Ororo Munroe: Storm Appreciation 2019

[yogaflame]

Yupp.
Give him "Storm and the X-Men" and allow him to write a LS on a theme completely in his wheel-house. (I still won't read it because...Coates, but it could be something.)
I'd still be wary of him writing other definitive characters like Bishop and Monet, though.

I did say I was [morbidly] curious to see what he'd do. It might end up a trainwreck, but so have the last dozen years+ of canon.

[butterflykyss]

I mostly agree. I have not been impressed by Coates's BP run(s). The first one was just an incredulous destruction of the whole Wakanda concept, and this second one is just a random space war with liberal sprinkling of historical names without any context for the people who don't know them(look up the Maroons and Queen Nanny and Cudjoe from Jamaica). Both have very strange political messaging that don't really work with the character. That said, given how bad the X-books have been for almost 15 years now, and considering how many lame writers have had a go, I would be [morbidly] curious to see what Coates would do with an 11 issue run. It is possible he'd do something more interesting with the 'feared and hated' theme than the million white dudes have done. At the very least, he seems to know something about the Claremont run. And while I do prefer the X-Men stories more balanced, all these other characters have had centralized runs about them, so, sure, let Storm have one too. Go wild with it, even, and title it Storm and the X-Men and have an all black team. Storm leads Bishop, Monet, Sunspot, Triage, Oya, and Manifold. Shoot, go ahead and have Logan there just to be the token white dude and help it sell.

I would be all over this book and lmfao at the token white dude lolol you are silly.
There is truth to your statement though. It has long been all white cast or predominantly white cast with token black or other POC. It would be nice to see the reverse.

[Jalysia]

I'm certain that The X-Men maybe more his wheelhouse than Black Panther (I'm certain he's not a huge fan of the character, hence the butchering of the mythos), but Coates has the pacing of a dead slug, and it takes forever to move a story forward.

[butterflykyss]

For you Foxmen Storm lovers, Alexandra Shipp says Storm is kicking bootay in this film:

One thing both Shipp and Smit-McPhee made clear: this movie is all about the X-Women. "I was really excited when I read through the script when I first got it because Storm is kicking ass," said Shipp, "She is kicking all the bootay."


https://toofab.com/2019/04/04/x-men-...s-hoult-video/

[butterflykyss]

Happy Friday Storm Fans!!!!

[stormstan]

I'm certain that The X-Men maybe more his wheelhouse than Black Panther (I'm certain he's not a huge fan of the character, hence the butchering of the mythos), but Coates has the pacing of a dead slug, and it takes forever to move a story forward.

Agreed. One of the reason I didn't continue reading this arc. I'll read the ending of the arc though.

[Peanutsinspace]

Lately I've been reading Previously On X-Men by Eric Lewald. In it he interviews many of the cast and crew of the 90's animated series, one of which was the late Len Wein who wrote four episodes on the show and co-created many popular X-Men including Storm. I thought some of you might find some of his insights interesting, particularly in the creation of Storm and the eventual treatment of Chris Claremont.


Len Wein: The idea to resuscitate the X-Men came from somebody upstairs, one of the accountants, of all people. He discovered that some of the Marvel books were selling very well in foreign countries, so he thought if we did a book combining heroes from those countries, it might sell. He pushed this idea for several years...When I co-created Wolverine for The Incredible Hulk (1974), I specifically made him a mutant, so if they needed a Canadian mutant, they had a Canadian mutant, little knowing I'd be the guy stuck with the (new X-Men) assignment. To this day, I'm not sure exactly what happened. The guy they had in line for the book just didn't pan out, and so editor-in-chief Roy Thomas calls me and says, "Do you wanna write the X-Men?" I said, "Sure, why not." He says, "You know we're going to do a whole new book, it's brand new, almost from scratch?"

Eric Lewald: With almost all new characters.

LW: Almost, about a third of them are old. He said, "Your artist is Dave Cockrum." I danced around the floor for a little bit, Dave, God rest him, was an amazingly talented artist and one of the great costume designers of all time. He had three or four binder books that he kept with him, full of costume designs; for most there weren't even characters to go with them, just possible visuals for characters. We decided to go through this books and see what worked for us, what looked good. We managed to cull what became Colossus, what became Nightcrawler, what became Thunderbird. There were two other characters: one called Black Cat and another called either Tempest or Typhoon, with weather powers. These last two characters were not coming together for us, we couldn't make them work. We went to Roy and said, "Hi, we've got these last two characters, not working." We described them. He said, "Well, one's got a good personality, the other sounds like she has a good power. Why don't you just combine them?" That gave us Storm.

