Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #2 annotations
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #2
“All Your Favorite Sorcerers are Tricksters”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The FBI super-agents surround a containment tank with Storm inside. This has pretty much nothing to do with the story.
Interestingly, the story then opens with an actual recap page explaining the plot with actual cross-references to individual issues (and the book doesn’t have its usual symbolic splash page duplicating the credits).
STORM:
The Scarlet Witch believes that although she has some affinity for magic, her level of actual knowledge is so low as to be practically useless – worse, Storm thinks she knows more than she does because she has magical allies. Storm is not dissuaded by the Scarlet Witch’s lecture about her magical limitations, and basically dismisses the idea that Akujin could be relied upon to honour the bargain. She seems to believe that fighting Akujin alone and without allies will somehow save everyone – conceivably, her logic is that if she dies in battle then Akujin will give up on attacking Earth because it will no longer provide leverage.
For some reason, her thought balloons all appear in negative. I genuinely can’t tell whether this is meant to indicate that she’s still talking to Eternity internally or just talking to herself, although I think it’s the latter.
She relocates the Storm Sanctuary to Biarritz to handle refugees, and leaves the giant Storm Engine robots to defend America in her absence – she talks as if Americans view her as their only national hero, which is a bit weird, particularly when a fellow Avengers has shown up in this very issue. There’s a rather obvious reverse-prejudice angle, with the mutants from Biarritz (or at least some of them) resentful of humans being allowed in at all. Storm gives a response to the effect that humans seem to be irredeemably prejudiced but she has to stick to her principles.
GUEST STAR:
The Scarlet Witch. She delivers a lecture to Storm about the unpredictability of magic, ostensibly to help train her in breaking magical spells, but really in an attempt to convince Storm that she’s out of her depth in dealing with magical threats, at least for now.
Her solution to Akujin’s threat is simply to advise Storm to release Susanoo, on the basis that this will make the problem go away. The Scarlet Witch doesn’t even engage with the question of whether there might be a moral dilemma here – she seems to regard it as blindingly obvious that imprisoning Susanoo was a stupid thing to do.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Saucier, the mutant chef, is working on the Storm Sanctuary.
Armor is helping to keep order among the refugees.
VILLAINS:
Akujin. As in the previous issue, Akujin’s basic objective is to secure the release of her master Susanoo. Even though she and her forces were already on Earth last issue and threatening to devastate a new city every five days until he was released, she now seems to be leading a full scale army on a march through the Crimson Cosmos (from Doctor Strange) on her way to Earth. Presumably getting the full forces to Earth takes more time. The army seems tobme made up of the same sorts of creatures that were serving her last issue.
Akujin is accompanied here by her two sisters, Iwin and Bogey, neither of whom have appeared before. “Iwin” is Yoruba for “ghost”.
The sisters genuinely don’t know where Susanoo is, to the point where Iwin and Bogey are trying to narrow it down to the nearest dimension, but Akujin claims to have been able to sense him somewhere on Earth.
Recruiting forces along the march isn’t going as well as they’d hoped, with the Crimson Cosmos being in some disarray right now (see below). Their current plan seems to be to try and get the Olympians on side by offering to target for their next attack Birnin Zana in Wakanda, which apparently contains something that Hera would want to get her hands on. (We’re specifically told that it isn’t just vibranium.)
The FBI. The weird-looking FBI super-agents from the previous run, including Fabiyi and Étienne, have a containment tank (like the one on the cover), but it doesn’t contain Ororo. It contains a woman labelled Gail Arakawa, with the “Project codename: Galacta”, and a Galactus-like costume seems to be on hand for her once she emerges. The implication of the recap page is that the FBI have been using the samples they took from Galactus in Storm #10-11 to give this woman powers. It’s her first appearance and she’s apparently going to be the Marvel Universe version of Galacta, Daughter of Galactus – the “daughter” bit being figurative here.
Whatever it was that made someone’s head explode in a subplot last issue also offhandedly kills one of the refugees near the end of this story. The obvious implication is that this is…
“Dr Strange.” A wraith of Dr Strange created on one of the occasions when he died and somehow made it back to life, now under the control of Death. She seems to have settled on him as a suitable championto attack Earth on her behalf (in retribution for the death of Oblivion at the end of the previous colume). For some reason, the first page has him attacking the Mandos, an obscure race of aliens whose only previous appearance was in Warlock vol 1 #15 (1976), where they were basically just thugs for hire.
