Storm #1 – Review

By: Greg Pak (writer), Victor Ibañez (artist), Ruth Redmond (color artist)

The Story: Sometimes, being where you need to be is more important than being where you should.

The Review: Despite being, in my estimation, one of the four most famous X-Men*, Storm has never held her own ongoing series. Almost forty years after her debut, Greg Pak has something to say about that.

It’s been a long time since Storm felt like a true A-Lister. While dull as dirt Cyclops has consistently tricked readers into thinking that his leadership position makes him more interesting, Storm has frequently faded into her own responsibilities. With this issue Pak needed to prove that Storm has the rich inner life and personal struggle that define Marvel’s greatest characters.

Thankfully, on that count, he succeeds with flying colors. From the first line, an English-professor-melting refrain of “When I was just a girl, I called myself Goddess…and I lived in the sky”, the essential warmth that has been absent from this character is alive and present. Pak defines Ororo Munroe by her compassion and pragmatism. When confronted with a Gordian Knot, she’s likely to simply cut it and struggles when the simplest solution is complicated by outside factors.

The story that Pak has chosen to tell is well suited to demonstrating these characteristics. It lacks extraneous elements without feeling overly constructed. That said this is a completely singular story. Marvel easily could have published this as a one-shot and it wouldn’t have even been one of those issues you put down and think, ‘man, this should be a series’ like with Superman: Lois Lane #1. That’s not to say that the issue doesn’t hook you, but there’s just not a sense of what the series will be like going forward, which is, in part, the purpose of a first issue.

While the specifics of the series aren’t quite laid out, Pak definitely demonstrates a grasp of character and a thoughtfulness that one would expect to reappear. Pak’s world is natural in a way that X-Men stories haven’t been in some time. Once again being a mutant isn’t a superpower it’s a culture, with all the privileges and prejudices that come with it. In a single issue the young mutant Creep has eclipsed Quentin Quire as the Jean Grey School’s most interesting critic. Likewise the way that Pak ties anti-mutant sentiment into real-life issues is respectful and engaging.