{"id":11047,"date":"2025-05-08T21:41:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T20:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11047"},"modified":"2025-05-08T21:41:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T20:41:36","slug":"storm-8-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11047","title":{"rendered":"Storm #8 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>STORM vol 5 #8<\/strong>
\n“Sinister Schemes of the Stars and Stripes, part one”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Murewa Ayodele<\/strong>
\nArtists: Lucas Werneck & Mario Santoro<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Alex Guimar\u00e3es<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

The issue opens with Storm, in some sort of armour, addressing some sort of … glowing red cloud thing. Judging from the dialogue (“ever since I was a child, you have spoken to me like a mother…”) and the mention that it’s been hurt by the storm gods, this is apparently a manifestation of nature, though not one resembling Gaea’s normal appearance in Marvel. This seems<\/em> to be Storm somehow sorting out the weather crisis from Brazil from the previous issue.<\/p>\n

According to the narrator, Storm is more bothered by having to deal with the FBI than the cosmic threats of Oblivion or the “Thunder War” – presumably because it’s on a scale that she’s more invested in.<\/p>\n

The Storm Sanctuary turns out to have been built for her by Iron Man, Moon Girl and Shuri. It emits solar rays so that it doesn’t cast a shadow, which is nice. Storm sees this as evidence of how well she treats the masses, though “not building a giant floating castle over their heads” might have been even nicer. She claims to have “the certifications issued by SHIELD” for its environmental credentials, though quite why they’re<\/em> doing emissions testing is beyond me. Maybe they have some sort of role for highly sensitive superhero-type stuff.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When the FBI agents suggests that Storm was under Professor X’s control during “X-Manhunt” – seemingly offering her an out for helping him escape the authorities – she rejects the idea and claims that she is immune to telepathic control. This is clearly an exaggeration. She points to Gambit and Jubilee as examples of “latent energy” making people “immune to telepathy”, and there were indeed early stories for both of them in which they seemed to be resistant to telepathic scans – although obviously, there have also been many, many stories over the years in which telepaths have dealt with them normally. Storm suggests that she’s similar. Most stories have suggested that Storm is resistent to psychic control through strength of will and training, there is actually some precedent for this claim – for example, Jean Grey claims in X-Treme X-Men<\/em> #9 that she can only do a surface probe of Storm’s mind because of “the electrical forces you control”.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maggott. <\/strong>He’s testing his newly upgraded powers by having some sort of fighting tournament in the Storm Sanctuary. While we didn’t see them last issue, his two maggotts do appear separately from him here, posing on his shoulder.\u00a0Gateway interprets this as a “way of facing his fears and preparing for the battle to come”, but Manifold\u00a0 worries that Maggott is just going to get himself killed trying to take on the sort of opponents he’s selected.<\/p>\n

Manifold. <\/strong>This is the first time we’ve seen him post-Krakoa. He crops up to teleport Storm to Washington for her meeting with the FBI, but seems to be generally hanging out at the Sanctuary. He seems sceptical of her decision to co-operate with the US authorities. Rather bizarrely, he claims that if she says the word then “we’ll kindle a second Krakoan age” – if the mutants had the ability to do that, they’d surely be doing it anyway. (He alludes to the first Krakoan age having been “announced by a whisper into the mind of humanity”, referring to Professor X’s telepathic announcement to the world in House of X<\/em> #1.)<\/p>\n

Gateway. <\/strong>He also seems to just be hanging around at the Storm Sanctuary now – though the last time we saw him was in Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic<\/em> #18 when he was helping out Sean Cassidy.<\/p>\n

GUEST CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thor. <\/strong>He showed up at the end of the last issue to warn Storm not to go after the other storm gods. His actual role is to inform Storm that a war has broken out between two camps of thunder gods, depending on whether they support or oppose Hadad (see below). Thor is evidently opposed to Hadad but doesn’t know which side the gods from last issue were on. Since he expressly offers to ally with Storm against the storm gods if they show up again, it’s not obvious why he told her last issue not to go after them, but presumably the idea is that solving the weather problems was a higher priority.<\/p>\n

The Silver Surfer.<\/strong> Thor’s mention that Hadad will return in the future is accompanied by a single panel flash forward of the Surfer defending Galactus from one of Hadad’s “rot storms”. This picks up from the opening scene in the previous issue. In that scene, the Surfer absorbed the power of Surtur’s sword, which is why he’s trailing a cloud of soot in this panel.<\/p>\n

The Black Panther, Iron Man<\/strong> and Mr Fantastic<\/strong> all have cameos, acknowledging that Storm has solved the weather problem that we saw them working on last issue.<\/p>\n

The other seven participants in Maggott’s tournament – all of whom get just a single panel – are as follows:<\/p>\n