Death herself appears in a flash forward at the end of the story, having apparently destroyed the Storm Engines and declared victory over Earth in the near future. While all this is very out of character for Death, it would fit with Infinity claiming in Storm #10-11 that she was being driven mad by separation from her own counterpart Eternity.
CONTINUITY REFERENCES:
- The Scarlet Witch refers to a time when Dr Strange was nearly killed by a handgun. That’s Dr Strange: The Oath #1 (2006), and the villain in question is Brigand. Despite what Wanda says here, it wasn’t a completely normal handgun – it was supposed to be the gun that Hitler had used to kill himself, which had somehow acquired some magical properties due to its symbolism.
- The Scarlet Witch refers to Dr Strange having defeated Sun God, “a being who floored the Incredible Hulk”. That’s New Avengers vol 3 #21 (2014).
- There are several flashbacks to Dr Strange fighting over a period of thousands of years in the War of the Seven Spheres. This seems to be intended simply to illustrate the unfathomable scale of magical war, rather than to actually bear on the plot. The War of the Seven Spheres is a Doctor Strange concept first mentioned in 1992. Strange fights in it for millennia and is returned to Earth much as he started, with the “changed” version of himself being split into a separate persona, General Strange, who appears in Jed MacKay’s Dr Strange run from 2023.
- Dimension Blood is the home dimension of the vampire-like Vampa-Cabra, and first appeared in Dr Strange #384 (2018).
- The Screaming Labyrinths (whatever they might be) have not appeared before, but in Dr Strange vol 6 #5, General Strange proclaims himself (among other things) the “Bloody-Handed Bastard of the Screaming Labyrinths”.
- Tiangong is Chinese for “Heavenly Palace” (it’s also the name of the Chinese space station). It seems to be new but it’s obviously something to do with Chinese mythology.
- Storm refers to the pressure she felt after first becoming leader of the X-Men (around X-Men #138).
- Storm refers to trusting in the universe and being betrayed by it, which is to do with Eternity possessing her to use as a warrior against Hada in the previous volume.
- Storm refers to the FBI killing Maggott and maiming Manifold in Storm #10.
- As the footnote says, Cyttorak left the Crimson Cosmos in Amazing Spider-Man vol 6 #70. We’re told that his children are now running the place, but in fact only two of them (Cyra and Callix) survived that storyline, and Callix was imprisoned. Possibly Callix got out or some of the others just got better.
- The sisters’ cosmology of Marvel dimensions is basically consistent with what this series has claimed before, with the One Above All’s “House of Ideas” realm at the top, and then the “Oblivion Void” separating it from Eternity’s universe, in which Death also resides. Assorted other “upper realms” are grouped just below the House of Ideas: the White Hot Room, the Never Queen’s realm (from Silver Surfer), the Beyonders’ realm (from Secret Wars) and the Dimension of Manifestations (where the abstract cosmic entities hang out). Less exalted alternate dimensions appear on the edge of the “Eternity” map: the Olympian underworld, Dimension Blood, the Crimson Cosmos, Limbo and Hjem Spìti (where the storm gods met in Storm #11).
Annoying, the recap page seems confused about the events of last issue- the recap page claims that Storm was tricked into destroying the city while the actual characters in this story talk about the city being attacked by demons.
“she seems to regard it as blindingly obvious that imprisoning Susanoo was a stupid thing to do”
I think Wanda’s point is not that imprisoning Susanoo was a stupid thing to do- it’s that keeping him imprisoned after Akujin threatened to destroy cities is a stupid thing to do. Susanoo just wants to die- the only reason he threatened the Earth last issue was to force Storm to kill him. So why doesn’t Storm just release him? The best answer Ayodele can come up with is “Akujin might not honor her word”.
Ayodele explains that Death was able to create a wraith of Strange because Strange was protected by Eternity from entering Death’s realm but once he made a deal with Death, he broke his protection bond with Eternity. This is weird- Strange made the deal with Death in MacKay’s Strange series but they because he was already dead!!
