STORM

Publication Date: 17th Feb 2022
Written By: Peter Luzifer, Ruth and Monolith.
Alternate Versions

ALTERNATE VERSIONS - Page 1

In the grim timeline known as Days of Future Past, Storm was embittered and weary by all the death she had witnessed. She was among the last X-Men alive, and incarcerated in a concentration camp with some of her friends and teammates, Ororo took part in a mad plan to save the future by changing the past. While the mind of Kate Pryde was sent on her chronal journey, the other X-Men broke out of the concentration camp and attacked the main Sentinel base in a suicide run. Just like Wolverine and Colossus, Ororo was killed by Sentinels during the attack on the Baxter Building, thus she never learned that their plan had failed, for Kate had accidentally changed a different timeline’s past.


Trying to rescue Illyana Rasputin from her kidnapper, Belasco, an alternate team of X-Men became stranded in the sorcerer’s hellish Limbo. For some time, Ororo became a slave and apprentice of Belasco, but eventually she regained her freedom. As her weather powers waned, she embraced the magical side of her heritage. At one point, she even overpowered Belasco in a magical duel, only to realize that by killing him she would become as corrupted as he. When the main reality’s Illyana Rasputin became trapped in Limbo as well, Ororo tried to tutor the girl in white magic in order to lessen Belasco’s influence on her. However, Illyana ended up Belasco’s thrall anyway and, when Ororo tried to save the girl from Belasco, she was defeated. Before Belasco could damn her soul, though, Illyana mercy-killed her former mentor and set her free.


In the reality depicted in What if ? (2nd series) #12, several members of the X-Men and the New Mutants accepted Loki’s offer stay behind in Asgard, instead of returning to Earth, Storm among them. Having gotten rid of Thor by turning him into a frog, Loki wasted no time and tried to install Ororo as new ruler of Asgard after Odin’s death. This didn’t sit well with the Norn Queen Karnilla, who wanted her beloved Balder on the throne. Egged on by Hela, Karnilla started a war, while Thor - the Thunderfrog - attacked Loki and had to confront Storm as well. During the battle between the many different factions and groupings around Asgard, the sword of Surtur was destroyed and Loki’s spell was broken, returning Thor to his normal shape. Also, Balder was capable of stopping the war by agreeing to marry Karnilla. With the throne of Asgard still empty, Thor would have become the rightful ruler. However, he decided to openly renounce his birthright, as he felt Earth was his true home, and offered the throne to Storm instead. Ororo accepted and became a wise ruler of the Norse Gods in his stead.


At one point, the female Sphinx, a foe of the New Warriors, gained near omnipotence and managed to reshape the world in her image by altering the past. In the revamped reality of Forever Begins Yesterday, ancient Egypt was never overpowered. It was them who colonized America, resulting in the United States of Assyria. In this world, it was the Caucasian race that had been enslaved, but eventually liberated in a big Civil War, though they were still persecuted. Many people were not okay with this world order, and mutants eventually became the focal point for the rebellion. This era, however, also had an equivalent for the Avengers, the line-up Captain Assyria, an Afro-American version of Iron Man, Sceptre, Nova, the Egyptian God Horus (instead of Thor) and his wife, Storm. Part of their job was to keep the rebels at bay. Over time, the New Warriors slowly but surely remembered the timeline as it was supposed to be, and eventually managed to convince the Sphinx of her errors, until she changed everything back.


Instead of leaving Cairo for Kenya as a teenager, Ororo remained a thief in the alternate reality shown in What if ? (2nd series) #40.  When she was caught stealing from an older man, Herman Hassel, who turned out to be a retired thief himself, he saw potential in her and took her under his wing. Inspired by a tale he told her, Ororo called herself “Jack Black” and accompanied Herman to New York, where they successfully worked their craft. During one heist, Ororo was arrested by the police and, suffering from her claustrophobia while being locked up, Ororo manifested her weather powers and broke out. Later on, when Herman was scared by the X-Men (because of an important gem stone he had stolen), Ororo wanted to pay them back and attacked them. Professor Xavier managed to calm her down, though, as Herman had taught his charge to show respect towards her elders and the handicapped. Although Ororo refused Xavier’s offer to join the X-Men, feeling they didn’t live in the real world, the experience had changed her, and she decided to give up stealing and to return to Kenya to find out who she truly was.


