A Voice For The Voiceless — Reviewing ‘Storm’ #4

Ororo Munroe, the wind rider known as Storm, is one of the most powerful individuals living upon the planet Earth. There are few that could match her in most matters.

Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to save her in Storm #4, as Murewa Ayodele, Lucas Werneck, Alex Guimarães, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo, and Travis Lanham close out one chapter for the mutant goddess and begin the next.

One of the oldest tales in life is how men bogart the power to use exclusively boosting themselves. Holding back or pushing back women from achieving that same or more power. Nothing threatens certain men more than the idea of women being equal or better than them. Women from every era of human history can speak to the lengths men have gone to silence, harm, or kill them because this disgusting need for full control.

This type of stuff bleeds into our fiction far too often, because men are still the ones predominately allowed to have voices within creative fields. Through four issues, we have seen Storm stripped of so much of her agency and power. She’s left to be something batted around and forced to act at the behest of various men. From the young man she saves at the beginning to the male doctor who chastises hero, to the male Doctor Voodoo who has to save her to her giving into the beckoning of Doctor Doom.

Even as her life is slipping away, the only relative she is allowed to see is her father. Her mother is seemingly not allowed to speak to her or be remembered more than in reference.

Ayodele has some epic scale ideas but diminishes that epicness by minimizing the character. As noted in the previous reviews, Ororo is nothing more than a figure in this series, a character who lacks character because she has no voice of her own. All the voices of “import” are male. Including the male presenting celestial being Eternity who not only gets to narrate the series but returns Storm to life here, claiming her as “his Eternal Storm.”

Back in 2002, Chris Claremont released X-Treme X-Men #19 that poked fun at the number of figures (again all male generally) who tried to covet and take Storm to be their “own.” Here we are over twenty-three years later, and the situation hasn’t changed any. It’s wild that the Krakoan era version of Storm handled by Al Ewing has been the most realized powerful individualized version we’ve had in a very long time.

Visually, the series is truly gorgeous as Werneck pulls out every single stop. This takes what feels hollow and lacking around the character and at least makes it feel more epic than it has a right to be. There is a visual elegance to the way that the various moments are brought to life in their panels. It’s befitting of the act that is being put on by both Storm and Doom.

Fluid, dynamic energy creeps through everything. Simple turns grand, which is what Werneck does best. Honing that skill more and more with each series, finding ways to keep leaping forward. If only the actual story found a way to match what the page was delivering.

Double colorists are here as Guimarães is joined by Sifuentes-Sujo for this issue. Both match the art energy beat for beat. Bright, shiny, bold, and dynamic, allowing all the big characters to have their flashy dynamic color tones while creating backdrops that are more natural and toned-down.

Storm’s voice is really neutered here, but what is on the page at least works visually. Since Lanham takes what is there and finds a way to do something with it. Storm’s words feel kind of flat but that’s because there isn’t enough happening with her to really find emotional energy to place in the words.

Storm #4 is now available from Marvel Comics.