- Name: Ororo Munroe
- Code Names: Storm
- First Appearance: Giant Sized X-Men #1 (Oct ‘75)
- Powers: Weather Control
- Teams Affiliation: X-Men, X-Force, The Crew, The Avengers, Fantastic Four
About
The word unless provides a lot of insight. It is one thing to say someone will do something, it is another to understand what would make them do the opposite. The power of unless is that it reveals the moral grey areas of a person. It uncovers their contradictions, and contradictions make people interesting. In comics, there are few characters with more contradictions than Ororo Munroe. She is an American, Egyptian, and Kenyan. A thief, superhero, goddess, punk, and queen. She is regal unless she needs to be sneaky. She is strong unless she needs to be gentle. She is the goddess unless she needs to be human. And Storm is one of the most fascinating characters in comics because of it.
Ororo was born in New York to a Kenyan princess and an American photojournalist. They took an assignment in Cairo before Ororo was even one-year-old and stayed for years. Tragedy struck when a plane crashed into their home, killing her parents and leaving a five-year-old Ororo trapped under rubble for days. She eventually escaped but she had no recourse for survival. The only one who cared was Achmed El Gibár, the master thief of Cairo, who trained Ororo to be his best pickpocket. As years passed, Storm felt a call, a desire to connect with her ancestral home. She traveled to the heart of the Serengeti, but the tribe there did not see her as N’Daré lost daughter, they saw her as a goddess.
As she grew, Ororo discovered that she possessed immense mutant powers. She could bend the weather to her command, harness the winds and the rain. She used this power to water crops and protect her tribe against those who wished to do it harm. Because of this, she was worshiped by her people. She would have remained forever if it wasn’t for Charles Xavier. He needed mutants, powerful mutants, and appealed to Ororo’s sense of responsibility. She chose to join him and his X-Men, and her world would never be the same again.
Ororo took the name Storm and thrived in the X-Men. Though she had some struggles adjusting to western culture she began to prove both her ferocity in battle and her loyalty as a friend. She particularly grew close to Jean Grey who became a confidant for her struggles. Storm respected the team leader, Cyclops, but often challenged him. Her years on the streets of Cairo had made her more jagged and pragmatic than Cyclops. She got the opportunity to prove her worth as a leader after the events of the Dark Phoenix Saga, and here she found her true calling. She was exceptional in command, especially as the X-Men faced graver and graver dangers. This leadership was pushed to the limit when the underground mutants called Morlocks captured Angel. Storm marched into the tunnels and challenged the Morlock leader Callisto to a battle to the death, not only for Angel’s life but for the leadership of the Morlocks. The duel was much like the women, brutal and beautiful. Callisto drew first blood but Storm kept focus. She ensnared Callisto’s arm, pulled her close, heaved the switchblade into her heart, and walked away. A Morlock was able to heal Callisto but one thing was clear, Storm was not someone to take lightly.
Even if she carried it well, leadership was a burden for Storm. It is no wonder why she was drawn to Yukio. The X-Men were in Japan for the wedding of Wolverine and Yukio was an old flame of his. She was carefree, impulsive, and everything Storm missed about her life before the X-Men. She had been leading the X-Men for so long that she needed a change. She traded her regal cape for a leather jacket, her flowing hair for a bitchin’ mohawk. She was still the powerful weather witch, but she embraced the contradictions within herself.
On a mission to rescue a fellow X-Man, Storm was shot with a gun that neutralized her mutant powers. She could no longer feel the Earth ebb and flow, she no longer held sparks between her fingers, the woman could no longer fly. A man named Forge took her in to recover. He understood what it was like to have a part of yourself stolen, he tried to help her through that loss. He was taken by her, many were, and she began to fall for the broken thing that he was. Their romance would have been timeless if he hadn’t hidden his role in depowering her. Storm left him, betrayed but resolute in her will to thrive in her new life.
She returned to her native Kenya, taking a hiatus from the X-Men as she tried to find herself again. There she came to terms with her loss and realized that her powers weren’t what made her a hero. Also, and I cannot find a way to bring this up organically, she became a Thor for a hot second and it was great. She decided to rejoin the X-Men, taking on the burden of leadership yet again. Soon after she returned the Morlocks were systematically murdered and Storm felt powerless to stop it. That failure drove her to push the X-Men, and herself, harder than ever before.
The goddess had come to terms with living without her powers, she had proved that she could rise above them, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want them back. She sought out Forge but the two of them were trapped by the chaos god the Adversary and shunted into a pocket dimension. There they lived, loved, for over a year, finally learning to accept the other’s contradictions. Forge, always the maker, created a device that could restore Storm’s mutant power and return them to their world. The once and future weather witch accepted and was restored with a crack of thunder. They returned in time to stop the Adversary’s assault in Dallas but fate was not on their side. To stop his attack, Storm and the X-Men were forced to give their lives, separating her from Forge.