At first, I thought the wraith might be General Strange but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Annoyingly, the last page of this issue, with the big reveal that Death’s servant is a wraith of Dr. Strange, was left out of the digital editions initially.
The magic gun in The Oath doesn’t really make sense in the Marvel Universe because Hitler didn’t shoot himself, Jim Hammond killed him.
I think they should combine the real-life suicide of Hitler with the Marvel Human Torch story. Hitler had just killed himself when the Human Torch arrived. Thinking Hitler was still alive, the Human Torch set him on fire. In real-life, the Nazis burned Hitler’s body after he killed himself. Marvel could make it all fit.
The 1977 history in discussion does not allow for that, though. “What If?” #4 is very clear and even gives a good reason why Jim would want to kill Adolf (it is out of character for him to kill needlessly).
Thus issue is definitely referencing The Oath, but I’ll point out that Doctor Strange was also wounded by a normal handgun wielded by Mister Rasputin way back in the Steve Ditko run.
Ditko also had Strange nearly killed by a bomb planted in his Sanctum Sanctorum, which he missed because he was only looking for magical threats.
I wish Strange were treated more like he was back then, with magic working one way but mundane stuff still significant. But 9he’s long since become some kind of vastly powerful wizard who waves away most things below a literal god with ease and has been changed by magic to the point that he can only eat weird tentacled things.
I get the feeling that’s where Storm will be from now on, too.
To be fair, the original panel showing Torch killing Hitler is from 1953’s “Young Men #24”.
Hank Chapman does not give Jim the self-defense reason for killing Hitler that Roy Thomas came up with (in 1977 and again in 1990), but both version have Hitler speaking while he is incinerated. Then again, the two scenes are not fully compatible; the 1953 history contradicts known lore and claims that Torch only met Toro in 1949.
Oh, did Hammond incinerate Hitler? I thought he just burned him to death (I forget the Marvel U details). If the body was incinerated in the comics, that already contradicts the real-life events, as the Nazis didn’t manage to fully incinerate the bodies and decided to do a hasty burial of the burnt corpses. The Soviets then took the remains of Hitler’s body.
I may have used the wrog word. Sorry about that.
It is not entirely clear to which extent Torch burned Hitler. In all three cases the art is somewhat ambiguous, perhaps understandably and purposefully.
He is still speaking after being burned – ordering Otto Günsche to tell that he died of suicide, as a matter of fact. In the 1953 panel the flames do not even consume his clothing; in the 1977 panels he is fully engulfed in flames but still vocal; in 1990’s he is shown somehow dying before his clothes fully burn.
In any case, no, he is not shown to be reduced to ashes by the Human Torch.
It is interesting to compare the Marvel U version with real-life events, as the USSR did publish books claiming that Hitler died of cyanide poisoning, like Eva, but had figures like Otto Gunsche and other Nazis present at the fuhrerbunker claim that Hitler shot himself (which Stalin said would have been a more manly way to go than cyanide). So, maybe the two versions do align better than it seems, although where the cursed gun from The Oath comes from is still in question.
OK, there are other theories that both explanations of Hitler’s death are accurate, in that Hitler had ordered Nazis to shoot him if the cyanide poisoning was taking too long. So, maybe Hammond burned Hitler very badly, but he was still alive and begged Gunsche (or someone) to shoot him. Thus, the cursed gun that did actually kill Hitler, but he would have died from Hammond burning him.
Personally, I would think that the gun would be plenty cursed enough simply because Hitler held it with fatal intent. No need to go to the length of shooting himself fatally.
It helps that it was being used at a time when so many people were holding strong feelings about him – starting with Eva Brown, whose final actions could conceivably taint the pistol by themselves.
Besides, as Omar points out, it is not even clear that a pistol would have to be in any way remarkable in order to harm Doctor Strange.
Does the Torch killing Hitler or whatever still get mentioned? I don’t want to get too geeky about it (sometimes you just have to shrug stuff off as comic book weird stuff) but I think its one of those things where reality just has to top fantasy.
I remember it mentioned within the last decade… Maybe in the Chip Zdarsky’s Invaders mini?
On the other hand, I think Bendis had Bucky off-handedly mention that he killed Hitler. Sometime around the Dark Reign.
