A return to Kenya brings a surprising return from a different past.
Creative Staff:
Story: Greg Pak
Art: Scott Hepburn, David Baldeon, Jordi Tarragona
What They Say:
Long ago, after she was worshipped as a goddess on the plains of Africa, Storm was stripped of her mutant powers and fell into deep depression. A brilliant inventor named Forge came to her rescue and nursed her back to health, showing her that she is so much more than her superhuman abilities. And a romance blossomed between them. But it was a love made to be broken. Now, years later, Storm has the powers and stature of a goddess once more, and she is reunited with Forge. But what does fate have in store for the pair this time?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I had enjoyed the first two issues of Storm, I ended up just falling behind, even though my subscription kept up, and just didn’t make it further into the book. I’ve long liked the character of storm and her changes over the years and wanted to support her own ongoing series since more female character centric books are important, and especially a character like Storm who should be an even bigger central player in things in the Marvel Universe. Part of what kept me from being invested in wanting to come back right away is that it looked like the book was going to have just an episodic kind of focus for a bit, which is all well and good, but I wanted to have something a little more than that.
With this issue, we get another touch upon the past that’s certainly interesting. While I fell out of the X-Books for awhile and I know I missed a lot of Forge material, I have fond memories of him when he was introduced as it was a mutant Tony Stark of sorts that arrived and further put Ororo on her own path back in those days. Ororo is definitely trying to forge her own path these days as we’ve now seen her in two very different situations in the first two issues and even Hank is calling her out a little bit on her decision to leave the runaways with Callisto, considering their history over the years. As they both basically come to agree on, they’re doing the right thing but it’s going to cause a lot of problems and wrong things along the way as well. And Henry puts another difficult choice ahead of her as a request for help has come in from Kenya.
Ororo visiting Kenya again after a good bit of time away is welcome since she always seems more herself there in a way, and her discovery of what’s going on shows some of that growth she’s been going through. Understanding the issues of the particular area she’s been called in to, she discovers that Forge has set up shop there in a very, very low rent kind of way, and is trying to find a way to bring rain to the area. She has her own issues with this, understanding the cost of creating systems like this, but it’s also layered with the issues of their past, several of which fly right over me since it was after I fell out of the books. But there’s a good effort on Forge’s part to try and repair bridges here and it’s also good to see Ororo offering a path, but making it clear it will take a long, long time. With the locals involved as well, there’s definitely some good moralistic type aspects brought into play here, but mostly it comes down to seeing how Ororo views such a situation and how she’s become a bit of an arbiter about it all at this point.
In Summary:
Going in with guest artists in the third issue isn’t a great sign for me and we get a fairly uneven feeling throughout the book that doesn’t quite capture things well. Ororo comes across decently for the most part, but it’s still not solid throughout. Forge in particular doesn’t look right and that just makes it all the harder to get into. As a standalone story, I like it in that it does set a proper potential fix for the relationship between the two – as friends – and it doesn’t make it a quick and easy fix. I liked the Ororo and Forge pairing before, but I doubt we’ll see that form any time soon again. The main story itself about trying to bring rain to Kenya isn’t a bad one, but it plays in that loose area where you know it can be done with the people involved but it falls into that area of should it be done. It keeps it all very simple when discussed between the main parties involved and it does come to a resolution, but it just rings too simple and too hollow.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 24th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