Because Storm is an X-Man, she didn’t actually die but instead was sent to Australia by Merlin’s daughter. The X-Men continued super heroing and caught the attention of Nanny and the Orphan-Maker. Storm was captured, presumed dead by her teammates, and deaged by Nanny. The now teenage Storm had no memories of her time on the X-Men and ended up in Cairo (Illinois) working once again as a thief. This time, however, she had a cool Cajun sidekick named Gambit. They eventually met back up with the X-Men and ‘Ro’s memories and natural age were restored.
The X-Men were split into two squads, Cyclops leading the Blue Team and Storm leading the Gold Team. She was a mainstay of the X-Men throughout this era, remaining with the team after Onslaught and Operation: Zero Tolerance. She ultimately learned of the Destiny Diaries, books of prophecy regarding mutants, and formed her own renegade squad of X-Men to track them down. On a mission with that squad Storm was captured by the intergalactic warlord Khan and groomed to be his queen. The others in Khan’s harem did not appreciate this newcomer and gravely injured her. The X-Men saved the day with Storm saving herself, but it was a long path to recovering the full use of her legs.
On a mission to Africa, Storm felt a calling back to her mother’s land. She left the X-Men to do relief work but soon found a new home with T’Challa. He was Haramu-Fal, Bast’s chosen, the King of the Dead, Sovereign of the Golden City, the Black Panther, but to Ororo he was some boy she saved years ago who she had a triste with. They reconnected, fell in love, and married with the blessing of the Panther God. They soon joined the Fantastic Four, filling in for Reed and Sue and thrived as superheroes. She helped the X-Men where she could but the Queen of Wakanda felt a distance growing between her and the mutant world. She tried to reassert her role in the X-Men but realized that she was stretching herself thin. It became no easier when she joined the Avengers. It soon became obvious that something would have to give, least Storm’s world come crashing down.
And crash down it did when the Avengers stormed the beaches of Utopia, the home of the X-Men. Captain America asked her to side with the Avengers, but she stood with her mutant family. In the end, her tenure with the Avengers was cut short, her marriage annulled, and her team of X-Men disassembled. She joined Wolverine back in Westchester, becoming the headmistress of the Jean Grey School. There, Storm resumed her role as leader of the mutant world.
That role was quickly challenged. In a matter of months Xavier, Wolverine, and Cyclops were dead with Emma Frost, and Magneto both missing. This as the mutant race was facing yet another genocide, this time from the Terrigen Mists. Storm made a hard choice and relocated the X-Men to the hell dimension of Limbo in a desperate attempt to survive. When it became clear that some Earth would become uninhabitable to mutants, Storm lead the war cry against the Inhumans. The threat of the Terrigen Mists was neutralized, but Ororo was disturbed by the lengths she went to for survival.
Storm abdicated her position as leader of the mutant race to her one-time mentee, Kitty Pryde. She began connecting with her ex-husband T’Challa again, finding solace in the parts of her life that were outside the X-Men. As her old life collided with her new one, Storm even regained her hammer, Stormcaster, from the ruins of Old Asgard, giving her Thor powers again. It is unclear what the future holds for Ororo Munroe but one thing is clear, she will ride on the winds to meet it.
Must Read
Shocking no one, Storm has been in a ton of great comics. When writers can tap into her inner conflict, an outpouring of fabulous and complex stories is inevitable. But no one wrote Storm like Claremont. That’s why the must read for Storm is Claremont and Barry Windsor-Smith’s epic character study in Uncanny X-Men #198. Storm, the powerless goddess, visits her homeland and learns to embrace her contradictions in the process.
Ranking
There is a compelling argument to be made that Storm could fill the number one spot on this list. It isn’t an argument I am going to make here. Storm is one of the most compelling characters in comics but she has been tragically underwritten for decades now. She has so many facets that writers can struggle to get a good grasp on her. I think Storm works better overall than Emma Frost because you can just put her in any story where Emma sucks all the attention to herself. I don’t think she can match the sheer fun of Nightcrawler. The challenge comes when comparing her to Wolverine. The best Storm and best Wolverine are on par with any character in comics, but I can’t think of a version of Storm I hate where there are plenty of versions of Wolverine that I can’t stand. That lets Storm squeeze into the new number 4 spot in the Xavier Files.
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Make sure you check out my podcast BATTLE OF THE ATOM. It’s where Bish & Jubez creator Adam Reck and I talk about every single X-Men story that ever existed and rank them from best to worst. Episode 40 is up and we talk about how friggin’ weird 90s Psylocke was. Make sure you subscribe to any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.
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Next week we meet an unstopable Juggernaut! See you then!
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
