Storm #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM vol 5 #1
“Grand Opening”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artists: Alex Guimarães & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Yes, volume 5. There were minis in 1996, 2006 and 2023, and a short-lived ongoing series from 2014-2015 (which is the one that’s been counted towards this issue’s Legacy Number of #12).
STORM:
She’s opened something called the Storm Sanctuary in Atlanta, which seems to be some sort of flying base of nebulous function. It’s “a haven in the day of adversity, a solace during difficult times and a refuge in the hours of need”, apparently. What that means in practice beyond “it’s a wildlife sanctuary” isn’t at all clear, nor is how anyone’s supposed to take refuge in it when it’s floating above a skyscraper. It doesn’t seem to have any particularly mutant-specific function, and indeed Storm says in her press conference that she wants to pursue some goals of her own rather than simply pursuing the agenda of the X-Men or (now) the Avengers.
As the story begins, she’s riding a wave of popularity after dealing with a disaster in Oklahoma City (though since this was only seven days ago, she must have been working on the Sanctuary for a while). The problem appears to be a series of shockwaves coming from a power plant, which Storm initially assumes to be some sort of nuclear meltdown – and she develops signs of radiation poisoning rather quickly once inside the building. She’s also slightly unwell at the press conference which ends the issue, so that doesn’t bode well for her.
The cause turns out to be a young mutant teenager who says he’s lost control of his powers. Storm simply calms the kid down and… takes him somewhere? We don’t find out what happened to him, and he doesn’t get a name.
In the aftermath, it turns out that the power plant was using recycled alien technology. This sounds terribly dangerous and is publicly blamed for the incident, though it seems like this was some sort of legitimately approved project. At any rate, the alien tech apparently has nothing to do with the incident – though nobody explains what the new mutant was doing hanging around an experimental power plant in the first place, or even seems to think the question might be of interest. Storm seems to have allowed this to run for a few days in the hope of finding some explanation of why it wasn’t the mutant’s fault after all, but it’s not obvious what she might have had in mind. Obviously, that just makes the eventual public U-turn worse.
GUESTS:
Frenzy accompanies Storm in dealing with the Oklahoma City disaster, though we’re not told why they were together in the first place – particularly as Frenzy is a member of X-Factor at this point, so she doesn’t even live in the same state. She did have a significant diplomatic role on Arakko when Storm was there, though, so presumably they know each other better than you’d expect from their limited on-panel interactions.
One of the civilians she rescues is wearing an Orchis T-shirt, which makes her pause, but it’s not clear whether she’d have actually refused to help him if Storm hadn’t stepped in. It’s not altogether clear whether this guy is a surviving member of Orchis or just someone who bought their merch, but even if it’s the latter, you’d assume he’d have thought better of it after Fall of the House of X.
Iron Man shows up to verify that the mutants were not to blame. He’s sympathetic to the reputational issues for mutants but, given his own perspective, clearly feels that the dead engineers deserve to be exonerated.
Brief cameos show Storm’s speech being watched by the Uncanny X-Men cast (Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Jubilee and Ransom) and by the other Avengers (Scarlet Witch, Captain America (Sam Wilson), Captain Marvel, Black Panther, the Vision and Thor). Wolverine seems particularly annoyed by Storm’s candid speech.
Eternity, of all people, shows up on the final page to declare that he’s taken an interest in Storm. This is the conceptual entity which embodies the Marvel Universe itself, first appearing in Strange Tales #138 (1965). He’s normally a character from the cosmic or magical books, and he’s almost never been used in the X-books. (He was in the 2001 miniseries X-Men Forever, though.)
REFERENCES:
Page 4: “On the streets of Cairo, she was an exceptional pickpocket. In the rural settlements that border Kenya and Tanzania, she was worshipped as a goddess of the harvest.” The goddess concept dates from Storm’s debut in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975); the pickpocket material comes a little later, in X-Men #113 (1978).
The three costumes on holographic display in the middle of the room are her early 90s costume, her original 1970s costume, and her mid-80s mohawk look. The costume on display in the left-hand alcove is her costume as regent of Arakko.
