This is, in fact, Rogue’s second appearance. Sort of. I say sort of because this story came out the same month as Uncanny X-Men #158 and seems to take place at the same time and roughly the same place; one story is at the Pentagon and the other is at a prison that is also set in Virginia. If you read them both, it’s kind of hard to reconcile the stories as they seem to be mutually exclusive, so we’re going to use this bit of logic to solve the question: we’re going to ignore it. Who cares!

What’s interesting is that this story is extremely important to the development of Rogue. After Rogue and Mystique break the rest of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants out of jail, they run straight into Rom, who proceeds to pummel them hardcore. He quickly whacks Avalanche, Pyro and Blob, so the female members of the team come up with a new plan: run like hell. Unfortunately they run right into the lair of the disgusting mutant wraith known as Hybrid.

Hybrid and Mystique, though, soon realize they both hate the X-Men and Rom, so they agree to team up and Mystique and Rogue set a trap for Rom. This essentially has no effect, because Rom is pretty badass, but it does lead to a key exchange between Rom and Rogue. During Rogue’s attack, Rom questions her motives:

Rom: “Why do you do this, child? Unlike Mystique, I sense no evil in you.”

Rogue then kisses Rom in an attempt to steal the power from his human side. However, this fails completely because the only part of Rom that is human is his soul. Instead of draining his power, then, she ends up connecting directly to his soul, leaving both stunned and suddenly giving Rogue a new outlook on things, as shown by these captions:

“What is there Rogue can say? She attempted to absorb Rom’s power, only to discover that that portion of humanity grafted to the cold spaceknight armor possessed no power… but only a kind of decency which Rogue, in her young life, has never known.

“She finds that she likes it.”

At this point, Hybrid reappears and starts crushing Rom big time. Mystique decides this is a good time to run away, especially considering Destiny has realized that Hybrid’s plan is to enslave mutant women and use them as breeding slaves for his own pleasure (um… yeah). Rogue, however, refuses to abandon Rom and, ignoring Mystique’s commands, she jumps into the fight to help save Rom.

In the end, just as Hybrid is about to overpower and slay Rom, Rogue grabs Hybrid and drains some of his power at great cost to herself since he’s a disgusting alien sex convict. Rom is able to destroy Hybrid once again thanks to Rogue’s help. The Brotherhood then leaves, with both Rom and Rogue wondering if they will ever meet again, each secretly hoping they will, for they have sensed in each other a kindred spirit.

It’s interesting that this takes place at the same time as X-Men #158, where Rogue is still hardcore, trying to kill Carol Danvers again and thrashing the X-Men. My assumption is that Mantlo was aware of Claremont’s long term plans for Rogue and this influenced his depiction of her, but I’m not sure. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, though, this encounter seems to be a major turning point for Rogue as she begins to question Mystique and instead embrace her heroic side.

Also, I still have my ROM, in a box, and it still works. I HAD 2, but sold one to Andy a loooooong time ago (1993 ?).