Storm: Who is the Weather Witch?

A Storm is Coming

Storm: “I am a woman, a Mutant, a thief, an X-Man, a lover, a wife, a queen. I am all these things. I am Storm, and for me, there are no such things as limits.”

X-Men: Worlds Apart

Armed bigots march on a school for Mutants. They’re going to finally exterminate those monsters. As they march, wind blows against them. It picks up as the air grows colder. Sleet falls from a sky that was cloudless moments ago. The shooters start to complain as they lose their footing. Their leader shouts slogans that are lost in the howling winds.

At last, they see the school through the blizzard. The leader raises his gun, but is stunned by flashing lightning. They all see a silhouette against the clouds, a woman floating in the air. A small tornado forms in front of the shooters and engulfs them. After a minute, it dissipates and they slam into the ground. The woman descends with a glare. Lightning fills the sky. Storm speaks just one word: “Leave.”

Storm is one of the strongest X-Men. She started out as a victim, but has grown into a woman who can save or damn a world. So who is she? How did she join the X-Men? Just how strong is Storm? Let’s find out.

Wind-Rider: Storm’s Backstory 

Ororo: “Who are you? What business do you have in Ororo’s land?”
Professor X: “I am called Xavier, and I come to you to make an offer I pray you will not refuse.”
Ororo: “An offer? What can you offer a goddess?”

Giant-Sized X-Men #1

Storm debuted in Giant-Sized X-Men #1 in 1975. She was created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum. They originally planned to create two male characters called Black Cat and Typhoon. These were merged into one character and became a woman. The rest is history.

Ororo Munroe is the daughter of a Kenyan princess and an American photojournalist. While flying in Egypt during the Suez Crisis, their plane was shot down. Ororo was trapped under debris for days and developed claustrophobia. She was rescued and wandered Cairo before being taken in by a thief named Achmed.

Achmed trained Ororo to be a world-class thief. She tried pickpocketing an American tourist who stopped her with psychic powers. The man was Professor Xavier, whose sensed potential in Ororo but lost her in a crowd.

Ororo’s weather control mutation activated while she traveled through Africa, causing superstitious rural communities to worship her as a goddess. She also encountered and briefly dated Prince T’Challa. Years later, Xavier came searching for Ororo. He was recruiting a team to save the X-Men, who had gone missing. Ororo was disappointed to learn she was a Mutant instead of a god, but accepted his offer and became Storm.

Down to Earth: Storm’s History

Storm: “Once I would have ridden the wind. Now it drives me. The elements I shaped to my will have me at their mercy… And always, the wind – my friend, my servant, taunts me with its fury. It howls, it laughs, it mocks my very being. Without me, Ororo, it cries, you are nothing.”

Uncanny X-Men #198

Storm and the new X-Men proved themselves by saving the old team from a living island called Krakoa. Her impressed teammates made her their second in command, but Storm slowly grew jaded from frequent fights against villains and monsters.

A mutant called Forge created a gun that could depower Mutants. Storm took a blast meant for her teammate Rogue. She struggled with the loss of her powers, but coped by training in martial arts and adopting a punk look. Storm came to terms with her loss and emerged stronger, just in time for Forge to create a cure.

Storm encountered T’Challa again after he became the Black Panther. The spark between them reignited and they married after a whirlwind romance. Despite pressure from the Wakandan god Bast, Storm chose to serve as both leader of the X-Men and Queen of Wakanda.

Coronations: Storm’s Modern Stories

Ororo: “I am Storm, Regent of Mars and I am the voice of Sol.”

Hellfire Gala

Black Panther and Storm were a power couple in every sense. They briefly joined the Fantastic Four and fought in the Superhero Civil War. That all came to an end during the event Avengers vs. X-Men. The teams disagreed on how to handle the Phoenix Force, which possessed Namor and ravaged Wakanda. T’Challa blamed Storm because she sided with the X-Men, and he divorced her.

Storm returned to leading the X-Men through several incarnations. The X-Men discovered that the island Krakoa was still alive and negotiated a truce with it. In exchange for donations of life energy, Krakoa would become the Mutant homeland. Storm earned a lot of brownie points by finding Krakoa’s sibling Arrako in another dimension.

The X-Men made a huge move in 2021. Storm led several other powerful Mutants in transporting Arrako to Mars and used their powers to terraform the red planet in minutes. They renamed the planet Arrako and unilaterally declared it the capital of the solar system, with Storm crowned the new Queen.

F5: Storm’s Powers and Personality

Storm: “You want my powers, Hungan!? [conjures a tornado] Here’s more than you can handle!”

X-Men: Evolution “African Storm” (Season 2, Episode 7)

We didn’t call Storm one of the strongest X-Men for laughs. She’s an expert martial artist, thief, knife fighter, sharpshooter, leader, and diplomat. You’ve gotta be really good at those last two to convince the governments of Earth to let you take over a planet and dub yourself the galaxy’s leader.

Extreme weather is the least of Ororo’s powers. She can summon lightning, snow, wind, rain, hail, fog, and whatever else she needs to kill da wabbit. She can also sense weather disturbances and create unnatural weather phenomena like acid rain. Storm’s powers are implied to be partially magical and she has temporarily ascended to godhood more than once. But no matter how many times you say hallelujah, she can’t make it rain men.

Ororo is compassionate, nurturing, and a born leader. She is sometimes arrogant and copes with claustrophobia. Storm is often the second in command of the X-Men when she isn’t leading them herself.

The Actors Who Play Ororo

Kathy Garver and Annie Lockhart – Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends
Iona Morris and Alison Sealy-Smith – X-Men: the Animated Series
Kristen Williamson – X-Men: Evolution
Cree Summer – The Super Hero Squad Show
Halle Berry – X-Men, X-2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Days of Future Past
Alexandra Shipp – X-Men: Apocalypse

Didya Get All That

A godlike mutant turned space queen.

Image: Alexandra Shipp as Storm © 2016 – Twentieth Century Fox

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.