Clearly, Brian K. Vaughn was under the impression that Jim Hammond killed the dictator of Sin-Cong, due to the sliding time scale.
I say this tongue firmly in cheek; I am pretty sure that Jim Hammond remains a World War 2 character.
Well, being a robot and all nobody needs to come up with an excuse for Jim Hammond Torch to not have aged since dubya-dubya-eye-eye.
I believe the story of him killing Hitler actually came up *twice in the same month* recently, one was the current version of the Ultimates, but I forget the other offhand.
Speaking of the actual story at hand, I certainly wasn’t expecting to see Galacta turn up in a Storm series, but you could say that about a lot of the appearances so far. Maybe they’ll let Adam Warren write her again if they want to keep her in circulation.
And there’s the complication that Hitler (or a copy of his mind) jumped into a clone when he died, becoming the original Hate-Monger.
Come to think of it, that would explain how Bucky could have also killed, Hitler, per the Bendis throwaway line that Krzysiek Ceran mentioned. Presumably Bucky killed one of the Hate-Monger’s Hitler-clone bodies, just as his own hate-ray-addled troops, Nick Fury, and the Man-Wolf did on separate occasions later on.
It’s also a bit ambiguous when the first Hate-Monger truly “died.” Was it when the Cosmic Cube containing his consciousness was destroyed by Captain America in Captain America v.1 #448?
Or is the weird “hate-energy” being that the Red Skull wished into being, which first appears in Captain America v.3 #26, actually the original Hate-Monger restored? Marvel says so.
If that’s canonical, then he’s died again a few times over, most notably in Captain America v.3 #48 and the again in the Loki and Escapade story from 2025’s Marvel United: A Pride Special.
What I’m saying is, between the Red Skull, the various Nazi Barons, and the likes of Geist, not to mention actual clone-ghost-Hitler running around, it sure seems like the Earth-616 Allied powers made a really bad job of the Second World War. Even powered-up grunts like the members of the Super-Axis managed to survive the war to cause trouble decades later!
Omar-Project: Paperclip.
Additionally, in our world, it’s not as if someone like Mengele didn’t escape. Maybe in the Marvel U, people like Mengele were brought to justice at the end of the war, while it the super-Nazis lived. The existence of superbeings changed the history.
I love that folks would rather debate Jim Hammond killing Hitler instead of discussing this issue’s utter nonsense.
Maybe things would be different if the hippo turned up again.
@ Joe I — the hippo(s) turned up again in Avengers #36, the last issue of that volume. Storm and Carol Danvers fed them some pumpkins at the sanctuary as they discussed the temporary dissolution of the team for two pages. Carol made a point to toss one of the pumpkins in perfect basketball shooting motion (as per the art).
I remember some commentary here about whether Storm replacing Thor on the Avengers would “humble” her. If anything, thanks to Murewa Ayodele’s stories, even being an Avenger is beneath her now. She’s become Super-Storm, complete with her Fortress Of Stormitude, and the near literal center of the universe interacting with actual gods.
As a middle aged white guy, I may be the wrong guy to ask. Marvel certainly has a right to be proud of creating Storm and keeping her in circulation ever since 1975, and comparisons between her and Wonder Woman happened at least by the 90s, when they infamously fought in DC VERSUS MARVEL. But I wonder, if this constant and now consistent focus on powering her up and leveling her beyond the affairs of mere mortals to the point that she’s an ex-queen of Mars and now is an avatar of Eternity really what her fans want, to see her “be her best self” and assume a massive role in the Marvel Universe, or is this missing the point and exchanging her humanity for a focus on her powers and gaudy mission? I don’t know. It hasn’t worked for me, but I may not be the right audience. It’s hard for me to envision the X-Men without Storm, so a part of me finds it a bit perplexing that her senior editor genuinely believes she’s risen above it now.
I’m still confused about that but where Ororo says going solo is new for her
Storm was plenty interesting when she was just a powerful weather-controlling mutant who just happened to be an ex-pickpocket/street thief, ex-“goddess” and occasional punk.
I seriously think that a series that kept her more down-to-Earth would have been fantastic. Something where she’s down among the normal people, street-level, more intimate, less cosmic. Changing lives in small ways because she understands the butterfly effect and how small changes can lead to big ones. Treating people like weather.