EL: It's amazing how many simple answers to seemingly unsurmountable problems make memorable characters in TV, in books. It's just a craftsperson doing this day-in and day-out work, who's done it a hundred times, thinking, "I know how you can fix that." Suddenly someone is born who lives for 40 years as a character.

LW: Exactly. But that's how we got the characters. We decided what countries they came from, we put the book together, and we were off and running. The funny thing about the entire process was nobody from upstairs ever came down to tell us what countries the books were selling well in, so we chose our own. To this day I have no idea if the X-books ever sold two copies in nay of the countries we picked, but we tried to pick a good international group; we tried to pick a good power mix....

EL:As I understand it, you've got what turned out to be a huge success on your hands, but you didn't know it at the time. You write the first double issue, you've laid out the story for the next four issues, and you get a call saying, "Oh, by the way, we're going to bump you upstairs and take you off the book."

LW: "We're making you editor-in-chief." They said, "You've got room to write one book on the schedule." I was writing at that point Spider-Man, Thor, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and I'd just started X-Men. The powers that be said, "You can really only write one book a month and do this management job." I had been writing the Hulk for the longest time and having the best time; I loved writing my Hulk...Anyway, I figure, "All right, I'll stick with the Hulk," and I did for another year or so. In the meantime, I was looking for someone to replace me on X-Men. I was in the editors office in the bullpen and my whole crew was outside in the bigger room and Chris Claremont just sat there going, "Me! Me! I'll do it, me!" waving his hand like a windmill.

EL: Is he about your age, or is he a little younger?

LW: He's younger, he just looks a lot older (laughs).

EL: So you would've been in your late 20s and he was in his early 20s.

LW: Chris took over the X-Men and did it for the next seventeen years, and God bless him, I love the book. I have my frustrations with some of the things he did. For one thing, he gave an origin to Storm which was essentially the origin to Modesty Blaise, the famous fictional character by Peter O'Donnell, and I said "Really, you couldn't come up with one of your own?" He tended to never finish stories. He'd start these protracted things and then wander off and the next thing that interested him, and I'd yell at him, "Finish a story, pick one, finish it!"

EL: But he got the X-Men.

LW: Then he was sort of forcibly taken off the book by some incarnation of editorial that thought it was unhealthy for a company to rely on one writer for its backbone.

EL: By that time it had become by far the biggest title for Marvel.

LW: So they worked a very nice contract for Chris and took him off the book to put him on other things, and within six months I had stopped reading every X-book. They had become incomprehensible to me. At least Chris could juggle four or five titles a month of X-People and keep it all in focus.

EL: Good old management again, thinking you've got something going that's too good to be true, so let's mess with it and ruin it.

[butterflykyss]

Lately I've been reading Previously On X-Men by Eric Lewald. In it he interviews many of the cast and crew of the 90's animated series, one of which was the late Len Wein who wrote four episodes on the show and co-created many popular X-Men including Storm. I thought some of you might find some of his insights interesting, particularly in the creation of Storm and the eventual treatment of Chris Claremont.


Len Wein: The idea to resuscitate the X-Men came from somebody upstairs, one of the accountants, of all people. He discovered that some of the Marvel books were selling very well in foreign countries, so he thought if we did a book combining heroes from those countries, it might sell. He pushed this idea for several years...When I co-created Wolverine for The Incredible Hulk (1974), I specifically made him a mutant, so if they needed a Canadian mutant, they had a Canadian mutant, little knowing I'd be the guy stuck with the (new X-Men) assignment. To this day, I'm not sure exactly what happened. The guy they had in line for the book just didn't pan out, and so editor-in-chief Roy Thomas calls me and says, "Do you wanna write the X-Men?" I said, "Sure, why not." He says, "You know we're going to do a whole new book, it's brand new, almost from scratch?"

Eric Lewald: With almost all new characters.

LW: Almost, about a third of them are old. He said, "Your artist is Dave Cockrum." I danced around the floor for a little bit, Dave, God rest him, was an amazingly talented artist and one of the great costume designers of all time. He had three or four binder books that he kept with him, full of costume designs; for most there weren't even characters to go with them, just possible visuals for characters. We decided to go through this books and see what worked for us, what looked good. We managed to cull what became Colossus, what became Nightcrawler, what became Thunderbird. There were two other characters: one called Black Cat and another called either Tempest or Typhoon, with weather powers. These last two characters were not coming together for us, we couldn't make them work. We went to Roy and said, "Hi, we've got these last two characters, not working." We described them. He said, "Well, one's got a good personality, the other sounds like she has a good power. Why don't you just combine them?" That gave us Storm.

