Ororo Munroe: Storm Appreciation 2018

[yogaflame]

Well, old one was too big for the server, evidently. Praise our mutant weather goddess here now.

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Storm, mistress of the elements:

Born in Harlem, New York, to a Kenyan tribal princess N'Dare, and a photo-journalist David Munroe, Ororo Munroe would go on to become one of the most powerful beings on the planet, but only after facing many trials and tribulations. When just a few months old, her father took a job covering ongoing strife in Cairo, Egypt. While her mother was happy to be back on the continent, and Ororo's first few years were spent hearing the stories of their people in the shadows of the pyramids, this idyllic childhood would soon be ripped from her. The conflict her father was covering eventually spilled over into a full war, and a downed warplane came crashing into their apartment building! Buried in burning rubble with the bodies of her dead parents, little Ororo would develop a lifelong claustrophobia as a result of the trauma, but somehow she clawed her way out with only her tattered clothes and her mother's ancestral ruby.

Orphaned and alone, when most children were barely starting elementary school, Ororo was left to beg on the streets. She was eventually found by other lost children, and taken to their leader, Achmed El-Gibar, Cairo's king of thieves, and she became one of his street urchins. Trained in begging, sleight of hand, acrobatics, lock picking, and more, little Ororo would quickly become his greatest student and a leader of her peers. By the time she was eleven, though, she began to feel a tug, beckoning her to go south. Remembering the stories of her mother, she left the life of thieving behind, and said goodbye to her newfound family, in search of her ancestral home.

She walked from Cairo, through the Sahara along the Nile, towards the Serengeti. Along the way a man tried to rape her, and she reflexively stabbed him in the heart, killing him instantly. Horrified, she swore to the Goddess to never take a life again. Soon thereafter, as she neared twelve, her powers manifested fully(there had been some unconscious flare-ups already), and she learned she could quench her thirst by summoning rain. As she neared Lake Victoria, she happened across a boy who was being attacked by white men. That day she learned she could summon the winds to make her fly, and saved the boy. This boy was actually the prince of Wakanda, T'Challa, on his walkabout, and the days they spent together were the happiest of her trek, but he had his own priorities to attend to, and she was still being called south, so they parted ways.

It was in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Great Rift Valley, that Ororo grew into a woman, no, more, a goddess. With her power to see the world around her as bands of energy she could manipulate, she lived at one with the elements, and brought rain to the drought-stricken, used her winds and lightning to protect those in need. Years passed, and the goddess of the storm, the Wind-Rider Ororo, was happy in a way few others could understand. One day, though, a white man came to her. She had just brought rain to end a drought, and she heard his voice in her mind. She landed and wondered what he could offer a goddess? It was Charles Xavier, an American professor and expert on genetic mutations, and a mutant telepath himself. He was also the founder of a covert action team, the X-Men, and he was recruiting a new team to save the original one, which had gone missing on the south Pacific island of Krakoa. He told Ororo that she was no goddess, but a mutant, and that she should come with him to live in the wider world. Though his words were strange(and perhaps not true...), Ororo decided to go with him, and took the superhero name Storm!

Learn more of Storm's adventures with the X-Men in Giant Sized X-Men #1, and her saga continues in the pages of Uncanny X-Men #94(1975).