I've read all her old stories. I grew up on them. But you know what, all those pretty scenes were an awfully long time ago. Just like with Magneto, Mystique can't fall back on the old Claremont speechifying to prop her character up. They've both done a lot of dark, horrible shit since then, some of it badly-written, some of it intelligent and well-done. The point is, the Mystique of that era is not the Mystique of 2009, who has killed a lot of people and been willing to sacrifice a lot of lives for selfish personal goals (not just Rogue's life) since then.