Fictional Women Around the World: Storm

The X-Men character Storm was one of the  most powerful characters, and had a huge lasting impact. We excavate all of the complex storylines that made this character one that people love.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
I never told you a production of iHeartRadio. And welcome
to another edition of the sub Sub Sub Sub segment
Fictional Women around the World. And I'm just going to

(00:25):
say I've been putting this one off, oh because it's huge. Oh,
but we're finally doing an episode on Storm from the
X Men. Now that being said, this character does have
an enormous history, and not just a fictional one, but
one that reflects societal touchstones at the time. She was
written like the US Civil rights movement, a lot of

(00:49):
social movements. So I think we should do a full
length episode on her and all the stuff around her.
But for now, we're doing a condensed segment, all right,
and best let's see. Don't test me. I do love Storms.
She was one of my favorite She was one of

(01:09):
my favorite X Men for sure. But on top of
that standard Marvel disclaimer, Oh my gosh, reboots, Red cons
so many conflicting narratives multiverses there is no way we
could possibly cover them all here or even in a
full length episode. To be honest, I'll talk about her

(01:33):
accent changes in the actual show. No, I don't talk
much about the movies in here, honestly. Okay, okay, but yes,
that is something we could revisit. Yeah, I will say this,
We're largely focusing on her earlier stories. Okay, And if
you didn't know, I'm always curious if someone will be like, oh,
I've never heard of X Men. X Men is a

(01:54):
huge property with over twelve movies I think, and now
Disney is involved, so who knows what's going to happen.
A ton of comics, of which Storm appeared in over
seven five hundred of them. She's in games, she's the products,
et cetera. She is a popular character. She's in all

(02:15):
kinds of things. With all that said, Storm is one
of the most powerful mutants in the X Men universe,
with the ability to control the weather. They are actually
really fun limitations she has that I love. It's like
about atmospheric pressure and stuff. Oh so nerdy. She was
first introduced as a character in nineteen seventy five's giant

(02:38):
sized X Men Number one comic, developed by writers and
artists Lynn Wine and Dave Cockrum. This comic was looking
to revamp the X Men franchise and renew interest, and
one way they were going about doing that was introducing
new mutants, and a lot of them were multinational and multicultural.

(02:59):
You can imagine some of them were better representations than others,
but Storm was one. Later Chris Claremont took over writing
of this character and gets a lot of credit for
her earlier storylines. So for the origin story, Storm was
born Aroa Monroe in New York. Her mother was a

(03:21):
Kenyan woman descended from royalty, while her father was an
African American photographer. As a baby, she and her parents
moved to Cairo, and at the age of five, her
parents died after a plane crashed into their home. I
don't remember that. The crash buried her and her dead parents,

(03:42):
her alive parents dead, and left her with claustrophobia that
she would continue to struggle with for the rest of
her life. It took her three days to dig herself out,
so pretty grim origin story. From there, she survived by
pickpocketing on the streets of Cairo until she eventually traveled

(04:03):
to Kenya and discovered her ability to control the weather.
Some of this is kind of, like I said, a
lot's happening in these comics, so some of the timeline
is a little messy. She then started to use her
powers to do things like water the crops for the
local so she was really respected. Eventually, word got out
to Professor ex leader of the X Men, and he

(04:24):
recruited her to join. After she tried to pickpocket in
he was like, think, I know where you should go,
and this is where she learned she's descended from a
line of African women who were mutants. Just to break
down her powers a bit, because they are pretty cool.
Storm cannot create situations that do not exist on Earth.

(04:44):
If she's upset, she can accidentally manifest a storm. So
her emotional and physical wellbeing play a role in her abilities,
and in some instances she can control the air in
the human body or the pressure in the human ear.
She's also connected to the Earth and can occasionally feel
its pain. On top of that, she's really skilled. I know, right,

(05:07):
it sucks. Oh, okay, keep going. Yes, no, I had
the same reaction. She is also very skilled in combat,
weaponry and piloting. Honestly, if I had listed all of
her skills it would be forever. But she's all around
a good fighter. You want her on your team and yes,
condensing here Okay. At one point she lost her powers.

(05:31):
At one point, she was married to T'Challa aka Black Panther.
It didn't in will. She became a leader of the
X Men of the team and Wolverine. No it wasn't Wolverine,
it well, no, Wolverine did push back against her at first,
and then Cyclops came in and was like, I feel

(05:51):
like I should be leader. But she won the battle
between them, and ultimately people were like, yes, she's the leader,
we accept you. She was possessed by Dracula, yes, yes,
uh huh, they go places Samantha. Because of her strength,
she attracted a lot of enemies who wanted to use
her abilities. She was deaged at one point and teamed

(06:17):
up with a Gambit, who you probably know is like
the New Orleans Gambler mutant. She led a rescue efforts
of mutant children. She learned she could become an elemental being.
She had a thor like hammer at one point. And yes,
there's a multiverse too, so there's lots lots of different storms.

(06:39):
But she's I think what they call her Class six,
Omega six. She's like one of the most powerful mutants,
and this leadership part was really big. She lost her powers,
thinks in part to a dude who she was romantically
interested in. I might they had kind of a strange relationship.
Returned to Africa to sort some things within her, and

(07:01):
then returned to challenge Psyclops to a duel, as I said,
over who should lead the X Men, and she won
without her powers. This was so new at the time
to see a black woman leading in mainstream media like this,
and she did it even without her abilities. Who this

(07:22):
character is often praised as the one that got the
ground work, the backstory, and led to her becoming a leader,
so like people really put in the work instead of
like shoehorning in a token, you know, Like it was like, really,
she had a really fascinating story and she had these
really interesting powers, and people really liked her. She also

(07:43):
became friends with Jean Gray, who helped her acclimate to
Western culture and overcome or at least manage her claustrophobia.
I don't know if this is true, but one thing
I read said she lost her virginity to black panther
at the age of twelve. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know if that's sure, but I did read that somewhere.

(08:04):
No I don't like this either. After that she killed
a man after an attempted sexual assault in nineteen eighty three,
her look changed drastically, with a white mohawk and a
lot of leather. I laughed because apparently the artist was
doing a joking riff on mister t who. I realize
a lot of people listening might not know, and it stuck.

(08:28):
I think maybe a lot of people listening don't know.
I can't be wrong, right in Oh No, this was
for the uncanny X men, and I will say she
was not immune to the sexy costume treatment. I can't
think of a single woman comic book character who was,
off the top of my head. I'm sure someone, but

(08:49):
a lot of hers weren't terrible. Some of them were,
but a lot of them were okay. But yeah, she
was just this hugely impactful character, truly arconic. I'm one
of the first black women leaders in this space, and
she is really popular to this day, ranks as one

(09:10):
of the most popular X men. She's just cool and
her powers are cool. She's a good leader with a
good story. Please write in if there's any storyline our
thoughts you have about this character that you think we
should come back to because I do want to do
a whole episode on her. You can email us at
Hello at stuff Onever Told You dot com. You can

(09:30):
find us on zoo sky at mom Stuff podcast, or
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We're also on YouTube. We have a teepelt the store,
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get your books. Thanks as always too our super producer
Christina expect to producer My and a contribute Joey. Thank
you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never
Told You is protection of my heart Radio. For more
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(09:51):
favorite sho