there are traditional religions still being followed in parts of Kenya<\/a>, but they don’t seem to bear much resemblance to this – and it’s something that’s often ignored, downplayed, not taken literally, or simply blurred into her own “bright lady” stuff.<\/p>\nBut this story takes it literally and head-on. \u00a0If Storm was being worshipped by the villagers, then her departure left a void – fair enough. \u00a0It’s now been filled by a new religion, which worships somebody called Uovu. \u00a0“Uovu” is Swahili for “evil”, so this is not exactly subtle. \u00a0But the story points that out, so let’s assume we’re in the same ballpark as stories where Satan shows up to tempt people, openly introducing himself as Satan. \u00a0That’s all reasonable territory. \u00a0Then again, we’re also told that the village is called Uzuri, which seems to be variously translated as “good”, “beauty” or “grace”. \u00a0At which point we’re at\u00a0Pilgrim’s Progress<\/em> levels of subtlety.<\/p>\nA flashback reveals that Ainet, Storm’s foster mother, prayed to “the old gods of the old ways” to do something or other about Storm. \u00a0That’s why her magic hammer from Asgardian Wars<\/em>\u00a0suddenly showed up a few issues back. \u00a0Quite how a random person praying to unspecified gods makes a magic hammer wake up is mystifying even by the standards of Marvel Universe magic.<\/p>\nIn the present, Storm is alerted to what’s going on by people at the Wakandan consulate, who tell her that Ainet has died, and that some sort of death cult has taken over the village. \u00a0Naturally, Storm heads to Uzuri “on the outskirts of Kenya” to investigate. \u00a0And seriously, what’s “the outskirts of Kenya” when it’s at home? \u00a0Who talks about countries having outskirts? \u00a0Let’s pause here and note a fundamental problem for this story – I don’t buy this for a minute as a depiction of a remote Kenyan village rather than a dated trope about superstitious villagers. Artist Michele Bandini does a reasonable job of at least giving the place a consistent feel but I still get the vibe of something made up from old parts.<\/p>\n
There’s a genuinely good scene when Storm first arrives in the village, in which a village elder gives her the “each to their own” speech and tries to shrug off Uovu as just another legitimate religion. \u00a0(“This term ‘death cult”, it smacks of bigotry.”) \u00a0The cultists are divided about whether to keep their heads down until Ororo has paid her respects to Ainet and gone home, or whether to try and recruit her; Uovu himself is up for a bit of recruitment.<\/p>\n
Uovu greets Storm politely enough and wheels out her parents, back from the dead, as a gesture of goodwill. \u00a0This seems to be intended as genuine; Uovu’s point is partly to demonstrate to Storm that he is a “real” god, not a pretender like she was. \u00a0Meanwhile, we establish that Uovu’s power is derived from the faith of his believers, and while he’s got an evil plan in mind, he doesn’t want to jeopardise his support base by having something dodgy befall Storm. \u00a0I’m not clear exactly\u00a0why<\/em> he thinks that would damage him – are these meant to be people who still worship both of them? – but that’s certainly what he says.<\/p>\nStorm finds that Uovu has been collecting the bodies of dead villagers for years – how big is this village anyway? – and confronts Uovu, who responds by raising the bodies of all the dead as some sort of zombie army. \u00a0Apparently Storm’s parents are supposed to be an example of the same thing but… hold on, they died in Egypt. \u00a0So if his scheme is mainly about storing the bodies of dead villagers and then reviving them, where did he get the bodies of Storm’s parents? \u00a0And if he doesn’t need the actual bodies, what’s with the catacomb?<\/p>\n
By the start of part 3, Storm’s hammer has stopped responding to her (because… she’s having a crisis of faith…?) and the narrative caption has decided that Uzuri is now “near Kenya”. \u00a0What do you mean, “near Kenya”? \u00a0Have we now relegated this odd little village to one of those magic Marvel Universe micro-states, where it can nestle gently between Kenya and Uganda?<\/p>\n
So… okay, the symbolism here is meant to be something along the lines that the magic hammer has abandoned Storm in the same way that she once abandoned the village. \u00a0But the hammer comes back for no apparent reason, there’s a big fight, the X-Men show up to help. \u00a0The story seems to suggest that you can undermine Uovu’s powers by physically<\/em> removing his followers and putting them to sleep, which, um. \u00a0But despite his speech in the previous issue about the importance of his followers, it turns out that that doesn’t matter after all, and there’s a final big fight in which Uovu is meant to be vanquished but really just kind of disappears between panels. \u00a0And the magic hammer is burnt out, so we can forget about that storyline.<\/p>\nAnd… no, I’m none the wiser. \u00a0What the hell was all that about? \u00a0There ought to be a decent story in the fact that Storm really just abandoned a village that was kind of dependent on her, but this isn’t it. \u00a0Some early gestures towards big ideas and nuance really come to nothing, and in the end, it seems to have nothing to say about anything much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s one for the “what the hell was that all about” file. \u00a0It’s a story that seems to be groping haphazardly in the direction of big themes… and what is it actually trying to say about them? \u00a0I’m very much unclear. \u00a0Let’s go through it and see if I can figure it out. This is […]<\/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-4294","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\/4294","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=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4295,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions\/4295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}