Ever since her inception in 1975, Storm's biography has largely stayed the same. The framework was laid first by Chris Claremont, who fleshed out her backstory in Uncanny X-Men #102 (1976)[4] and Uncanny X-Men #117 (1979).[34] Some reinterpretations were made in 2005 and 2006, where writers Mark Sumerak and Eric Jerome Dickey, respectively, rewrote part of her early history in the miniseries Ororo: Before the Storm[28] and Storm (vol. 2).[35]
According to established Marvel canon, Ororo Munroe is the child of Kenyan tribal princess N’Dare and African-American photographer David Munroe. While stationed in Egypt during the Suez Crisis, a fighter jet crashes into her parents’ house, killing them. Buried under tons of rubble, Ororo survives but is orphaned and left with intense claustrophobia.[4] In Cairo, she is picked up by the benign street lord Achmed el-Gibar and becomes a prolific thief;[28] among her victims is her future mentor Professor X who is there to meet the Shadow King.[34] Following an inner urge, she wanders into the Serengeti as a teenager and meets T’Challa, her future husband. Despite strong mutual feelings, the two part ways.[8][35]
In the Serengeti, Ororo first displays her mutant ability to control the weather. For a time, she is worshipped as a rain goddess, practicing nudism and tribal spirituality, before being recruited by Professor X into the X-Men. Ororo receives the code name “Storm” and is established as a strong, serene character.[2] She eventually supplants her colleague Cyclops as leader of the X-Men,[7] a role she fills out during most of her time as a superhero. Concerning her personal life, she is for a longer time romantically involved with fellow X-Man Forge, and even considers marrying him before breaking up.[22]
After 98% of the mutants of the world lose their powers, Storm leaves the X-Men to go to Africa; rekindles her relationship with T’Challa, now a superhero known as Black Panther; marries him; and becomes the queen of the kingdom of Wakanda[36] and joins the new Fantastic Four alongside her husband when Reed and Sue take a vacation. On a recent mission in space, the Watcher told Black Panther and Storm that their children would have a special destiny. Upon Reed and Sue's return to the Fantastic Four, Storm and the Black Panther leave, with Storm returning to the Uncanny X-Men to help out with events in Messiah Complex.
Powers and abilities
Weather manipulation
Storm has demonstrated a plethora of abilities, most of which are facets of her power to control the weather.[37] Storm possesses the ability to control all forms of weather. She can control the temperature of the environment, control all forms of precipitation, humidity and moisture, coalesce toxic atmospheric pollutants into acid rain or toxic fog, control the wind to elevate herself to fly at high altitudes and speeds, generate lightning and other electromagnetic atmospheric phenomena, and has demonstrated excellent control over atmospheric pressure. She can produce all forms of meteorological tempests, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, and is capable of summoning even a hurricane,[38] as well as a mist. She can dissipate such weather to form clear skies as well. Besides the atmosphere, Storm has demonstrated the ability to control natural forces that include cosmic storms, solar wind, ocean currents, and the electromagnetic field. She can create electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields and has demonstrated the ability to create electrolytic fields to separate water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. While in outer space, she is able to affect and manipulate the interste
llar and intergalactic mediums. Storm can alter her visual perceptions so as to see the universe in terms of energy patterns, detecting the flow of the electromagnetic fields behind weather phenomena, machines, and nervous systems and bend these forces to her will. Storm has shown to be sensitive to the dynamics of the natural world. One consequence of this
connection to nature is that she often suppresses extreme feelings to prevent her emotional state from resulting in violent weather. She has sensed a diseased and dying tree on the X-Mansion grounds, detected objects within various atmospheric mediums--including water, and sensed the incorrect motion of a hurricane in the Northern Hemisphere and the gravitational stress on the tides by the Moon and Sun as well as the distortion of a planet's magnetosphere.[39] Storm's mutant abilities are limited by her willpower and the strength of her body. Her character has been described as being a "possible Omega-level mutant."[40]
Magical potential
Storm's ancestry supports the use of magic and witchcraft.[41] Many of her ancestors were sorceresses and priestesses. Storm's matrilenial powers have even been linked to the real-world Rain Queens of Balobedu, the region from which her Sorceress Supreme ancestor, Ayesha, hails from. The Mystic Arcana series deals with Storm's ancestor Ashake, who worships the Egyptian goddess Ma'at, also known as Oshtur--the mother of Agamotto.[42] Some of Storm's alternate universe selves possess considerable magical talent.[43] Although Storm has not developed her magical potential, it has been hinted at.[41] The Mystic Arcana series lists the characters with magic potential according to the Marvel Tarot deck. The Tarot asserts Storm as being "High Priestess," the First Tarot's choice one-third of the time. The other draws were the Scarlet Witch and Agatha Harkness. These three characters
split the High Priestess card equally. On a separate note, it has been stated that Storm's spirit is so strong that she was able to host the consciousness of Eternity, a feat which very few Marvel characters can accomplish without going insane.[44]
Origin of Storm (1970s)
Storm first appeared in 1975 in the famous Giant Size X-Men #1 comic, written by Len Wein and pencilled by Dave Cockrum. In this comic, Wein uses a battle against the living island Krakoa to replace the first-generation X-Men of the 1960s with new X-Men.[2] Storm was an amalgamation of several characters Cockrum intended to use for the Legion of Super-Heroes. In a 1999 interview, Cockrum said that the original black female of the
Legion would have been called The Black Cat. According to him, she had Storm's costume but without the cape, and a cat-like haircut with tufts for ears. However, other female cat characters like Tigra had appeared, so Cockrum redesigned his new character, giving her white hair and the cape, and created Storm. When colleagues remarked that Storm’s white hair made her look like a grandmother, and thus, presumably unpopular, he just said: “Trust me.”[3]
Chris Claremont, who followed up Wein as the writer of the flagship title Uncanny X-Men in 1975, embraced Storm and started writing many notable X-Men stories, among them the God Loves, Man Kills and Dark Phoenix Saga arcs, which respectively served as the base for the films X2: X-Men United and X-Men 3. In both arcs, Storm is written as a major supporting character. This was a harbinger of things to come, as Claremont stayed the main writer of that comic book for the next 16 years and consequently wrote most of the publications containing Storm.
In Uncanny X-Men #102 (December 1976), Claremont established Storm’s backstory. Ororo's mother, N'Dare, is the princess of a tribe in Kenya and the descendant of a long line of Africans with white hair, blue eyes, and a natural gift for sorcery. N'Dare falls in love with and marries African American photojournalist David Munroe. They move to Harlem in uptown New York City, where she becomes pregnant with Ororo and bears her, and then to Egypt during the Suez Crisis, where they are killed in a botched aircraft attack and leave six-year-old Ororo as an orphan. There, her violent claustrophobia is also established as a result of being buried under tons of rubble after that attack. She then becomes a skilled thief in Cairo under the benign Achmed el-Gibar and wanders into the Serengeti as a young woman. There, she is worshipped as a goddess before being recruited by Professor X for the X-Men.[4]
Claremont further fleshed out Storm’s backstory in Uncanny X-Men #117 (January 1979). He retroactively added that Professor X, who recruits her in Giant Size X-Men #1 of 1975, had already met her as a child in Cairo. As Ororo grows up on the streets and becomes a proficient thief under the tutelage of master thief Achmed el-Gibar, one of her most notable victims was Charles Francis Xavier, the later Professor X. He is able to use his mental powers to temporarily prevent her escape and recognizes the potential in her. However, when Xavier is attacked mentally by Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King, the two men are preoccupied enough with their battle to allow the girl to escape. Both Xavier and the Shadow King recognize Storm as the young girl later.
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