Rogue reaches the penultimate part of "Going Rogue", which is definitely one of those stories that would have benefitted hugely from being a four-parter.  We didn't need five issues to get to this point, and it's yet another in a long list of stories from the last couple of years which have been badly damaged by padding them out to fill a trade paperback.

Still, we're here now, and the story is finally building to a conclusion.  Rogue finally establishes what Campbell wants with her, in a scene that requires the reader to be awfully charitable.  Campbell gives us an origin story which involves him being some sort of dream given human form, and explains that he's been trying to enlist Rogue to deal with incursions from the Far Banks - the dimension her mother's supposed to have disappeared to.

Now, you might well question why Campbell would go about it in such a roundabout way.  And Rogue does, only to get the answer that he's a dream, and dreams aren't rational.  This has "huge copout" written all over it, because Campbell doesn't act much like a dream either.  He's way too coherent for that.  Sheer gall and a modicum of charm just about allows the scene to work, but it's really straining credibility to the limits.

Meanwhile, blind Gambit turns up to look for her.  (This is the one satellite title that bothers to acknowledge his condition - is it really such a chore for the editors to stop him making cameo appearance in other titles while this storyline is ongoing?)  Rodi handles Gambit very well - he's allowed to be some use, because he can "see" the dream characters, but basically he's totally out of his depth the moment something happens that he can't charm his way out of.  The poor guy spends most of the issue blundering into furniture and running headlong into trees.  You actually feel sorry for him, which is more than X-Men has managed to achieve with the plot.

It's taken far too long to get to this point, but the six-parter is at least building to a promising climax.

Rating: B

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