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Discomfort incarnate.

Published 2006

Up top, this appears to be a sequel to Ororo: Before the Storm, but that is by no means required reading for this. Storm mentions she lived in Cairo and her old teacher’s name. And this is definitively not the fun little Indiana-Jones-style adventure we got from that book. This one prefers to do everything in its power to make the audience uncomfortable about reading it.

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First, and this is more important than it sounds, we should establish roughly what Storm’s age is in the story. She:

• Talks about puberty like its a new experience.
• Has flashbacks to an event 6 years ago where she appears about 5 or 6 years old.

So let’s say she’s 12. Pretty common age for women to start puberty. With that in mind:

To reiterate:

TWELVE.

Written by a middle-aged man that mostly writes sexy spy stories.

I’m not qualified to unpack that, but there is some weird decision-making going on here. There’s also a lot of imagery and talk of sexually assaulting 12-year-olds. Interesting direction for a comic that’s meant to, purportedly, lead up to the romantic wedding of Storm and Black Panther.

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For the art, either the artist was also uncomfortable about the story and tried to visually age-up characters, or they don’t know how to draw children’s faces.

Both of these people are supposed to be about 12 or 13. The one on the right could pass for 45, and its not just the lighting in this shot, that’s what she looks like throughout.

BABY

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Racism and slavery are briefly touched on here and there, but doesn’t really provide any impact. Almost feels like an afterthought. We also get T’Challa coming in with the most privileged take of all time.

People try to explain it to him in similar words several times, but he doesn’t actually change his mind by the end, which is… odd.

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This one is pretty bad. Don’t pick it up, you’ll be made uncomfortable. There are exactly two parts that are entertaining and I’ll share them with you so you don’t miss out: