After an extended moratorium on X-Men characters in the Marvel Select figure line, Diamond Select Toys is giving X-fans a lot of love in 2018. At New York Toy Fair 2018 they revealed Beast, and at San Diego Comic Con we got the unexpected reveal of Rogue. We had to wait a month for the solicitation, but the Southern Belle is on the way: Marvel Select Rogue is now up for order! (Oh, and there’s a new Gallery Spider-Man PVC as well…)

Collectors have been asking Diamond Select Toys to expand their X-Men Select series of 7” for years, and while that wasn’t happening during the seemingly-long moratorium on X-Men merch from most companies, the floodgates have really opened up over the past year!

And with popular 90s X-Men characters like Gambit and Beast already in the lineup (Beast is scheduled to arrive in September 2018), there was probably no clearer choice for the next entry in the line than this new Marvel Select Rogue.

While MS Rogue didn’t make the best first impression when my first glimpse of the figure was her crumpled over in the display case at SDCC 2018, she looks flat-out phenomenal in her official photography from the new round of Diamond Select Toys solicitations.

Gentle Giant Studios did a tremendous job sculpting this Jim Lee Rogue figure, and as much as I like the Hasbro Legends Rogue from 2016, I think this is going to be the superior toy of her in the 6”-7” scale.

Just like Cyclops, Colossus, Storm and most other Marvel Select X-Men, Rogue will come with a cool Danger Room diorama base. Slowly but surely, we’re building a HUGE Danger Room backdrop! Even those who favor Hasbro Marvel Legends may wanna take an interest in building the Danger Room for display purposes.

Rogue also comes with an interchangeable ungloved hand and a hang holding a glove, which will be great for battle dioramas.

It’s a rare light month for the DST Marvel Gallery line, with just one new entry in the series this month, so I’ll include that piece in here as a footnote. For the first time ever, we’re getting an all-new Gallery sculpt for a comic book character that’s already had one: Spider-Man!

I thought that the original Marvel Gallery Spider-Man Statue with Spidey standing with one foot on a building and one off was a little bit awkward, and I think this one is a mite strange as well. Spidey is crouched on a web between two buildings… right over a traffic light.

Points to DST for originality here, but this piece just sort of baffles me. Why doesn’t Spidey just stand on the traffic light? Even so, this is a cheap comic-based Spider-Man PVC figure—it’s gonna sell just fine.

The Diamond Select Toys Rogue Select figure and new Spider-Man Gallery PVC are both now up for order, with anticipated release dates in February 2019 (just in time for loads of new reveals at Toy Fair!). First production runs of popular Marvel Select figures tend to sell-out quickly, so you might want to reserve your Rogue early if you don’t want to be left waiting for a later shipment of her.

Thoughts on this new duo of Diamond Select Toys Marvel Figures? How do you think the DST Rogue compares to Hasbro’s version? And do you think the new Spider-Man Gallery PVC is imaginative… or just weird?