{"id":2974,"date":"2015-05-24T16:04:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T15:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2974"},"modified":"2015-05-24T16:04:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T15:04:10","slug":"storm-vol-2-bring-the-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2974","title":{"rendered":"Storm vol 2 – “Bring the Thunder”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Storm<\/em>‘s second volume, covering\u00a0issues #6-11, looks to be the end of\u00a0the series –\u00a0it\u00a0could<\/em> technically be a\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> hiatus, but given the sales, I wouldn’t hold your breath. \u00a0This, of course, makes it only the latest in a long line of X-Men solo titles to go from launch to scrapheap within a year, an outcome which one can only assume Marvel regards as satisfactory,\u00a0as otherwise they’d have stopped doing it. \u00a0The thinking, I suppose, must be that at least they\u00a0know they’ll get\u00a0a few months of acceptable sales out of\u00a0a book like this.<\/p>\n

Like many of the characters who wind up in these solo series, Storm was\u00a0never designed to fill this role; she was conceived as a member of an ensemble cast. \u00a0More to the point, her roles in that cast have\u00a0largely been “heart of the team”, “bonding mainstay”, and “emerging (later veteran) leader”. \u00a0None of this particularly suits her to be a solo lead, since all three roles define her largely in relation to her position in the team.<\/p>\n

And it’s a problem that\u00a0Storm<\/em> never really overcomes. \u00a0I suspect this is the main reason why, despite the evident effort and skill put into the book, it’s always left me rather cold. \u00a0There just isn’t a central premise here that can carry a series.<\/p>\n

Greg Pak certainly tries to find\u00a0an angle that will work for Storm as a solo lead. \u00a0It’s not necessarily a doomed effort. \u00a0After all, if you prise her away from the team and from her usual character roles, maybe that frees up the space to bring out another side of her. \u00a0But what Pak ends up with is pretty much “she stands up for the underdogs”,\u00a0and that’s really not enough. \u00a0Put like that, after all, it’s\u00a0just a basic function of all superheroes.<\/p>\n

Pak seems to intend something more specific by it,\u00a0to be fair. \u00a0There’s at least a sense that he’s going for Storm as the voice of the 99%, standing up to establishment privilege, whether that be corrupt politicians in the USA or dodgy paramilitaries\u00a0in the developing world – mostly in the first volume, but carrying over in the first few issues of this one. \u00a0A corporation called Eaglestar, and its cyborg head Davis Harman, are set up as her arch-enemies, out for revenge for the damage\u00a0done to their profits by her exploits in earlier issues. \u00a0And\u00a0where the X-Men are usually deeply unpopular with the general public, Storm attracts crowds to protest in her support. \u00a0She’s\u00a0evidently intended here as the woman of the people.<\/p>\n

The book seems to toy with going somewhere more specific than that. \u00a0The pro-Storm protestors are described simply as members of the public who have turned out to support her, but it’s hard to imagine many readers failing to notice that they’re overwhelmingly black,\u00a0as are most\u00a0of the other characters\u00a0Storm\u00a0helps\u00a0over the course of the series. \u00a0The\u00a0story never draws any particular attention to this,\u00a0but it’s hard to imagine many readers failing to notice\u00a0it. \u00a0\u00a0In one sense this is nicely subtle,\u00a0but\u00a0because it’s left as that,\u00a0the theme is never really developed past the obvious point that Storm is supporting the sort of underdog causes that get overlooked by a white media.<\/p>\n

This feels like it could usefully have been developed further. \u00a0The intro blurb at the start of each issue\u00a0says that Storm’s “desire to better the world has never been limited to only her own kind”, which is potentially a useful angle. \u00a0A curiosity of the X-Men is that, in this\u00a0era when identity politics are on an upswing, the X-Men are singularly unequipped to deal with it\u00a0directly; they\u00a0only seem able to approach it through the metaphor of mutant status. \u00a0You can give your cast a wonderfully diverse range of back stories\u00a0and beliefs, but\u00a0in practice it all gets overshadowed by them being mutants – all the more so in the years since\u00a0House of M<\/em>, where the mutants have largely been holed up in big campuses\u00a0trying to build their own separatist communities. \u00a0This leaves depressingly little room for characters to actually\u00a0express<\/em> any individual back story they might have, or any other aspect of their identities –\u00a0even though, for most of us, identity is surely\u00a0something that stems from a combination of factors. \u00a0For the most part, these characters have simply ceased to exist in, or at least interact with, anything approaching the real world.<\/p>\n

So trying to position Storm as a character who re-connects with actual\u00a0real-world identities – any of them, really – ought to be a good idea, and something that would give her book its own place in the line. \u00a0Admittedly,\u00a0whether the\u00a0self-proclaimed weather goddess is\u00a0really<\/em> the best candidate for that role may be\u00a0open to debate. \u00a0In practice, at least in this volume,\u00a0it feels a bit vague and\u00a0unfocused, trying to sweep in too many things for any of them to have the definition this sort of approach\u00a0requires.<\/p>\n

There are three stories here,\u00a0all of them mixed bags. \u00a0Issues #6-8 cover\u00a0Storm’s showdown with Davis Harmon, the evil CEO, which\u00a0ties up stories from the previous volume. \u00a0There’s a cute idea in here somewhere – not only Harmon but also his entire multinational have faked death\u00a0(receivership) and gone underground. \u00a0But Harmon is ultimately a cartoon villain who hates Storm because she interferes with his profiteering. \u00a0That’s\u00a0too one-note to work with the\u00a0tone of this series, besides which it’s a hoary cliche.<\/p>\n

Issue #9 is a one-shot in which Storm helps Gambit take on a stray villain from his recent solo series in order to steal a macguffin. \u00a0This being\u00a0Storm<\/em>, it’s a macguffin that helps him learn a Very Important Lesson. \u00a0\u00a0It’s a fun little story but feels like it’s wandered in from a different book entirely. \u00a0And issues #10-11 see the return of Zero from\u00a0Generation Hope<\/em>, of all people. \u00a0This gets the character back into circulation (if that’s really an issue in the light of\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em>),\u00a0and also doubles as an excuse to check in on\u00a0characters from throughout the series, an old wrap-up standard.<\/p>\n

Zero was originally established as an artist, albeit a fairly nihilistic one, but here he’s just\u00a0bitter about\u00a0what he sees as the X-Men’s overly optimistic and rose-tinted worldview. \u00a0Storm joins forces with members of her cast to\u00a0mentally show him the horrors they’ve overcome and how they have hope and optimism despite all that. \u00a0I sort of see that it’s an attempt to draw together the threads\u00a0and pull a common theme out of the series, but\u00a0it’s a trite theme, and it requires Zero to set up a real straw man position for Storm to knock down. \u00a0(Does he\u00a0really<\/em> think that the X-Men don’t believe that people suffer? \u00a0To the point where having it pointed out to him becomes a revelation?)<\/p>\n

Scene by scene, and often issue by issue,\u00a0Storm<\/em> can be a pleasant read; but looking at the big picture it\u00a0feels unfocused,\u00a0gesturing at big themes that end up\u00a0stated so generally as to be largely uninteresting. \u00a0There was something in here that could have worked, but I don’t think it\u00a0quite found\u00a0the right gear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Storm‘s second volume, covering\u00a0issues #6-11, looks to be the end of\u00a0the series –\u00a0it\u00a0could technically be a\u00a0Secret Wars hiatus, but given the sales, I wouldn’t hold your breath. \u00a0This, of course, makes it only the latest in a long line of X-Men solo titles to go from launch to scrapheap within a year, an outcome which […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","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=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3043,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions\/3043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}