Storm is a 1996 comic book limited series from Marvel Comics. It's written by Warren Ellis with art by Terry Dodson and Karl Story, and color art by Ariane Lenshoek.
Set in the shared Marvel Universe, it's part of the wider X-Men line and the first solo series to star the weather-controlling mutant Ororo Munroe, the titular Storm.
As well as her role as a superhero and leader of the X-Men, Storm was once leader of the Morlocks, a band of outcast mutants living in the tunnels beneath New York. However, many of the Morlocks were slain in the Mutant Massacre, and some of those who survived were transported to a place where time runs faster, eventually returning as the terrorists known as Gene Nation.
In one arc of Uncanny X-Men, Storm was forced to kill Marrow, one of the Gene Nationals, cutting out her heart to prevent a bomb detonating. Marrow was once a little girl named Sarah, who Storm remembered as an innocent child. She hasn't come to terms with that yet. But when she visits a memorial in the old Morlock tunnels to pay her respects, there's a new challenge waiting for her.
Storm contains examples of the following tropes:
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: After Storm seemingly annihilates Mikhail, the Gene Nationals seem to accept her as their new leader — and the arrival of her fellow X-Men just reinforces that. Gene Nation's predecessors, the Morlocks, were similar but had a more structured approach, which is how Storm ended up as their leader after Challenging the Chief.
- Big Bad: Mikhail Rasputin is the lord of the other-dimensional Hill and the leader of Gene Nation. He's responsible for faking Storm's death as well.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Loss's mutation gives her a wide bone blade on the back of each hand, starting just behind her knuckles and slightly longer than her fingers. They curve slightly downwards toward her hand, like huge claws, and there's no sign that they're retractable.
- Call-Back: At the start of the story, Storm's still dealing with her decision to kill Marrow, the mutant girl she once knew as Sarah, and it drives most of her actions in the first issue.
- Caught Monologuing: Loss threatens to detonate a bomb and kill everyone if Mikhail gives into Storm's threats and teleports them to Earth. They're teleported, and Loss starts a final speech before triggering it - only for Cable to interrupt it by telekinetically disarming her.Cable: Which one's got the bomb?
Loss: Me. Know my face well, for I am the one who brings death to you. For Gene Nation and the dream of a world for us that stands clean of humanity—
[Cable telekinetically lifts the bomb out of her hands] - Death Faked for You: Mikhail faked Storm's death after her visit to the Cathedral, taking advantage of the Hill's Year Inside, Hour Outside timeflow to rapidly make a plan. Marilou, a Gene National whose build and skin color could pass for Storm, was dressed in similar clothes and killed to provide a corpse. As the body was supposedly crushed by falling rocks, leaving her face unrecognisable, this was sufficient to fool the X-Men for a while.
- Early Instalment Weirdness: A minor example. At the end of the story, it's revealed that there's a Greater-Scope Villain — the Man Behind the Man is the Black Beast, a mutant from the Age of Apocalypse timeline. As of 2023, he's much better known as "Dark" Beast, but when Storm was published Marvel hadn't decided on a label to disambiguate him from his Alternate Self, the X-Men's Beast.
- Facial Horror: In the final confrontation, Callisto pulls a gun on Storm. Storm destroys it with a lightning bolt and hot metal fragments explode into Callisto's face. The art doesn't really show the wounds as she stumbles away, whereas captions suggest that it's much more severe and describe her as half-blinded by pain and blood.
- Facial Markings: One of the first mutants Storm meets on the Hill has "MAIM" scrawled across his forehead. It's in black, and seems to be a brand or tattoo rather than a scar.
- Foreshadowing:
- In the first issue, before visiting the Morlock tunnels, Storm has an awkward video call with her love interest Forge. The third issue reveals that Gene Nation's next target is Forge's X-Factor team.
- One of the Gene Nationals is shown clambering up the cliff to Mikhail's fortress, getting a handhold at the top before Mikhail casts him down again. A few pages later, Callisto makes the same climb, rejoining Mikhail to confront Storm.
- While standing on the edge of the fortress, Storm's thoughts drift back to an African village she once knew, where crops and land were ruined by short-term decision making. She's attacked by Gene Nationals while she's lost in thought. At the end of the series, after defeating Mikhail and Callisto, she sends the Gene Nationals to the same village, ordering them to work the land.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The final issue reveals that Mikhail was working for the Black Beast, a mutant from an Alternate Timeline who is not happy that Storm's disrupted his experiment. He gets no dialogue and takes no action within the story, but captions confirm that he's not happy with the outcome.
- Grossout Fakeout: Storm walks into the woods outside Xavier's institute, looking for Wolverine. She passes pigeons and a raccoon, then finds small bones scattered across the ground. Wolverine's chewing meat from another bone when she finds him. When Storm asks whether he's devouring the local wildlife, Wolverine points out the box of Kentucky Fried Chicken he's eating.
- Hand Stomp: Mikhail challenges the Hill's mutants to climb to his fortress at the very top of the slope, above the Hostile Weather, so that they may join him. But when one actually makes it, Mikhail stamps on his hand to send him falling down again.Mikhail Rasputin: You must be stronger. Stronger than me, even. And evolve better fingers.
- Hostile Weather: The Hill has clouds full of acid rain, a skeleton belt of dead birds above the cloud layer (which can rain calcium spikes) and weird patterns of heat, with glass fragments in the cloud which can align to focus the unseen sun's heat on the ground. After a little initial adjustment, all of them can be manipulated by Storm's powers.
