STORM vol 5 #9
“Sinister Schemes of the Stars and Stripes, part 2”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

STORM

Her relationship with Eternity is sharply deteriorating. She tells Manifold that “something has taken possession of my body” – which was Eternity, in issue #5 – and that she feels she’s been made to watch helplessly as it commits atrocities in her body. More recently, she’s been experiencing blackouts, though she’s not clear whether this is Eternity taking even more control, or just a sign of mental collapse. She doesn’t seem to have done anything about it so far, and while she claims to be unable to resist Eternity when it takes control, she seems able to speak freely about it to Manifold the rest of the time.

She then goes on compare the experience to the time in her childhood when she killed a man who was trying to rape her (in a flashback in Uncanny X-Men #267), and declares that she wants to kill Eternity. The original scene carries a rather stronger implication that she kills the attacker in self-defence before he’s able to rape her; this one is played more as if she killed him in retaliation, given the analogy that she draws between him and Eternity.

In the course of her interrogation by Special Agent Fabiyi, she truthfully answers that she housed Professor X knowing that he was a fugitive (in issue #6), and that she didn’t help him escape from Graymalkin (which happened earlier in the “X-Manhunt” crossover, in Uncanny X-Men #11).

She then gets asked about the mutant child who caused the disaster in Oklahoma in issue #1, and who simply vanished from the plot midway through that issue. The US government are looking for him (understandably, let’s be honest), but she claims to be literally unable to disclose his whereabouts, because if she answered, nobody would be able to hear her. Fabiyi suggests that she had Dr Voodoo suppress her knowledge of the boy’s whereabouts when she visited him in issue #2-3, but there was nothing to suggest that at the time, and besides, she seems to say that she does know and can’t communicate. At any rate, she avoids giving him a direct answer.

Fabiyi then goes on to claim that the Storm Sanctuary contains an immense cosmic power that she hasn’t disclosed to any of the agencies that she mentioned last issue, when she claimed to have had the Sanctuary thoroughly checked over. As we find out later in the issue, Fabiyi is correct: a cosmic entity has in fact been imprisoned in the Storm Sanctuary by Eternity during one of Storm’s blackouts. The implication seems to be that Storm only learns this during Fabiyi’s questioning, which is why she claims at the start of the scene that she isn’t a threat to the USA, but (according to the lie detector, at least) changes her view by the end.

SUPPORTING CAST`

Omega Maggott. He’s still running his fighting tournament.

Manifold. He gets to listen to some exposition from Storm.

Gateway. He’s hanging around in the background during the tournament.

GUEST CAST

The She-Hulk. She’s unable to take Storm’s call because she’s off at Maggott’s tournament and, remarkably, she doesn’t seem to have voicemail. Presumably Storm is being ironic when she says that the She-Hulk would only be unavailable if it was due to pressing legal matters – she’s the She-Hulk, for heaven’s sake.

For some reason, this story has her reverting to human form briefly when rocked by a particularly heavy blow, which is Not How She Works.

As before, a bunch of characters cameo in Maggott’s tournament. Strong Guy, Juggernaut, Big Bertha, Armor, Gentle and the Abomination are competitors. The Blue Marvel seems to be serving as referee. Lactuca, Isca, Jon Ironfire and Callisto all help to defeat the Limbo demons (see below); presumably they were in the audience. What are three characters from Arakko doing here? We don’t know, but Lactuca has been linked to Manifold in the past.

VILLAINS

Agent Lundqvist. He seems to have authority to give instructions to the weird alien superhumans in the FBI, and has no apparent difficulty in working with them. His big plan this issue is to distract Storm with the FBI interview, and get some demons from Limbo to take care of Maggott, all to cause a distraction so that they can get aboard the Storm Sanctuary and investigate its mystery power source. Lundqvist is convinced that it’s not a power source but a weapon. What they’ve actually detected is the cosmic entity that Eternity has imprisoned in the Sanctuary but, otherwise, Lundqvist is actually right. In fact, while his scheme may seem pointlessly elaborate, it appears that it would have worked if he hadn’t had the misfortune to time it alongside Maggott’s superhero tournament.

Special Agent Fabiyi. Fabiyi claims that Dr Doom is “highly invested in ensuring you face justice for your crimes”, so apparently we’re still during One World Under Doom – not exactly something that helps the story, but that’s crossovers for you. Doom is presumably piqued by Storm refusing his offer of an alliance in issues #4-5.