In the Age of Apocalypse, the conflicts between mutants started several years earlier than in the main reality. When founding his X-Men, Magneto didn’t have the same hesitations Xavier did, and Storm was among the first group of students, regardless of the cultural shock it might have meant for her. Because of her earlier recruitment, Ororo was not worshipped as a goddess in Kenya for quite as long. This meant Storm was a bit more down to Earth and closer to her roots as a thief than a "goddess." While a staunch member of the X-Men, she initially did not become a leader, as those positions seemed to be reserved for Magneto and his extended family. Fighting side by side with him for years, Ororo in fact developed feelings for her team leader, Quicksilver.

After the fall of Apocalypse, Ororo grew into the role of leader with the X-Men, as they became official agents of the new American government. With the unfortunate passing of Quicksilver in battle with Sinister's Six and Magneto stepping down as Director of Mutant Affairs following a scandal, Storm remained one of the strongest voices among the X-Men. Time passed, however, and a new horror fell upon Manhattan. Storm, Logan and a squad of X-Men advanced upon the new Celestial Ship as it landed in New York. In the conflict that followed, Weapon X was corrupted by a Celestial Deathseed, becoming the new Apocalypse. He apparently killed most of the X-Men who accompanied him, but Storm was singled out and subjected to the same nano-geological process that turned the first Apocalypse's foe Ozymandias into his immortal scribe of sand and stone. Now called Orordius, Storm was twisted into serving her new master on his path to celestial evolution.


The timeline shown in What If? (2nd series) #79 diverged from the main reality on the fateful day when the X-Men’s shuttle passed cosmic radiation during re-entry to Earth. Jean Grey had been knocked out and could not pilot anymore, so instead it was Ororo who volunteered to steer the capsule with her elemental powers. However, she was not as successful as Jean, and all of the X-Men, except for Wolverine, died during the crash. Ororo seemingly survived and emerged from the wreckage as Stormphoenix, now displaying control absolute over all aspects of weather.

She erected a benevolent dictatorship on Earth, drawing young mutants to her side and freezing the superbeings who opposed her in the atmosphere. As she grew more cruel and detached from humanity, the remaining heroes, as well as her acolyte, Kitty, and her mentor, Ahadi, hatched a plan to get rid of her. They examined the space capsule and found the real Storm, who had been placed in a healing cocoon. Kitty took over her body and they confronted Stormphoenix as the fake she was. Shocked back to its senses, the Phoenix left Earth, but the real Ororo died in the process, the strain having been too much for her comatose body.

 

 


When Earth’s heroes were taken to a distant planet by the Beyonder, to perform in the Secret Wars, it was only because of the scientific mind of Reed Richards that they could return home. However, in the reality shown in What If? (2nd series) #114, Reed died during some battle with the super-villains that had also been  taken to the Beyonder’s planet, leaving both heroes and villains stuck there. Over time, they put their differences aside and settled down, realizing how futile their attempts to battle each other was in their isolated situation. In two decades that followed, some of the heroes fell in love with each other, and even had offspring. Storm was together with Wolverine, and they had at least two kids. Their eldest daughter, Kendall, had inherited her mother’s weather powers, as well as some traits from her father. Taking the codename Torrent, Kendall joined several other super-powered teenagers to form a new group of Avengers - at first to stop the evil schemes of the son of Dr. Doom. Later on, a way back to Earth was uncovered, but in the meantime it had been overrun by Sentinels. The new Avengers decided to try to overthrow them.