Or heck, let Claremont cook, give him a Storm mini where she has another caper with Yukio and they get to radiate all the sapphic vibes because well, Claremont.
This current direction doesn’t feel like Storm at all.
@AMRG She’s definitely being written as Superman. The recurring conflict is the conflict being between the lead being both all-powerful and all-good, with Storm repeatedly making things worse by refusing to employ the slightest bit of pragmatism. Everyone loves and respects her. Future Floating Mouth Death sees Storm as the only Earth hero worth considering. Her fortress even has alien robots and a zoo. I assume there’s a very tiny Cairo in there somewhere.
The Other Michael-Anytime they let Claremont write Storm in the modern-day, he wants to write child Storm, for some bizarre reason. Remember the recent Claremont Gambit mini?
@MasterMahan
“A very tiny Cairo in there” lol
This is so convoluted and could nearly plug in any stand in character. I’ve learnt nothing about Storm herself. Who is this even for? It’s all just so bizarre!
@AMRG- The problem is that Storm will apparently no longer be appearing outside of X-Men United. This series will end with issue 5. And the Avengers roster she’s been a part of has already been disbanded. So now, after Storm has been trend into Super-Storm, what does Marvel do with her? The obvious answer is to focus on her as a teacher in X-Men United but she didn’t get any lines of dialogue in issue 1 and Ewing is apparently using that book to focus on her pet characters from Exceptional X-Men.
Storm is as Storm does , she’s one of those characters who break common sense story logic , since the very concept of weather itself, which she embodies, is literal chaos after all LOL
Even Superman at its most narcisistic can’t approach the levels of ludricrous exacerbation that this character displays every month.
I honestly can’t bring myself to think of this as Ororo Monroe, the character who we met in the second half of the 1970s.
More to the point, I don’t see how this direction can be at all sustainable or followed up except by swerving into parody, Stardust-style (do we know if Ayodele has Fletcher Hanks among his inspirations?) or making some sort of reboot to Ororo. She needs that far more now than Tony Stark needed after Civil War.
Maybe she can get a symbiote (everyone else did already, after all), realize that she has a sacred mission to bring Knull down for good, and then she raises her arm and all other symbiotes and heroes and villains follow her towards an epic confrontation that indeed brings Knull down for good? It practically writes itself. Then Dormammu. And finally Squirrel Girl realizes that there is just too much power in the hands of Dark Storm, and we get a six issue mini-series where she reluctantly but decisively brings sense into the so-called goddess and becomes Doreen’s squirrel carer for a couple of years until she recovers the wisdom and self-control needed to attempt a solo career again. Maybe they pull an Illyanna and toss Ororo into Belasco’s Limbo and get back in return a human-relatable alternate. Or Storm meets Kang and heroically sacrifices her current self to keep him forever entangled into eternal battle while a fragment of her past is given autonomy and takes her place. Or they may pull a Bob Ewing and have her wake up with a hangover, hoping it was all just a delirium of self-aggrandizement and promises to herself to go easy on the curry from then on.
I still hope that Ayodele simply admits that whoever this character can be, it was never meant to be Storm.
@Luis: Superstorm, firmly convinced everyone is beneath her, joins the newest evil-mutant team, 5G, but not before the creation of a clone with all her memories up to, oh, let’s say just before she was de-aged and met Gambit.
“Even Superman at its most narcisistic can’t approach the levels of ludricrous exacerbation that this character displays every month.”
And Superman comics usually make a point of writing the main character as a humble farmboy, with everything and everyone else telling you how awesome he is. Supes is regularly at pains to point out he’s not a god, and he thinks it would be Very Bad if he ever decided otherwise.
Remember when Storm had to triumph over claustrophobia and win a close combat knife fight in a sewer?
No, apparently the writers don’t either. This Storm is far above such petty earthly things!
@Luis: “And finally Squirrel Girl realizes that there is just too much power in the hands of Dark Storm, and we get a six issue mini-series where she reluctantly but decisively brings sense into the so-called goddess and becomes Doreen’s squirrel carer for a couple of years until she recovers the wisdom and self-control needed to attempt a solo career again.”
Don’t give Claremont any ideas.