Rounding off this week's refreshingly small collection of X-books, Rogue #10.  Rogue looks set for cancellation with issue #12 - which is to say that, as usual, Marvel have simply stopped soliciting it, and since it sells abysmally, that probably means it's dead.

But we've still got the second half of "Forget-Me-Not" to go, a story which was at one point being touted as featuring some sort of major development for the character.  Given that it's now going to form the closing issues of a dead book, one wonders whether they're going to go through with that.  It would seem a waste of a major plot.

Mind you, it hasn't stopped writer Tony Bedard from going through with a rather drastic plot development at the expense of Sunfire, the book's unfortunate guest star.  For once, those great big claws coming out of Lady Deathstrike's hands actually do their job.  The character hasn't been killed off, but let's just say he's lucky he can fly.  (Or, possibly, lucky that there seems to be a partial reboot just around the corner...)

Meanwhile, Rogue is reunited with Blindspot, the memory-thief character who's been central to the plot.  Reasonably enough, the explanation for the forgotten photo of Rogue with Sunfire is that the two of them did indeed go on a mission with Blindspot back when they were both supervillains, and Blindspot's removed their memories. 

I'm a little confused by the way Blindspot's being used in this story - apparently she's supposed to be a hostage of Lady Deathstrike and the Silver Samurai, which really didn't come across at all clearly in earlier issues, with the Samurai treating her more as an ally.  Mind you, it's a nice touch that, even though she's plainly the villain, Rogue still treats her as a long-lost friend.

There's some interesting ideas in here.  But it's let down by some slightly sluggish fill-in art by Karl Moline (who struggles particularly with Sunfire's mutilation - admittedly difficult to depict in a PSR-rated book).  And I'm still not persuaded that Rogue is the sort of character who can really carry a book on her own.  She works in a team dynamic, but she doesn't have the sort of charisma needed for a solo title.

Rating: B

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