Rogues #1-4

Rogues #1-4

Originally released in 2022

Written by Joshua Williamson

Art by Leomacs

I started off the week on a bit of a villain kick, so I think I'm going to keep that up.  I knew there was a Black Label mini-series about the Rogues (a team of criminals that makes up the bulk of the Flash's rogues gallery), so I decided to read that today.  Ten years after their heyday, the Rogues are trying to live honest lives while out on parole. (the deaths of Captain Boomerang and the Weather Wizard might have played a part in that decision)  However, their lives aren't satisfying, and Captain Cold in particular is tired of being looked down upon.  He decides to get the gang back together for one last score that he heard about ten years ago.

They're going to rob a mountain of gold from a bank that's in Gorilla City.  Now, you can add "in Gorilla City" to the end of just about any sentence and that makes it more interesting (ex. "we're filling out tax returns... in Gorilla City"), but throw in a gang of supervillains who have nothing to lose, and I was quickly sold on this series.

The Rogues have gone in very different directions over the years - Golden Glider (Captain Cold's sister) has turned her life around, becoming a social worker, though concern for her brother gets her to go along with him.  The Trickster is rather vain in this, getting extensive plastic surgery to keep himself looking younger, while Mirror Master is so heavily drugged up that nobody's sure how much use he'll be in spite of him being their getaway.  As for Heat Wave, he's in the middle of burning down a building for the insurance money when Cold finds him, and he's immediately in for whatever Cold's planning, no big speech necessary.

I'm not sure if Magenta (who has magnetic powers) is a new character for this book or if she's a pre-existing villain from the comics, but she fills the role of the naive newcomer, confiding in Cold that she feels like she's a step behind everyone else.  As for Bronze Tiger, his criminal background keeps him from getting better jobs - being in the Suicide Squad seemingly didn't make a difference in that regard.

Naturally, Captain Cold's plan goes horribly wrong - as it turns out, Grodd has modernized Gorilla City in the past ten years, bringing it in line with major cities elsewhere in the world, where he rules it like a mix of a president and a mob boss.  Cold has a freak-out, but an encounter with Sam Simeon gets him updated information at a cost.

The Rogues are developed well in this - I was only vaguely familiar with some of them beforehand, but it does an excellent job with showing their dynamic and why they've worked together for so long, along with fleshing them out as individual characters.  As the leader, Captain Cold gets the bulk of the focus, but the rest are also well-developed, particularly Golden Glider and the Trickster.

The series was entertaining, keeping me hooked throughout as I waited to see how the plan would adapt or if the gold reserves even existed at all, and while it could veer into darker territory (Captain Cold has grown bitter and cruel over the ten year time-skip, and it's not entirely clear if the bank heist is a way to make it so the team can live the rest of their lives in comfort or if it's an elaborate form of suicide on Captain Cold's part and he's dragging everyone else with him), there were still sparks of decency within the Rogues that kept me rooting for them.  At four issues long, it's a quick read even with the issues being longer than normal, though it's definitely a title for older readers, reminding me of a Quentin Tarantino movie at times.