STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #3
“War of the Realms”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Storm steps out of a comic book panel. Nothing quite so explicitly meta actually happens in the book itself but… well, you’ll see.

STORM:

A flashback reveals that during the break between Storm vol 5 #12 and issue #1 of this series, Storm visited assorted afterlife realms in search of the missing Dr Voodoo. (He was captured by Death at the end of Storm #12, and turned into her servant, for reasons we’ll come back to below.) Her alliance with Sugaar seems to have started around this time, with him providing her with access to these realms.

Storm lists the following realms that she’s visited as part of this exercise:

• Valhalla. This is part of the Norse mythology and so its inclusion here is seems to be a continuity error, since current Thor storylines involve everyone forgetting about Thor and Asgard. It might be possible to push this story far enough down the line that everyone’s remembered again, though.
• Helheim. Another name for Hel, Hela’s realm -and same point applies.
• Duat. The Egyptian underworld, which has shown up in a few Marvel Universe stories (most recently, Iron Fist minis).
• Aaru. The Egyptian paradise.
• Yomi. The Shinto underworld.
• Xibalba. The Mayan underworld.
• Djalia. The plane of Wakandan collective ancestral memory, from various issues of Black Panther.

Storm also fits in a visit to Elysium to visit Maggott (see below). She says that none of these realms is a paradise in the normal sense of the word, although most of them aren’t actually meant to be.

This tour of afterlifes seems to turn up no useful information at all about Dr Voodoo, but Storm says that she did run into her parents. She says that “my mother continues to avoid  my company”. That seems to refer to Storm #4, where she briefly dies and meets her father David Munroe in the afterlife. Ororo asked in that scene where her mother was, but didn’t get an answer – though David didn’t say anything to imply that N’Daré had refused to come. In this issue, Ororo suggests that N’Daré is upset because Ororo gave away her ruby to a charity hospital in Storm #2. We don’t see anything in particular to support this theory, though, and Ororo might simply be wrong. Maggott jokingly suggests that Ororo should “give her a grandkid”, which is foreshadowing for next issue, when Ororo’s supposed daughter is meant to show up (having been trailed in Hellfire Vigil).

Ororo tells Maggott that she would be willing to start a war against the underworld to restore him to life, which seems a stretch, but then she did spend several years accustomed to the idea of resurrection as the norm.

In the present-day section of the story, Ororo finds the mutant who died in the Storm Sanctuary last issue after their head exploded – presumably killed in the same way as the couple who died similarly in issue #1. She views this as another example of “meaningless death”. Cut into this scene is a single-panel flashback of Susanoo warning her of impending pain when she imprisoned him in issue #1. Not unreasonably, but apparently wrongly, Ororo concludes that the exploding head victim was killed either by a human bigot or by a mutant trying to frame the humans. (Last issue had some mutants objecting to Storm offering refuge to the humans from Biarritz.)

A woman claiming to be an alternate reality version of N’Daré (see below) then drags Ororo out of the mainstream Marvel Universe entirely in order to explain the plot to her. Ororo quite reasonably protests both at being expected to take another untestable assertion about the fate of the universe at face value, and at being expected to have this conversation with her dead mother rather than talking about anything more personal.

N’Daré’s explanation of the plot is rather telegraphic and makes more sense if you read (and understood) the previous volume. According to a flashback in Storm #5, Death was originally hosted by Oblivion, but Oblivion persuaded the Living Tribunal that Death should instead be hosted within Eternity, thus introducing death to the universe. During the course of the previous series, the primal storm god Hadad returns and kills Oblivion (though the void outside the universe, which Oblivion used to personify, still exists – don’t ask how that works). This seems to have driven Death mad, causing the crusade which her agents are carrying on in the subplots (again, see below). This is presumably because she’s unable to cope with separation from Oblivion, in the same way that Infinity couldn’t handle separation from her flipside Eternity in Storm #10-11.