EL: It's amazing how many simple answers to seemingly unsurmountable problems make memorable characters in TV, in books. It's just a craftsperson doing this day-in and day-out work, who's done it a hundred times, thinking, "I know how you can fix that." Suddenly someone is born who lives for 40 years as a character.

LW: Exactly. But that's how we got the characters. We decided what countries they came from, we put the book together, and we were off and running. The funny thing about the entire process was nobody from upstairs ever came down to tell us what countries the books were selling well in, so we chose our own. To this day I have no idea if the X-books ever sold two copies in nay of the countries we picked, but we tried to pick a good international group; we tried to pick a good power mix....

EL:As I understand it, you've got what turned out to be a huge success on your hands, but you didn't know it at the time. You write the first double issue, you've laid out the story for the next four issues, and you get a call saying, "Oh, by the way, we're going to bump you upstairs and take you off the book."

LW: "We're making you editor-in-chief." They said, "You've got room to write one book on the schedule." I was writing at that point Spider-Man, Thor, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and I'd just started X-Men. The powers that be said, "You can really only write one book a month and do this management job." I had been writing the Hulk for the longest time and having the best time; I loved writing my Hulk...Anyway, I figure, "All right, I'll stick with the Hulk," and I did for another year or so. In the meantime, I was looking for someone to replace me on X-Men. I was in the editors office in the bullpen and my whole crew was outside in the bigger room and Chris Claremont just sat there going, "Me! Me! I'll do it, me!" waving his hand like a windmill.

EL: Is he about your age, or is he a little younger?

LW: He's younger, he just looks a lot older (laughs).

EL: So you would've been in your late 20s and he was in his early 20s.

LW: Chris took over the X-Men and did it for the next seventeen years, and God bless him, I love the book. I have my frustrations with some of the things he did. For one thing, he gave an origin to Storm which was essentially the origin to Modesty Blaise, the famous fictional character by Peter O'Donnell, and I said "Really, you couldn't come up with one of your own?" He tended to never finish stories. He'd start these protracted things and then wander off and the next thing that interested him, and I'd yell at him, "Finish a story, pick one, finish it!"

EL: But he got the X-Men.

LW: Then he was sort of forcibly taken off the book by some incarnation of editorial that thought it was unhealthy for a company to rely on one writer for its backbone.

EL: By that time it had become by far the biggest title for Marvel.

LW: So they worked a very nice contract for Chris and took him off the book to put him on other things, and within six months I had stopped reading every X-book. They had become incomprehensible to me. At least Chris could juggle four or five titles a month of X-People and keep it all in focus.

EL: Good old management again, thinking you've got something going that's too good to be true, so let's mess with it and ruin it.

thanks for sharing this. its amazing how talented these group of men were. I'm sure when they created these characters they had no idea the impact they would have on so many lives over generations of people.

[yogaflame]

This guy right here...! (The caption is a bit of a stretch, but I'm still here for it!)

[AHRNIHAL]

This guy right here...! (The caption is a bit of a stretch, but I'm still here for it!)

Unavailable??? Article 13????

[nj06]

Happy Friday Storm Fans!!!!

Nice images. I love the 2nd one!

[Rosa Snarks]

For you Foxmen Storm lovers, Alexandra Shipp says Storm is kicking bootay in this film:

One thing both Shipp and Smit-McPhee made clear: this movie is all about the X-Women. "I was really excited when I read through the script when I first got it because Storm is kicking ass," said Shipp, "She is kicking all the bootay."


https://toofab.com/2019/04/04/x-men-...s-hoult-video/

We've heard this kind of lie before.

[Shreene]

After watching Captain Marvel (the movie), I wonder if Ororo can take Carol in a fair fight energy vs energy.

[yogaflame]

After watching Captain Marvel (the movie), I wonder if Ororo can take Carol in a fair fight energy vs energy.

I mean, it all depends on how movie Storm is displayed. Solar/cosmic winds, galactic cores, Trion dimensional membranes all say Ororo has a chance.

[Shreene]

I mean, it all depends on how movie Storm is displayed. Solar/cosmic winds, galactic cores, Trion dimensional membranes all say Ororo has a chance.

Did you noticed that in the "movie" Carol dematerialize thru a bulwark?