As Storm showed last issue that she can resist their telepathy, Fabiyi wheels out an “Abbaqian lie detector”, which is basically a polygraph machine made of a dead alien. It seems to be intended to discomfort Storm more than anything else. “Abbaqian” doesn’t refer to anything previously established, as far as I can see.

Storm quite reasonably interprest Fabiyi’s conspicuous show of following the rules as misdirection to distract from the fact that he’s actually involved in Lundqvist’s unlawful raid on the Storm Sanctuary. She claims to have picked up this idea from a “friend who is the best at card tricks”, presumably Gambit.

Agent Étienne. She’s Fabiyi’s colleague from the previous issue with the Day of the Dead designs on her face. (She’s also accompanied by another two weird FBI agents from the previous issue, who don’t get any dialogue.)

She can access Limbo, though it’s not clear whether this is through her own power or some sort of artefact that the FBI have got hold of. In what might be described as a bold negotiating gambit, she tries to get potential rebel demons on side is to tell them that the USA is “the greatest country on Earth”. To be fair to her, though, she does actually have an argument to back this up: Limbo’s previous ruler Magik and its current ruler Madelyne Pryor both left Limbo to live in the USA, which proves how impressive it must be. So she’s figuring that these demons will have heard of America and see it as a kind of promised land. She’s wrong, but it’s not a completely insane thing to try.

When that fails, she argues that control over Limbo depends on “Essence Blades” such as Magik’s Soulsword and Madelyne’s “Scythe of Sorrows”, and that the FBI have figured out how to create their own – something that would obviously be very valuable to rebellious Limbo demons. Madelyne does indeed have such a blade: it was created in New Mutants #28, and its importance as a means of controlling Limbo was a plot point in the “Dark Web” crossover, which is where the “Scythe of Sorrows” name comes from.

Zolel et Kolam. A rebel demon in Limbo, who we haven’t seen before. He claims to be 10,000 years old and to have fought the Rock Trolls from Thor, and Cyttorak, the demon that empowered Juggernaut. According to Zolel, Cyttorak killed his wife.

Zolel is unimpressed with Étienne’s argument that Limbo’s demons are being denied the opportunity to do such legendary things today, but he’s much more interested in the opportunity to get his own Essence Blade. He duly leads his demons against the Storm Sanctuary, and gets squashed flat off panel by Maggott’s house guests.

Eternity. Presented unequivocally as a villainous presence in Storm in this issue.

Abraxas. During one of Storm’s blackouts, Eternity has apparently abducted Abraxas and concealed it in the Storm Sanctuary.

Abraxas is a cosmic entity from the Carlos Pacheco Fantastic Four run in 2001. He was an anti-creation entity spawned by Eternity and kept in check by the existence of Galactus; during the period when Galactus was meant to be dead, Abraxas went on a rampage and wound up getting obliterated with the Ultimate Nullifer in Fantastic Four vol 3 #49.

So Abraxas ought not to exist, and he never looked remotely like this. Murewa Ayodele has apparently attributed Abraxas’s return to the subsequent reboot of the cosmos after Secret Wars, and sure, why not. As for his redesign, all the cosmic entities got redesigns for GODS, so why not this guy?

Ayodele interprets Abraxas as something that Eternity created as a weapon to use against Oblivion, which I don’t think was in the original story, but makes reasonable sense. According to the narrator, Eternity is inspired to create this sort of weapon through viewing Earth through Storm’s eyes, which suggests some non-linear causality going on.

In a “near future” flash forward, Abraxas is apparently empowering Eternal Storm so that she can destroy the Black Winter (from flash forwards in previous issues). He keeps repeating “Najisalimisha kwa yule mmoja wa milele”, which is “I surrender to Eternity” in Swahili.

Black Winter. Also in the flash forward. It’s the same thing that was called an Ender in the flash forward in issue #5.

Hadad. In the flash foward, Eternity mentions that Hadad is working with Oblivion. Hadad is the rival storm god that Thor told us about last issue, so the idea is that Eternity and Oblivion have each selected storm gods (literal or figurative) as their champions. But, at least in this near future timeline, Hadad has apparently killed Oblivion and usurped him as the main threat.