole place is coming down and
(08:49):
Rogue is trying to contain the blast with her gravity powers,
and it looks like she's able to Billy, Jed and Milly.
So's Billy and Milly. It's about as bad as Jimmy
and Bemmy, Billy and Milly have well. Rogue wakes up
on a box car on a train that's leaving the
area and Billy, Milly, and Jed have apparently rescued her,
(09:12):
and they've stowed away on this train. So Milly was
apparently rescued from a circus. She is offering Rogue a
spot on the traveling show Here Rogue has turned her down.
I need to go someplace I can live a normal
life again and find out who I am. She's head
into Canada. I bet we flipped back to Magneto and
(09:34):
the Brotherhood, who are watching this report. I knew this
would be in there. They're watching this report on Sherman's
facility that is burning the Sherman Chemical plant. Put that
in quotes. Magneto goes, I've been aware of Sherman's connections
with Kelly for quite a while. This new development, that's interesting.
Go and see what you can sniff out. He's talking
(09:55):
to Sabertooth. It is possible that we might be able
to recruit for the battle ahead. All right, And here
we are, just like those last pages of the Wolverine
X Men movie prequel book where Rogue is at the
bar the lions Den, which is the name of an
adult bookstore about twenty miles from here. But Rogue's in
(10:19):
the bar and Logan's at the bar, and we get
the guy who's telling her you need to go get
us some more beers, and she's like, I need to
use ladies room anyway. She stops by Pat's Wolverine, who
almost looks like an old man logan when you get
a look at his face. My goodness, she says, listen,
can you help me? And we didn't get this little
(10:39):
bit at the end of the last book, but Wolverine
looks at her and says, I doubt it, and that
is a beginning. Well, there we go, folks, the X
Men movie prequel Rogue. We have one more to go,
the book that focuses on the villain of this movie, Magneto.
So tune in tomorrow as we finish out this celebration
(11:03):
of the twenty fifth anniversary of Fox's X Men film.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Thanks for joining us. All of this would not be
possible without w twom net dot com, so make sure
to seek them out for more podcasts. If you enjoyed
what you heard today, please feel free to share, and
we look forward to entertaining you again soon
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