The following contains spoilers for Storm #7, on sale now from Marvel Comics.
The «From the Ashes» era has taken a fascinating approach to the topic of anniversary issues. As we have seen over the years, it is often a fun thing to celebrate a character’s anniversary, and, of course, as we’ve discussed a number of times over the years, what a comic book company will term an «anniversary» is often quite hilarious. These anniversary issues are often marked by special issues that tie into the fact that it is an «anniversary» issue, which, of course, leads to some strange stuff when you have multiple «anniversaries» on top of each other, so that’s how we came to have Incredible Hulk #393 become an «anniversary» issue (celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Hulk’s first appearance) but then Incredible Hulk #400 ALSO being an «anniversary» issue (celebrating the 400th issue of Hulk’s comic book, which, of course, wasn’t ACTUALLY Hulk’s comic book until the 60th issue, and wasn’t even TITLED Incredible Hulk until its 102nd issue!). However, «From the Ashes» has mostly been doing what DC Comics used to do in the old days, which is that they would acknowledge on the cover that it was, in fact, an anniversary issue, but then NOT acknowledge it in the issue itself, so we just had the 300th issue of X-Factor go that route, and now, the 50th anniversary of Storm has also gone that route in Storm #7.
Storm #7 is from writer Murewa Ayodele, artist Luciano Vecchio, colorists Alex Guimarães and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo, and letterer Travis Lanham, and it continues the evolution of «Eternity Storm,» the journey of Storm having merged with Eternity (or becoming the host of Eternity? It’s all kind of a semantics situation). This time around, Storm is running afoul of other Thunder Gods on Earth, and they’ll find that they’ve very much unprepared for the Thunder Goddess that is Storm.
How has Lucciano Vecchio evolved into a comic book superstar?
When I first encountered Luciano Vecchio’s work, he was doing animated comic books (you know, comic books based on cartoon series), and while he was quite good at it, it’s sort of a house style sort of deal, as the storytelling was always there, but you’re not getting the «true» style of an artist when they have to draw like, say, Bruce Timm or whatever. He has since done a number of short stints on different books at Marvel over the years, while becoming one of the top variant cover artists around. His work has developed to the point where he had his real breakout series last year with The Resurrection of Magneto miniseries, which tied into the end of the X-Men’s Krakoan Era. However, as good as he was on that series, he has stepped up his game even MORE in this short stint on Storm, and I assume that his talents here are what led to him recently being named as the regular 1B artist on Uncanny X-Men to David Marquez’s 1A. Marquez is doing such a great job on that book that it really says a lot to say that Vecchio is a worthy shared lead artist with him on that series.
Alex Guimarães and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo do a great job assisting Vecchio, as a lot of what Vecchio is pulling off in this issue is very much tied into the different saturations of the pages with the colors. He achieves some really distinctive, and very COOL looking backdrops to some very clever design choices. You feel like you’re reading through, like, a series of classic paintings almost with how EPIC he makes so many of the panels look. It’s just an outstanding piece of work, and especially when you contrast it with the flashforward at the start of the issue where we see a future where Eternity and Oblivion are at war, and Vecchio and his colorists draw that in a whole different style. Vecchio has really just become a superstar artist right in front of our eyes.
How is Storm being pulled into a Thunder War?
As good as the art in this issue is (and, again, it is REALLY good), I certainly don’t mean to short change the work of Murewa Ayodele, who has given Storm what will almost certainly end up becoming her most successful ongoing series that she’s ever had (only the second one she’s ever had, but still! As noted before, The Incredible Hulk’s long-running series was also HIS second chance at an ongoing). Ayodele’s decision to have Storm become Eternity Storm has clearly upended SOME sort of cosmic balance, as we see that her changed status is drawing the ire of the other Thunder Gods of the Marvel Universe, forcing Storm to really go all out to take down the other Thunder Gods (Ayodele cleverly goes into a few different cultures for their Gods of Thunder, almost all of whom have appeared at SOME point in either a Thor or a Hercules comic book, although some, like Mamaragan, the Aboriginal god of lightning, I believe is making its first appearance outside of a Thor/Hercules handbook entry in this issue).
Ayodele has made it a point, though, to never make the book become TOO much of just «What feat will Storm pull off this issue?,» as he has made sure to ground the book in Storm’s humanity, which in this issue is both her friendship with Maggott, but also her somewhat uneasy relationship with her Avengers teammate, Iron Man, who asks her for a favor, and then gives her a bit of an attitude over the fact that she didn’t keep something secret in the first issue of the series that he would have prefered she kept secret. She knows she wasn’t his first choice for this mission (Thor was), but she accepts it anyways.
The cliffhanger of the issue is a great one, setting up what could be an epic battle next issue. While this issue really didn’t reference Storm’s 50th anniversary explicitly, it was still a worthwhile celebration of Storm nonetheless.
