Residual Blues
by Bobbi Gorden

Many who have read early issues of comics with Rogue appearances - such as ROM (#31, 32), Dazzler (#22, 24), and Rogue's first official appearance in Avenger's Annual #10 where the opening pages show that Rogue had just finished absorbing Carol "Ms. Marvel" Danvers - will recall that Rogue's eye coloring was often blue in some of those early issues.  This raised questions about whether Rogue's eyes were really originally blue and later changed to green for some reason and if this was just a colorist error or if it may have some meaning.

I have come to believe it wasn't done in error or at least that it certainly has meaning, whether it initially was intentional or not.  It was explained as well as could be in Uncanny #236 as being a bleed-over characteristic of Rogue's absorption of Carol Danvers, whose eyes were blue.  Rogue's own eyes had been colored green by then.

She and Wolverine had been captured by the Genoshans and transported to a Genoshan prison.  It's important to note that the transporter only transported their organic bodies and not their clothes.  A character named "Wipe Out" had then negated their powers and they had been taken off to be registered and put into cells.

This topic turned out to be a key historical issue for several other stories to come and it established some power bases at the time for both Rogue and Wolvie.  Without his powers of healing always at work, for instance, Wolverine started to age quickly (apparently from the inside first).

Meanwhile, Rogue minus her super strength and clothes had to deal with at least one guard with "rude hands, ruder glances" and it traumatized her beyond what many fans have felt would probably have been typical of her, given what we knew of her at that time, but that's another topic.

The story showed that because of her sudden vulnerability, Rogue withdrew, psychologically, into the "deepest recesses of her mind" where she met, for the first time, what was referred to as the "residues" of many or all of those people she'd absorbed in the past.

On a sideline note, which has nothing to do with her eye color, but follows what I've felt is one of the more interesting aspects of this story....  It seemed pretty obvious to me that these residues were only Rogue's own memories of thoughts and ideas she'd absorbed - items within those people's own psyches that she recalled after the psyches had returned to the "victims," tainted by her own perceptions of what she had felt at that time and self-perceptions she still held.   Rogue had most likely just pushed these "residues" down into those "deep recesses of her mind" so that she could keep them separate from her own psyche.  But many of those memories/residues seemed to have then been at least somewhat distorted by Rogue's own interpretations of them.

This actually would make sense if you realize that everything anyone says to you - any sound, sight, touch, smell, etc. - you effectively interpret using your own experiences and understanding (hence a bulk of misunderstandings).   It then follows, though, that Rogue's absorption would act much as a new "sense" or a way for her to bring information into her own self other than with the five regular senses/(sets of) sensory organs most people have as "input devices" and she'd have added some of her own interepretations (probably later, when only the memory of what she'd absorbed remained) to what she gained from their psyches.

Nightcrawler, for instance, was painted to look almost like an evil demon, coming after her with an angry wish for vengeance.  By that time, Nightcrawler and she had become close team mates.   He'd regained his psyche and he didn't feel that way toward her at all (if he ever *had* felt that strongly), but these were the interpretations of what she got from him at the time she absorbed his conscious and subconscious thoughts, combined with her own view that he was very angry at her at some point and that remained in that "deep recess" of Rogue's mind.

It was only because Rogue was traumatized there in Genosha and was psychologically withdrawing that she saw these "residues".  It was never supposed to be about her loss of powers making her "lose control" of those residues, although it could probably be said that Rogue may have felt that way.

This is where she met up with the "residue" psyche of Carol Danvers, which was much stronger and clearer than the other residues, as the person she'd absorbed most completely.   Carol's residue talked to Rogue quite a bit and finally convinced Rogue to *let* Carol take control. 

The idea was supposed to be that Carol's experience as an agent would allow Rogue and Wolverine to get out of there and the plan did work.  It only follows, though, that it was simply ROGUE's own memories of her absorbed experiences along with her own interpretations of those absorptions, not Carol's actual psyche, that was being accessed.  This was just how Rogue handled those residue memories of absorbed "victims" at that time.

It's also important to note that even in that traumatized state - her powers gone, alone, and feeling as though she was at the mercy of these "rude" guards - Rogue didn't just allow all these characters to run rampant between her subconscious and conscious minds. She had to consciously give even the strongest psyche residue (the one she had the most memories of) the power to take over. She also was always consciously aware of everything even Carol had done while in control of her body. 

Later, though the suggestion in the lead-up to the story in Uncanny X-Men #350 was that all she has to do is lose her powers for whatever reason and she's instantly at the mercy of whatever psyches she's ever absorbed and that she would have no recollection of what they said or did when she regained control.  It's sad that the depth of that Genoshan story seems to have been lost on those later writers/editors who wrote this.  (Scott Lobdell has said that while he was credited with the story, editors finished it and did not write it the way he intended.)

Anyway, a huge effort was also made in Uncanny #236 to show that only once Rogue had given over power to Carol did her eyes turn blue.  They'd been green all through the book up to that point and, after she accepts Carol's offer, an extreme closeup frame was done to emphasize Rogue opening her eyes again and we see they're now blue.  (Rogue has often shown physical characteristics of those she absorbs so this is completely understandable as well and may even be another way in which Rogue's conscious or unconscious mind "sorts out" the characteristics that were originally hers and those that were originally someone else's.  She has also been shown to be extremely adept at dealing with the numerous psyche residues and this has saved her and her fellow X-Men, on occasion.