N’Daré claims that Death is now spreading to destroy “our entire multiverse cluster”, whatever that means, and that she has to “giv[e] up on everything that you hold dear” to save everything. Quite why isn’t explained, but that’s prophecy for you.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Maggott. He’s dead. For some reason he’s gone to the Greco-Roman afterlife of the Elysian Fields, which is a segment of Hades. According to Maggott, negative emotions are not allowed in this paradise, which he views as suspicious. He describes the place as a paradise, but with some irony.

According to Maggott, the residents of the Elysian Field have been told that Hades and Persephone passed on the throne of the underworld to their daughter Macaria. Macaria is a curious figure who is referenced only in a single medieval Byzantine encyclopaedia and seems to have no surrounding mythology. She doesn’t actually appear here either. Maggott also claims that the Titan Cronus staged a failed attempt to overthrow Macaria, and was killed for it – Elysium contains a giant corpse for everyone to look at in their paradise. If this really is Cronus then he’s not normally shown as the outright giant that he is here.

Maggott is decidedly unkeen on the idea of Storm starting a war with the underworld to get him out. Although he looks normal when Storm is speaking to him, his reflection shows him as a dessicated corpse.

Sugaar. He appears with Storm in the Elysium flashback, but doesn’t say anything.

N’Daré Munro. The alternate N’Daré Munro shows up wearing a spacesuit, and then unmasks. We previously saw this character in issue #1, where she appeared on the TV of the couple whose heads exploded. In that scene, she delivered a weirdly meta speech about how the universe had been created only ten years ago (i.e., when the universe was destroyed and re-created in Secret Wars), and how existence was a lie. The recap page in this issue also draws our attention to a single panel in Storm #11 where a figure in a spacesuit can be seen crossing the background in the House of Ideas.

N’Daré somehow takes Ororo to a place which the captions simply describe as “Beyond the Confines of our Multiverse”. It’s a surreal landscape which includes a giant wall made up of statue-like figures with their arms outstretched. This is the Source Wall that forms the outer boundary of the DC Universe, or at least something identical to it. An energy bird in negative colours, which Storm initially mistakes for Phoenix, is said to “tur[n] powerful beings into building blocks for the wall”. This is the Cosmic Raptor from Justice League vol 4 #22, and it’s even referred to as “the Raptor”.

The Scarlet Witch has a one-panel cameo on the last page, inspecting the body of the mutant in the Storm Sanctuary (which seems to have just been left propped up against a tree in Storm’s absence). Evidently she’s continuing her investigation from issue #1.

VILLAINS:

Dr Voodoo. Continuing to represent the absent Death as her champion. Broadly, his mission seems to be to assemble an army of zombie heroes from other timelines and use them to kill various mythological figures, who can then be added to the army. He’s assembled a bunch of zombie X-Men; Wolverine suggests that this is Voodoo’s way of trying to attract Storm’s attention so that she can put him out of his misery, and points out that he will have to face the consequences of desecrating sacred places.

Specifically, Voodoo’s forces attack “Erinle’s compound”, so presumably the guy they kill first is the titular Erinle. He’s a Yoruba hunting deity, making his first Marvel Universe appearance. He’s promptly resurrected as part of Death’s army. The next target is Ogun, another Yoruba deity who’s had a handful of previous Marvel Universe appearances; he seems to have last appeared in Dr Voodoo, Avenger of the Supernatural #5. Finally, this provokes the appearance of Olorun himself, the supreme Yoruba deity, depicted as a giant glowing energy figure – as described, this guy is a higher form of god, rather than simply the Yoruba gods’ ruler. He seems to fare rather better, and is still locked in battle with his attackers as the issue ends.

The Dead X-Men. Wolverine, Magik, Gambit, Rogue, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Angel and Magneto appear. Only Wolverine talks at any length, though Magneto and Magik both speak. He claims to be enjoying the job.

The army also includes the Immortal Wreckers, who are simply zombified alternate versions of Knull, Hadad and Gorr, the God Butcher.

Galacta has a one-panel cameo on the final page, still in her floating tank from the last issue.

For some reason, the final panel includes a panel of Tartarus, with some sort of fight going on involving Cerberus. Maybe that’ll be explained next time.