Page 5: Rather confusingly, the four costumes on display here don’t match with the captions. From left to right, they’re a version of her Asgardian goddess outfit first seen in New Mutants Special Edition #1, her Australia-era costume from the mid-80s, her costume from the 2013 run of Uncanny X-Force, and another Arakko costume.
Page 11: The narration is comparing the devastation to the plane crash that killed Storm’s parents, first seen in flashback in X-Men #102 (1976). The parallel is perfectly legitimate, though the narrator labours it a bit.
Page 24: “All mutants of great power know this day…” This is going back to the traditional approach where mutant powers emerge at puberty. It hasn’t really been universal, or even the norm, in quite some years now – but the trope of the mutant who can’t control his newly developed powers is fairly familiar.
Page 26: “Reed Richards, Lunella Lafayette, Forge, Riri Williams and your former sister in-law Shuri”. As you almost certanily know, that’s Mr Fantastic, Moon Girl, Forge, Ironheart and, well, Shuri.
Page 30: “…and I look forward to doing great things with the mighty Avengers.” Storm joined the Avengers in Avengers #17 (in August).
Page 32. This final page, disconnected from the rest of the story, looks suspiciously like it might originally have been intended as a QR Code page, but apparently we’re not doing those any more.
Wow, talk about damning with faint praise.
Eternity and Storm do have a prior connection. Back in Fantastic Four 550 (the short Dwayne McDuffie written run), as part of their attempt to save Eternity’s life, Dr Strange temporarily transferred Eternity’s consciousness into Storm’s mind.
“She’s opened something called the Storm Sanctuary in Atlanta, which seems to be some sort of flying base of nebulous function.”
How did she get this thing built and how did she pay for it?
T’Challa’s alimony payments? 🙂
So, this book goes over and over again about how loved mutants are in the setup. Feels like a big contrast to the stories being told in X-Men, Astonishing, Dazzler, NYX, etc. Of the mutants who are now hated for trying to be humanity’s new gods, you’d think the self-appointed Regent of Sol would be pretty high on the list.
It feels like this is the story Ayodele wanted to tell about Storm, irrespective of the larger circumstances.
What if mutants are still mostly loved, but all the other teams are getting their news from Facebook?
“how did she pay for it?”
You’ve got to pick a pocket or two. 😉
This issue was uneven, but the moral conflict Storm found herself in grabbed me: do you lie in order to avoid causing controversy, or tell the truth? I don’t know what I’d do in that situation, or if Storm did the right thing. I hope the series gets better as a whole (nice art, some good moments, a bit too much “… huh?”), but I am interested enough to pick up the next issue.
Probably not the best time for releasing such a series. But the dilemma seems to be well built and I for one am curious about where the writer wants to go with Storm.
“It’s not altogether clear whether this guy is a surviving member of Orchis or just someone who bought their merch, but even if it’s the latter, you’d assume he’d have thought better of it after Fall of the House of X.”
The real world contains *many* people who continue to actively support causes despite those causes committing heinous war crimes, up to and including genocide. I like to think that they’re a minority, but they’re numerous enough that I’m hardly surprised by seeing a single one show up amidst the large crowd of survivors.
I don’t think Paul is making light of Orchis’ goal of wiping out all mutants, which is an every-other-day occurrence in the Marvel Universe. Rather, I think he’s pointing out the fact that Orchis was revealed to be secretly manipulating the humans for the purpose of also wiping out baseline humanity to make way for Machine supremacy. He might want to throw his Orchis merchandise in the garbage and pull out his old Humanity’s Last Stand T-shirts.
Part of the conspiracy mindset is to reject all contrary evidence as lies/fake news, so it would be reasonable that there are people in the MU who still support Orchis.
@Mark,
T’challa has been deposed and is living in the slums of a smaller city outside the capital so his alimony may not be worth much, unless the new govt is upholding it for their old queen. As Regent of Sol she had control over the Mystrium so she probably squirrelled that away somewhere safe and has used that to pay for the off-world tech needed for such a structure.
