This is "Never Gonna Be the Same Again," a feature where I look at how bold, seemingly "permanent" changes were ultimately reversed. This is not a criticism, mind you, as obviously things are always going to eventually return to "normal." That's just how superhero comic books work. It's just fun to see how some of these rather major changes are reversed. This is differentiated from "Abandoned Love," which is when a new writer comes in and drops the plot of the previous writer. Here, we're talking about the writer who came up with the idea being the same one who resolved the change. This is also differentiated from "Death is Not the End," which is about how "dead" characters came back to life, since this is about stuff other than death.

Today, we look at how Rogue got back to having super-strength again.

Rogue was introduced in Avengers Annual #10 (by Chris Claremont, Michael Golden and Pablo Marcos), where see that she has drained Ms. Marvel of her powers and also her personality!

We see her in action against the Avengers and we see that she has the ability to absorb the powers of others, but those absorbtions are temporary, while she has Ms. Marvel's powers permanently (she absorbed too much of her powers)...

This allowed Rogue to have a baseline of flight...

and super-strength (plus invulnerability, of course, that sort of goes hand in hand with super-strength typically)...

On top of any other power that she happens to absorb.

This was the status quo for Rogue for many, many years. Even after she succeeded in getting rid of Ms. Marvel's personality that she absorbed (which threatened to take over Rogue's mind itself), she kept Ms. Marvel's powers.

However, in X-Treme X-Men #16 (by Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca), Gambit was being used to power an alien invasion and Rogue came in to help him stop it...

At the end of the story, Rogue essentially uses up all of the powers that she has ever absorbed and her powers are now gone...

This is confirmed in the next issue...

She is without her powers for a couple of years before they eventually return. She doesn't have permanent powers anymore, though, just the ability to siphon powers off of other mutants, like this bit from X-Men #161 (by Chuck Austen, Salvador Larroca and Danny Miki)...

However, in Rogue #11 (by Tony Bedard and Derec Donovan), Rogue was captured along with Sunfire and the mysterious Blindspot. Rogue went to absorb some of Sunfire's powers, but Blindspot made her absorb it all...

So she now had Sunfire's powers permanently...

Until, of course, she was "cured" of all of her powers by the touch of baby Hope Summers in New X-Men #46 (by Craig Kyle, Kyle Yost and Humberto Ramos with a couple of inkers)...

She then was taught how to control her powers, and she was back to being someone who absorbed other people's powers but didn't have any baseline powers of her own.

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In Uncanny Avengers #21 (by Rick Remender and Daniel Acuna), Wonder Man allowed Rogue to absorb him and his powers...

In the next issue, we see that she is now stuck with him...

This gave Rogue her basic old school powers. Flight and super strength, on top of anything else she absorbs.

In the most recent Uncanny Avengers volume, Uncanny Avengers #22 (by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz and David Curiel), Rogue kissed Deadpool, which had the curious result of freeing Wonder Man from Rogue...

Then, in the next issue, we learned that even with Wonder Man now free, Rogue retained the abilities she had from Wonder Man...

So, it took well over a decade, but Rogue is back to her classic superpowers - strength, invulnerability, flight and power absorption.

Okay, folks, I KNOW that you have suggestions for other examples of this sort of thing in comics, so drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com with your suggestions!