Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975)
Created By: Len Wein & Dave Cockrum
Biography
When Ororo was very young, a plane crashed into her home in Cairo, Egypt, killing both of her parents. Ororo survived but was buried for an extended period time in the rubble, within sight of her mother’s body. After escaping, she found herself with a lifelong struggle with claustrophobia and a sudden need to survive on her own. She turned to pick-pocketing, even robbing Charles Xavier at one point.
In time, she started wandering Africa. During the time, she had a youthful romance with Prince T’Challa of Wakanda before settling in Kenya, where she started to develop her weather-controlling powers. Ororo came to regard herself as a goddess, and the local people responded by worshipping her.
Along came Professor X to kill the goddess-y good times. He explained the concept of mutants and talked her into joining the X-Men. After some initial culture shock, Ororo became both a powerhouse and an emotional center for the team, enjoying several stints as leader of the group. Highlights of her time on the X-Men include becoming depowered, deaged to a young teen, getting a Mohawk, and taking over the Morlocks. Okay, that list only sounds about half-awesome.
In recent years, Storm and T’Challa (who’d grown up to become not only a king, but also a masked hero known as the Black Panther, which isn’t quite as racist as it sounds) reconnected and fell in love again, marrying in a gorgeous ceremony. As Queen of Wakanda and an open mutant, Ororo became (in Xavier’s opinion) the most important mutant in the world.
Despite her newfound queenliness, Ororo has recently enjoyed stints on both the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, but she just can’t seem to quit the X-Men for good. Now that the X-Men and Avengers are making angry eyes at each other, Storm decided to stand with the mutants—in opposition to her husband.
So What’s So Great About Her?
Are you a Millenial, like me? Then chances are, when you read the term “X-Woman”, you picture one of three characters: Jean Grey, Rogue, or Storm. They were the three grown-up ladies featured in X-Men: The Animated Series, unleashed upon the Saturday morning cartoon-watching populace in 1992.
I was one of those kids tuning in, and the memory of being spellbound by superheroes for the very first time is still very powerful. But I bet dollars to donuts that if I hadn’t seen that a woman—Storm—was a main character in that episode, I was have flicked right past FOX in search of DuckTales.
No matter where you encounter Ororo, TV screen, theater, or print, she is a woman radiating with power, whether from a voice practically vibrating with majesty or the lightning crackling around her. She was obviously designed to grab your attention—a gorgeous black woman with blue eyes and frankly enormous white hair is probably not a sight you’d normally see on your morning commute—but she keeps it by being larger than life. This is a woman who controls the weather—she could make or destroy a nation by twitching her eyebrow. She was worshipped as a goddess. It’s only because she happens to be a good person that countries aren’t paying her tributes to let their crops grow.
But as terrifyingly powerful as Ororo is, she’s also still human. She’s one of the earliest heroes with a real-world weakness that I can think of—she’s claustrophobic. When she was created, specific weaknesses tended to be something rather random (the color yellow! wood, which I guess can something be a weakness to a hormonal teenage boy who needs to get up to do a math problem on the board) that would never, ever hurt any real person or things like magic or Kryptonite, which—I hate to break it to you—are not real. Giving us something we can relate to emotionally, something we might actually have to struggle with, is a major step in the right direction.
Another thing that’s appealing about Storm is that she’s naturally a nice, gentle person. Sure, she can kill you pretty efficiently, but she would really rather not. There’s a reason why this soft-spoken, patient woman is looked to as a mentor by other X-Men. It’s also probably why she brings plenty of hotties to the yard, including Forge (not my type, but to each their own?), T’Challa and…Yukio. A woman. While it’s not explicitly stated that Ororo and Yukio were an item, it’s easy to read their banter and emotional closeness (I mean, come on) as romantic. Coupled with her sudden adoption of leather gear during the Yukio period, you can—and many do—read Storm as a queer character. (This may have been intentional on Chris Claremont’s part, but I’m not finding a definite source. Please tell me if you know of one!)
Also, as I’ve touched on before in this blog, Ororo was the first black X-person. And for far too long—seventeen years!—she was the only one. That’s far too big a gap of time for one character to be shouldering the burden of representing all black mutants on her own, but if anyone was capable of pulling it off, it’s Storm.
Notable Appearances
…hoo boy. I hate to do this two weeks in a row, but Storm has been in a lot of damn comics, and she’s often, if not usually, a key character in them. Uncannyxmen.net (a fabulous resource that you can easily get lost in) has a pretty good list of must-have issues here, but it hasn’t been updated in a while. For more recent appearances, check out the trades in your local comic book store.
Currently, Storm’s appearing in Avengers vs. X-Men, which is in stores now.
