As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

STORM vol 5 #3
“Impending Doom”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

STORM:

Dr Voodoo summarily cures her radiation poisoning by making a bargain with an ancient spirit called Eégún, in exchange for her not using her powers for a week. We’ll come back to Eégún. However, according to Voodoo, she continues to be surrounded by “death sprites”, who are drawn to her because she’s about to die.

Storm correctly points out she’s gone without her powers for far longer than this in the past – specifically, when her powers were removed by Forge’s Neutralizer device between Uncanny X-Men #185 and #226. However, since the other prices that the spirit offered were essentially lethal, the strong implication is that the spirit expects it to be impossible for Storm to get through the next week without using her powers. From her dialogue, it seems that Storm still has her powers, but would be breaking the deal with she actually used them.

Voodoo invites her to hole up at Strange Academy for the next week, but she decides to visit the local X-Men from Uncanny X-Men instead. (Who’s feeding the animals at the Storm Sanctuary?) For some reason, when she arrives, Wolverine misidentifies her as Nimrod – no reason is given for this, and nobody seems to think it’s worth thinking about further.

Storm seems to spend six days at Haven House sparring with Wolverine, which leads to them sleeping together. This has been done before; Chris Claremont tried to establish them as a couple only for the storyline to be cut off when Storm to married off to the Black Panther, and the couple was briefly revived in 2013-14 prior to the Death of Wolverine story. All this was a while back, though, and the stories aren’t particularly well remembered – though the narrator does describe Wolverine as an “old lover”. Storm says that this was “on the spur of the moment” and that she is “not proud of my actions.” She suggests that she can’t pursue a relationship with Wolverine because that would mean abandoning the agenda that she only just announced to the world in issue #1.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Dr Voodoo is here mainly to advance the plot. He’s aware of Storm’s magical heritage but doesn’t expect her to do anything about it. Oddly, the ghost of his twin brother Daniel Drumm also shows up to agree with him. When the character was first created as Brother Voodoo, Daniel’s ghost was a standard feature of his set-up, but to the best of my knowledge Daniel turned into a villain some time ago and had been hooked up with the Hand. Apparently they’ve smoothed things over.

The X-Men are still hanging out at Haven House – we see Rogue, Gambit, Wolverine and Nightcrawler here, and Deathdream gets a cameo on the last page. This must be after the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, since there’s no break in the action in Uncanny X-Men to allow it to take place any earlier. (There’s a gap between Uncanny #5-6, but Wolverine’s blinded during that period.)

VILLAINS:

Dr Voodoo claims to have cured Storm’s radiation poisoning through a bargain with someone that he various describes as “an ancient spirit” and “the dark spirit Eégún“. Eégún appears to be the character’s name, at any rate. It’s a Yoruba term, which is a shortened form of Egúngún. This is very much not my area, but as I understand it the word doesn’t refer to a particular mythological character; rather, it’s more of a symbolic representation of ancestors.

Dr Doom, who became the Sorcerer Supreme in Blood Hunt, summons Storm to a meeting so that they can discuss “mutant affairs”. Doom is openly claiming that he intends to conquer Earth soon. Storm decides to meet with him anyway, on the grounds that it can’t do any harm to gather some information. She also regards Doom as mostly harmless, which is a little optimistic.