STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANTS #4
“Mama”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

STORM:

We’re still “two days before Akujin’s invasion of Earth”, as in the previous issue. Storm is still outside the Marvel Universe proper at “the Wall” (the edge of the DC Universe), though in this issue it seems more like an area of metafictional swirl, complete with fan mail floating  around. Storm seems to disregard all of the explicitly meta elements.

The alt-N’Daré’s basic pitch to Storm is that she should let Death destroy the Multiverse and then they can go back and restart it. Not surprisingly, Storm isn’t on board with this idea, not least because she’s working from an in-universe perspective and isn’t remotely convinced superhero universes work this way. However, we also get a flashback to the Krakoan era to remind us that, when she was infected by a techno-organic virus, she chose to fight it rather than just take the easy option of resurrection. This was Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex and Giant-Size X-Men: Storm. The latter issue does indeed have a speech from Storm implying that she thought Krakoan resurrection undermined the value of life.

When Ororo rejects N’Daré as not living up to the real N’Daré’s values (as to which, see below), N’Daré decides to teach her a lesson by “see]ing] what you would do differently in my shoes”. She seems to hope that experiencing the wider Omniverse will force Ororo to recognise the context in which she exists. Traditionally, the “Omniverse” is Marvel’s term for the wider collection of all real and fictional worlds that go beyond the regular Marvel Multiverse, and that’s how Ayodele is using it here. A footnote calls it “the collection of all multiverse clusters to have ever been featured in a narrative”, expressly including the real world. By a “multiverse cluster” he seems to mean superhero multiverses and similarly tangled continuities.

On her way back to the Marvel Multiverse and Earth-61391, Ororo passes through the following worlds:

• “Chaos Womb. Multiverse Cluster of the Blind Idiot God.” This is the Cthulhu mythos, and the “blind idiot god” is Lovecraft’s description of Azathoth.
• “Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. The Multiverse Cluster of Magic and Death.” This is the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
• “Mono, the Ground. The Multiverse Cluster of Sentient Trash.” This is a world from Gachiakuta.
• “Desert 1993. The Macho Multiverse Cluster.” I’m not sure what specifically this is referring to, but it seems to be a world of Liefeld-style 90s warriors.
• “Thataway”, the “multiverse cluster of war and lovers”. Search me.
• May Pen, Jamaica, “earth-61391, the One Above All’s Multiverse Cluster”.

Ororo appears in the opening flashback as a six-month-old baby, already with a full head of white hair.

SUPPORTING CAST:

David Munroe and N’Daré Munroe. Storm’s actual parents appear in the opening flashback. Broadly, what Ayodele is getting at here is that the Munroes moved to Africa rather than continue to put up with American racism, believing that Ororo could one day return if she wanted to. The fact that the Munroes moved to Egypt when she was six months old because David had a job offer there comes from X-Men #102, but the idea that they chose to leave America because of racism (and specifically because of N’Daré’s reaction to it) comes from Storm #1 in 2006.

Presumably, the reason why Ayodele is bringing this up is to draw a parallel with the alt-N’Daré trying to persuade Storm to escape the universe for somewhere safety, and to undermine Storm’s claim that her real mother wouldn’t do such a thing.

Furaha. Ororo’s daughter previously appeared in a flash forward from Hellfire Vigil, as the recap page  explains. Ultimately, she seems to be just a daughter from an alternate timeline, Earth-61391, who has precisely one line of dialogue interacting with Storm before helping her unconscious mother get back to her home timeline. In theory, the point of this is supposed to be to put Storm in the position of meeting an alternate universe daughter, but that doesn’t really hapen in any meaningful way on the page.

Furaha recognises Ororo as her mother but knows that she’s from another timeline. She first appears standing on an ice cube thing that hovers in mid air.

Her home reality is identified as Earth-61391, and she seems to be from May Pen, Jamaica. What little we see of her timeline here presents it as a rather chaotic place of chunky Sentinels, large white humanoid entities, and biker gangs who seem to be roughly allied with Furaha. This is the alternate future timeline from Ayodele’s own I Am Iron Man #1 (2023), and the character with the guitar is called Tami.

VILLAINS:

N’Daré Munroe. The alt-timeline N’Daré is trying to persuade Storm to abandon the multiverse to Death rather than fight a futile battle, on the basis that once Death has destroyed everything, they can “go back and trigger the creation of a new multiverse”. She doesn’t explain how they’re going to do this. However, she does explain (correctly) that the multiverse has been destroyed and re-created before, and cites Secret Wars, something that she previously mentioned in issue #1. In very meta fashion, she says that it “happens frequently as a natural way of the narrative renewing itself”. That presumably explains what we’re doing out here on the shores of the DC Universe.

On one level, N’Daré seems to have drawn the conclusion that the world isn’t real and that its destruction and recreation don’t matter.  Despite that, she seems obsessed about saving Storm, even though it’s not her real daughter – in fact, she said last issue that she didn’t even have a daughter in her world.

In the closing panel, she’s holding a copy of the next issue.

Bogey. Last seen in issue #2, as one of Akujin’s sisters, co-leading their army as it marched on Earth. That army seemed to be aiming to secure the release of Susanoo, but here she implies that her master is someone more demonic and ancient, and that ultimately she regards her people as older and greater than the gods.

In issue #2, she said that she would negotiate with the Olympians to get passage through the Underworld to allow them to invade Earth. She said that she would offer something from Wakanda that would be of interest to Hera, and strongly implied that it was more than just a big pile of vibranium. Turns out, no, it was just a big pile of vibranium. Her argument is that the Olympians don’t need it, but it would be nice to have, and they can’t take it themselves because Wakanda is protected from outside gods by the Orisha. (A footnote directs us to Black Panther: Blood Hunt #2.)

Bogey is rather put out and taken aback to find that Hera doesn’t seem to recognise or respect her – she clearly thinks her people ought to have made more of an impact on Olympian minds. She claims that her master aided the Olympians against “the alliance of Jötnar and Gigantes in the Third Gigantomachy” – i.e., the combined forces of the giants of Norse and Olympian mythology. Hera does remember this incident, but regards it as an unsavory affair, and Bogey’s master as a mere mercenary; in Bogey’s version of events, Zeus begged her master for aid, but she thinks better of pushing the point.

The Olympians reject Bogey’s offer on the eminently sensible basis that if she actually has the power to deliver on it, they don’t want her army anywhere near their domains. This prompts her to unleash a magical attack which suggests that, at least with the benefit of surprise, she is indeed capable of outpowering the Olympians.

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Hera, Hades and Persephone. Zeus is still missing after the Thunder War, which is odd, since various other thunder gods have shown up alive and well since then (including in this series). Nonetheless, the recap page insists that they’re the exceptions. There’s a passing mention of Zeus’s death in Immortal Thor #14, but that precedes “Thunder War”, so he must have got better. Certainly the Olympians refer to Zeus as if he’s simply missing. Hera doesn’t seem especially bothered by his absence, but does mention that she believes he’s changed his ways in terms of his endless infidelity (in Incredible Hercules #140), and that she no longer has any interest in taking revenge for those incidents.

In Zeus’s absence, Hera, Hades and Persephone are ruling Olympus as a triumvirate. This is why Hades and Persephone relinquished the throne of the Underworld to their daughter Macaria, as mentioned last issue. Bogey was unaware of these developments, and was hoping to simply appeal directly Hera.