{"id":10421,"date":"2024-10-03T21:50:05","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T20:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10421"},"modified":"2024-10-03T21:50:05","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T20:50:05","slug":"storm-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10421","title":{"rendered":"Storm #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>STORM vol 5 #1<\/strong>
\n“Grand Opening”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Murewa Ayodele<\/strong>
\nArtist: Lucas Werneck<\/strong>
\nColour artists: Alex Guimar\u00e3es & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, volume 5. There were minis in 1996, 2006 and 2023, and a short-lived ongoing series from 2014-2015 (which is the one that’s been counted towards this issue’s Legacy Number of #12).<\/p>\n

STORM:<\/strong><\/p>\n

She’s opened something called the Storm Sanctuary in Atlanta, which seems to be some sort of flying base of nebulous function. It’s “a haven in the day of adversity, a solace during difficult times and a refuge in the hours of need”, apparently. What that means in practice beyond “it’s a wildlife sanctuary” isn’t at all clear, nor is how anyone’s supposed to take refuge in it when it’s floating above a skyscraper. It doesn’t seem to have any particularly mutant-specific function, and indeed Storm says in her press conference that she wants to pursue some goals of her own rather than simply pursuing the agenda of the X-Men or (now) the Avengers.<\/p>\n

As the story begins, she’s riding a wave of popularity after dealing with a disaster in Oklahoma City (though since this was only seven days ago, she must have been working on the Sanctuary for a while). The problem appears to be a series of shockwaves coming from a power plant, which Storm initially assumes to be some sort of nuclear meltdown – and she develops signs of radiation poisoning rather quickly once inside the building. She’s also slightly unwell at the press conference which ends the issue, so that doesn’t bode well for her.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The cause turns out to be a young mutant teenager who says he’s lost control of his powers. Storm simply calms the kid down and… takes him somewhere? We don’t find out what happened to him, and he doesn’t get a name.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath, it turns out that the power plant was using recycled alien technology. This sounds terribly dangerous and is publicly blamed for the incident, though it seems <\/em>like this was some sort of legitimately approved project. At any rate, the alien tech apparently has nothing to do with the incident – though nobody explains what the new mutant was doing hanging around an experimental power plant in the first place, or even seems to think the question might be of interest. Storm seems to have allowed this to run for a few days in the hope of finding some explanation of why it wasn’t the mutant’s fault after all, but it’s not obvious what she might have had in mind. Obviously, that just makes the eventual public U-turn worse.<\/p>\n

GUESTS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frenzy<\/strong> accompanies Storm in dealing with the Oklahoma City disaster, though we’re not told why they were together in the first place – particularly as Frenzy is a member of X-Factor at this point, so she doesn’t even live in the same state. She did have a significant diplomatic role on Arakko when Storm was there, though, so presumably they know each other better than you’d expect from their limited on-panel interactions.<\/p>\n

One of the civilians she rescues is wearing an Orchis T-shirt, which makes her pause, but it’s not clear whether she’d have actually refused to help him if Storm hadn’t stepped in. It’s not altogether clear whether this guy is a surviving member of Orchis or just someone who bought their merch, but even if it’s the latter, you’d assume he’d have thought better of it after Fall of the House of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Iron Man <\/strong>shows up to verify that the mutants were not to blame. He’s sympathetic to the reputational issues for mutants but, given his own perspective, clearly feels that the dead engineers deserve to be exonerated.<\/p>\n

Brief cameos show Storm’s speech being watched by the Uncanny X-Men<\/em> cast (Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Jubilee<\/strong> and Ransom<\/strong>) and by the other Avengers (Scarlet Witch, Captain America<\/strong> (Sam Wilson), Captain Marvel, Black Panther, the Vision<\/strong> and Thor<\/strong>). Wolverine seems particularly annoyed by Storm’s candid speech.<\/p>\n

Eternity<\/strong>, of all people, shows up on the final page to declare that he’s taken an interest in Storm. This is the conceptual entity which embodies the Marvel Universe itself, first appearing in Strange Tales<\/em> #138 (1965). He’s normally a character from the cosmic or magical books, and he’s almost never been used in the X-books. (He was in the 2001 miniseries X-Men Forever<\/em>, though.)<\/p>\n

REFERENCES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 4: “On the streets of Cairo, she was an exceptional pickpocket. In the rural settlements that border Kenya and Tanzania, she was worshipped as a goddess of the harvest.” <\/strong>The goddess concept dates from Storm’s debut in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1 (1975); the pickpocket material comes a little later, in X-Men<\/em> #113 (1978).<\/p>\n

The three costumes on holographic display in the middle of the room are her early 90s costume, her original 1970s costume, and her mid-80s mohawk look. The costume on display in the left-hand alcove is her costume as regent of Arakko.<\/p>\n

Page 5: <\/strong>Rather confusingly, the four costumes on display here don’t match with the captions. From left to right, they’re a version of her Asgardian goddess outfit first seen in New Mutants Special Edition<\/em> #1, her Australia-era costume from the mid-80s, her costume from the 2013 run of Uncanny X-Force<\/em>, and another Arakko costume.<\/p>\n

Page 11:<\/strong> The narration is comparing the devastation to the plane crash that killed Storm’s parents, first seen in flashback in X-Men<\/em> #102 (1976). The parallel is perfectly legitimate, though the narrator labours it a bit.<\/p>\n

Page 24: “All mutants of great power know this day…”<\/strong> This is going back to the traditional approach where mutant powers emerge at puberty. It hasn’t really been universal, or even the norm, in quite some years now – but the trope of the mutant who can’t control his newly developed powers is fairly familiar.<\/p>\n

Page 26: “Reed Richards, Lunella Lafayette, Forge, Riri Williams and your former sister in-law Shuri”.<\/strong> As you almost certanily know, that’s Mr Fantastic, Moon Girl, Forge, Ironheart and, well, Shuri.<\/p>\n

Page 30: “…and I look forward to doing great things with the mighty Avengers.”<\/strong> Storm joined the Avengers in Avengers<\/em> #17 (in August).<\/p>\n

Page 32.<\/strong> This final page, disconnected from the rest of the story, looks suspiciously like it might originally have been intended as a QR Code page, but apparently we’re not doing those any more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. STORM vol 5 #1 “Grand Opening” Writer: Murewa Ayodele Artist: Lucas Werneck Colour artists: Alex Guimar\u00e3es & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo Letterer: Travis Lanham Editor: Tom Brevoort Yes, volume 5. There were minis in 1996, 2006 and 2023, and a short-lived ongoing series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10423,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions\/10423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}