‘Rogues’ Gallery’ #1 explores the dark side of fandom

Maisie Wade is about to beat her biggest fans.

July 20, 2022

Rogues’ Gallery #1 made my skin crawl.

And I’m not saying that to indicate that this is not a work of merit, nor do I feel like this is a story that should have remained untold. I say that to hammer home the fact that this creative team has its fingers on the pulse of the industry, and has therefore delivered a story about toxic fandom that feels all too accurate. Spending time with some of these people made me supremely uncomfortable, in the way that only insightful art can accomplish.

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The first issue of Rogues’ Gallery opens with a scene from the (extremely expensive and well-produced) show-within-the-book, Red Rogue. As the most debated media seems to be these days, Red Rogue is based on a comic book that is essentially worshipped by our lead characters. The action here is fierce and violent, giving Justin Mason and Triona Farrell an opportunity to bathe the scene in viscera and laser blasts of all sizes and colors. The superhero costumes have a kind of classic Image quality to them, in a good way. One could see Red Rogue being a ’90s comic that launched a dedicated fandom, much like it did in the world of Rogues’ Gallery.

And at the center of that show is the titular Red Rogue, played by an actress named Maisie Wade. Despite not being in charge of the network upon which her show airs, Wade is pointed to as “the problem” for everything that’s gone wrong with the show. From bad dialogue to actor exits to changes from the source material, somehow Wade has become the object of the fanbase’s ire. Though we don’t get much of Wade herself in this book, it’s easy to see the parallels between her treatment here and the acidic hatred thrown Ruby Rose’s way every time someone tries to nail down what went “wrong” with the CW’s Batwoman — up to and including accusations of diva behavior for the crime of not wanting to be continually injured while making a show that doesn’t love her back.

Of course, I’m drawing my own conclusions and connections here from the fact that I’ve seen this kind of mob mentality play out on Twitter and the like. The creators may have an entirely different angle in mind, and we’ll no doubt get more of Maisie’s side of the story as the series progresses. But for now, we’re left with a look at the slippery slope that this kind of vitriol and obsession can lead to.

It helps that we spend so much of the issue with Kyle, the one holdout member of the group who still appreciates Maisie Wade and tries to go to bat for her on a few occasions. Kyle’s got a bad home life and an outsider complex that keeps festering until he has to make himself a part of something bigger. It’s easy to see why this kid would lash out in this way, all while ignoring the warning signs (one particularly poignant joke sees Kyle ignoring a lecture on groupthink). Maybe all of Kyle’s friends had a tipping point. Hannah Rose May’s script (written from a story conceived by May and Declan Shalvey) smartly never excuses their actions, but instead paints a picture of how easily a crusade like this can get out of hand.

Justin Mason does an excellent job of making these characters feel realistic, and their reactions and body language feel very true to life. There’s something to the way that Kyle makes himself smaller around his father and his pushy friends, and even when he’s drawing in class, that makes it feel even more likely that he’d be influenced by the right (or wrong) amount of pressure. Meanwhile, in the brief moments of action sprinkled throughout the book — including that brutal ending — Mason flexes his gift for bombast that we’ve seen in the current Spider-Punk series (a book I adore). Farrell paints this final sequence in vivid reds, communicating the visceral and surprising nature of the attack in bright flashes.

Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou continues his streak as one of the best damn letterers in the biz by perfectly and subtly separating the various forms of media at play in the story. For instance, there’s more of a big and bold flavor to the word balloons seen in the episodes of Red Rogue. Much like in classic superhero comics, there’s a fun tendency to give each character name their own logo to deploy within dialogue. Meanwhile, Kyle’s progression from beaten-down wallflower to headstrong troublemaker can literally be tracked as Otsmane-Elhaou seems to crank up Kyle’s volume knob. There’s a lilting nature to his earlier scenes of dialogue, but the final pages give us a Kyle who speaks with more of a surety. This transformation is further hammered home by Mason’s illustration of Kyle in deep shadow. The darkness is winning.

Rogues’ Gallery may end up being a divisive book, and people are likely to take many different things from it. For my money, though, it’s easily one of the most thought-provoking studies of comic fandom — and how it can all go terribly wrong — that I’ve read in quite a while. Even as the lasers fly and the world falls apart on the TV screen, the characters feel dangerously close to reality.