- Immortality Field: A variation. Mikhail claims that the Hill is a place where all wounds rapidly heal and only death from old age is final. However, the first mutants she meets there intend to kill her and sell her corpse (and one also speaks of his father being murdered). Mikhail certainly lies about other things, and seems concerned for his life when Storm puts a knife to his throat, but the story never confirms the truth.
- It's Personal with the Dragon: Played with, mostly due to Callisto's Face–Heel Revolving Door. When they first met as enemies, back in Uncanny X-Men, Storm fought Callisto for leadership of the Morlocks and won, with consequences that became bitterly personal for both of them. At the start of Storm, Callisto's just been deposed as Mikhail's lieutenant, so is no longer The Dragon — at one point, she claims that this is because she specifically objected to him killing Marilou to fake Storm's death, at another because she simply didn't want Mikhail to bring Storm to the Hill. Either way, she makes her way back to Mikhail's fortress and rejoins him once she sees Storm's arrived, aiming to confront her. And when Storm forces Mikhail to return the Gene Nationals to Earth, it's Callisto who pulls a gun and says that Storm's not taking over again.Callisto: They're mine! Life was hard, but I loved them! I led them with Mikhail, until I cursed him for trying to steal you — I am sick of you ruining things for me!
- Ms. Exposition: Jean Grey doesn't play a major role in the story, but she summarises Storm's childhood for Cable, who doesn't know her so well. Cable has taken Storm's death at face value, whereas Jean and Cyclops doubt she's really dead. As well as providing an Infodump for readers, Jean's recap helps to explain why they don't think she'd die so easily.
- Narnia Time: It initially seems that time on the Hill runs much faster than Earth, with Mikhail many years older and entire generations of mutants born and grown to adulthood there. However, Mikhail tells Storm it's not that simple - the flow of time varies, and it's sometimes slower than Earth. He's lying when he tells her that, back on Earth, she's now been dead for decades, but it's never clear whether or not the wider claim is also a lie.Mikhail Rasputin: Time moves in strange cycles here. For a while, time here was faster. Now, it is slower. You have been dead for some years. Back on Earth, all your friends may be deceased.
- No Body Left Behind: After the Gene Nationals return to Earth and the Morlock tunnels, Mikhail begins to teleport out and Storm throws a lighting bolt at him. He escapes, but the awed Gene Nationals assume that he's been completely disintegrated.
- Not Quite Dead: Back in Uncanny X-Men, Storm cut out Marrow's heart at the end of their duel, the only way to defuse the linked bombs. At the end of the Storm series, she reappears, stating that her powers kept her alive.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Storm was forced to kill the Gene Nation terrorist Marrow, once the little girl she knew as Sarah, to stop her from detonating bombs and killing her hostages. Her attempts to come to terms with this bring her to the Cathedral in the abandoned Morlock tunnels, and her presence there triggers the rest of the plot. As the ending reveals, Marrow's not actually dead after all.
- Power Incontinence: Despite his initial claims, Mikhail's not entirely in control of his portal powers. Events can trigger a portal to Earth regardless of his wishes, although he can control and shape the effect once his powers create the portal.
- Relocating the Explosion: Gene Nation's next mission will be to Virginia, to blow up X-Factor's headquarters. When Storm wrecks that plan and Mikhail is forced to transport everyone back to New York and the Morlock tunnels, Loss threatens to detonate the bomb and kill everyone. She's halfway through her big "holy death" speech when Cable telekinetically takes the bomb from her hands and Storm uses her winds to carry it high above the city, where it safely detonates.
- The Reveal: When Gene Nation first appeared in Uncanny X-Men, Callisto gave contradictory stories about the fate of Mikhail Rasputin. Either he'd died transporting the Morlocks who became Gene Nation, or the next generation turned on him and killed him. This series reveals that neither version is true — he's their leader.
- Sequel Hook:
- A vengeful Callisto is now reunited with a Not Quite Dead Marrow, setting up another round of conflict with Storm.
- The Black Beast, Hank McCoy's alternate version from the Age of Apocalypse, was the Man Behind the Man. He gets no dialogue, but the final issue has a page of him brooding in silence, with captions confirming that he's now vowing revenge on Storm.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: At the very end of the series, after Gene Nation are defeated and Storm's dealt with her recurring worries about short-term vs. long-term judgment, she debuts a new hairstyle and costume.
- Starts with Their Funeral: The variant that starts with a body rather than an actual funeral. The first issue begins on Sunday night, with Cable discovering Storm's corpse in the underground cathedral. The first issue then jumps back to Sunday morning and shows how Storm's day led her there.
- Sudden Name Change: Mikhail's elite squad includes Gene Nationals named Pain, Snow and Glass. When Gene Nation first appeared, in Uncanny X-Men, these three very distinctive mutants were named Hemingway, Vessel and Sack, respectively. They revert to those original names when they next appear.
- Taking You with Me: Loss threatens to detonate a bomb and kill everyone if Mikhail, who has Storm's knife to his throat, gives in to Storm's threats and teleports them to Earth. When he does, she tries to make good on the threat, but is disarmed by Cable while making a final speech.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Time moves much faster on the Hill than on Earth. At one point it's mentioned that a year on Earth is at least a generation on the Hill. Mikhail also claims that the relative speeds vary and sometimes time moves much faster on Earth — however, he's also lying for part of that conversation, and the story never confirms that this is true.