In the Earth X timeline, Storm was happily married to her childhood crush, the Black Panther, and lived as queen of Wakanda. A large number of their kingdom was inhabited by the Ani-Men, mutated humanoid animals, capable of speech. At first, it was believed they had been changed by the Inhuman Terrigen Mists that had been accidentally released into the atmosphere and evolved all of humanity, however it was later discovered that it was T’Challa’s subconscious doing. Captain America had given him the cosmic cube for safeguarding and, without even realizing it, the Panther was tapping into its reality-warping power. Not even when alerted to this fact did he want to accept it, but when Ororo was killed in battle, and miraculously reanimated by T’Challa, he saw the truth. Happy to have his wife back, he gave away the cube to Captain Marvel, who wanted to use it for creating a paradise in the afterlife.


The main reality’s Storm got lucky after she was bitten by Dracula, as her transformation into a vampire wasn’t complete and could be reversed. Her counterpart from the Mutant X universe, wasn’t as fortunate and she turned into a vampire. Nevertheless, she refused to give in to being evil and fed only from her lover, Forge. The only time she ever turned another human into a vampire was when her close friend, Gambit, whom she had accompanied during a heist, was about to die and begged for her to keep him alive, no matter what. Under the name Bloodstorm, Ororo joined Havok’s team, the Six, most of whom had broken away from the X-Men, as they didn’t trust Magneto. During a time when her teammate, the Brute, aka Hank McCoy, temporarily regained his intellect, he developed a partial cure for the constant bloodlust Bloodstorm felt and had to keep at bay. Later on, after most heroes of this reality had died in battle against the Beyonder and the Goblyn Force, Bloodstorm was one of several people from alternate realities who were recruited to aid the people in the Earth X timeline. In return for her services, Ororo was fully cured of her vampirism with a blood transfusion from her counterpart.

A second Bloodstorm also existed in the multiverse, and eventually wound up on Earth-616 with the Goblin Queen's HeX-Men. Younger than other versions of Ororo, this Bloodstorm found a home with the time-displaced Original Five X-Men after turning on the Goblin Queen. She and teen Cyclops had a flirtation, which was awkward due to the psychic link between him and Jean Grey. Eventually, however, Bloodstorm was murdered by the Hound master, Ahab.


A car thief hailing from Morocco, Storm was recruited by the X-Men in the Ultimate universe. Seeming somewhat bubbly and shallow at the beginning, she nevertheless dated the physically different-looking Beast. Their relationship suffered, however, when the insecure Hank got it in his head that the telepathic Charles Xavier pushed Ororo into loving him so he felt encouraged to stay with the X-Men. Storm suffered terribly when Beast was killed and changed both her look and attitude afterwards. Later on, she seemed to have come into herself and displays a calmer more reasonable attitude, even showing clear leadership potential. However, the mass casualties and devastation caused by Magneto's Ultimatum Wave changed everything. Xavier, Cyclops, and Wolverine were among the dead, and legislation against mutants followed which had Storm placed in government custody. She and Colossus spent time in a mutant concentration camp out west before Kitty Pryde and her allies led a mass uprising and claimed a parcel of land as a mutant reservation thanks to President Captain America. Storm became a part of this "Utopia", working with several mutants like Blackheath, Magma, and Zero to sculpt the land and environment into a suitable home for their people. She and Sam (Blackheath) grew closer as they combined their weather- and plant-powers to create a mutant super-seed for Utopia's benefit.


A variation of Storm was chosen by the mysterious Time Broker to aid Weapon X in their cross-dimensional missions. Little is known about this Ororo; apparently she was already in full control of her power, despite the fact that she was only sixteen years old. She seemed rather arrogant and heartless, and had learned witchcraft from her uncle. In fact, she was the ruler of half of Africa in her reality. That didn’t help her much, though, for Storm was killed during one of Weapon X’s missions, only to be replaced by some other timeline’s Hyperion.