I just presumed she called a favor from Forge.
@Alastair – OK, I’m a really, really lapsed reader so I have no idea what an Agent of Soul is or why being one would allow someone to control Mysterio (he seems more like an R&B guy to me), but I’ll take your word for it.
But I feel like “How did Storm build/finance such a thing?” should’ve been addressed in the first issue of a Storm series. Or maybe I’m the only one who really wonders about this stuff. To be fair, I haven’t read this, but it doesn’t sound very new reader friendly to me based on what Paul’s written about it.
@JD – Building and paying for that? That strikes me as one hell of a favor to ask of an ex-boyfriend, but I guess it’s possible.
If people IRL wear CHE t shirts then Marvel Universe people wear ORCHIS merch.
For some people, all it takes is the phrase “government conspiracy” and they’ll believe any fact is a lie.
As for Storm’s floating city, she probably bought it from DC’s Ultramarines. They weren’t using it anymore, so she probably got it for cheap.
“For some people, all it takes is the phrase “government conspiracy” and they’ll believe any fact is a lie.”
I bet the government pays you to say stuff like that.
The payments come directly from our reptilian overlords, but close enough.
Scott Summers negotiated an abandoned Alaskan sentinel factory as a settlement from the US government after Fall of X. My head cannon is Storm built and funded her floating sanctuary from her settlement from the US government. Why is Storm’s base better than Scott’s? Because she’s a better negotiator (and leader) than Scott by quite a wide margin.
I’m not liking how ostentatious Storm’s base is- Storm’s always been prideful but never ostentatious.
in fact, Storm’s dialogue during that speech just didn’t seem like Storm. I think part of the problem is that Storm has been a Hero With Bad Publicity for much of her career, so trying to turn her into a universally respected hero like Captain America or a public hero like the Fantastic Four just doesn’t work. I get that Marvel is trying to make Storm into their new Wonder Woman equivalent now that Carol seems to have failed in the role (the Marvels was a flop and her last series got horrible sales before being cancelled) but it’s not a role that Storm is suited for.
I think part of why Storm had to face a Sadistic Choice is that Storm is not used to operating publicly without telepaths helping her.If Xavier or Betsy were there, they could have brainwashed the crowd into thinking that the explosion was caused by strippers from the Dark Dimension. But since no telepaths were around, Storm had to choose between blaming innocent dead people and letting their kids get beat up or fomenting anti-mutant prejudice.
When in continuity does this take place? The X-Men shown include both Wolverine and Nightcrawler but Nightcralwer only arrived after Wolverine left and then Wolverine was ambushed by Sarah Gaunt.
Meanwhile, Thor is an Avenger but he left as soon as Storm joined. Maybe he just stopped by for a bite to eat?
@John “So, this book goes over and over again about how loved mutants are in the setup”.
I think the idea is that mutants were only loved for that one week between the accident and learning it was caused by a mutant.
@Brendan- Scott only got a settlement because he was imprisoned by the government for months on trumped up charges and tortured. Storm was absent-as usual- for most of the fight against Orchis. None of the other X-Men got settlements- that’s why Rogue’s X-Men work out of an orphanage and Kitty is a barista. The only other X-Man shown to have money is Emma and she stole it from several villains.
@Michael – See? And she still got a better settlement that Cyclops. What a negotiator!
It feels like there’s some good story potential in Storm’s moral decision here. The X-Men’s doctrine has always been to be secretive and conceal information, and Storm is very much going against that.
Storm as a popular in-universe hero isn’t a classical approach to the character, but she’s spent enough time now bouncing around as a member of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, not to mention the Queen of Wakanda and ruler of Mars, that I can buy her becoming a celebrity icon to the more liberal side of the MCU public.
Her having a high-tech floating headquarters over Atlanta is more of a stretch. It seems like it would have been better for the story to built toward this new status quo for her rather than presenting it as a fait accompli.