Ororo MunroeStorm

As a storied, veteran X-Men member Storm is one of the most powerful mutants on Earth. A trusted and wise leader of the team, with the ability to control and manipulate weather patterns, Storm creates a legacy of both freedom-fighting and mentorship, forever aware of how emotions can cause one’s powers to spiral out of control.

The Rains Down in Africa

The daughter of a rebellious Kenyan princess, N’Dare, and an American photographer, David Munroe, Ororo is born in Harlem in New York, though her family relocates to Cairo, Egypt when she was six-months-old. A few years later, N’Dare and David are tragically killed when a plane crashes into their house. Though she survives the event, Ororo would develop claustrophobia due to her time trapped in the rubble of her home. Left an orphan to wander the streets, Ororo picks pockets and steals to survive.

Ororo eventually leaves Egypt and heads south on foot with the goal of reaching her ancestral homeland. However, she almost dies while crossing the Sahara, triggering Ororo’s latent mutant powers over weather, allowing her to save a kidnapped Prince T’Challa who would become Black Panther. She then spends time wandering the Serengeti as a young woman, bringing rain to those in dire need, which transforms her into a worshiped “goddess” among local tribes.

Working with Ororo to defeat fellow weather manipulator Deluge, Professor Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, asks her to join a new version of the X-Men; one which would help rescue the original team from the living island of Krakoa. She accepts Xavier’s invitation and receives the code name Storm.

The Perfect Storm

Along with being a highly skilled fighter and thief, Storm is an atmokinetic, able to psionically control the elemental forces that preside over weather. For example, she can end a drought in one area by creating torrential rains there, but that would necessitate robbing all available moisture from the surrounding area. She can redirect winds and alter their intensity from a light zephyr to hurricane force, utilize wind currents to carry herself and others aloft at up to 300 mph, accomplishing flight, while protecting herself and any passengers from air friction, raise or lower humidity and temperature around her, draw moisture from the air to create precipitation such as rain or fog, induce lightning and other electrical atmospheric phenomena, and disperse natural storms. She can also focus effects in a specific direction, such as causing lightning bolts to project from her hands. At times, she’s been able to control the air in someone’s lungs and the air pressure in a person’s inner ear.

Storm can also manipulate weather patterns to generate localized effects, even indoors or within artificially maintained environments. Her control over weather is such that she can redirect certain effects over a specific area while shielding smaller areas within, such as causing a rainstorm to form around herself but preventing the rain itself from touching her. 

However, Storm cannot create atmospheric conditions that do not exist naturally in her environment. For example, she cannot lower temperatures to absolute zero or raise them to solar intensities. While in space, she can manipulate the solar wind—the stream of electrically charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star.  

Storm’s control over weather is limited by the strength of both her will and her body, and is also affected by her emotions; hence, if she becomes angry and does not maintain control, she can subconsciously manifest a thunderstorm. Storm’s body also changes temperature in opposition to her environment, so that the colder the weather the warmer her body becomes and vice versa. She can alter her visual perception so as to perceive electrical energy patterns as well as those factors responsible for existing meteorological phenomena in her surrounding environment.

Storm is also ecopathically linked to the Earth itself—a connection that creates empathy within her toward life everywhere, big and small. Extreme geological changes can cause her psychic pain.

At times, she wears a cameo gem that serves as an interdimensional portal; the full properties of this gem are unrevealed. Storm is also a gifted hand-to-hand combatant, is highly skilled at wielding a knife and experienced with a bo staff; she trains in sword fighting by Wakanda’s finest warriors, and is an excellent marksman, thanks to training from James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine. Storm is also an accomplished pilot, a skilled tactician and leader, a burgeoning diplomat. During her brief time as goddess of thunder, Storm wields Stormcaster, a hammer forged by the dwarf Eitri that functions similarly to Thor Odinson, AKA Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, and would return to her hand after being thrown.

Storm comes from a centuries-long line of African priestesses, all of whom possessed distinctive white hair, blue eyes, and powerful “magic.” As such, she has profound mystical and sorcerous potential. During their attempt to thwart Mzungu, AKA Deluge, it was Xavier who told her that her powers stem from being a mutant.

Friendly Forecast

Losing her parents so young forces Ororo into an early life of scavenging and isolation, thus making the friends she is connected to as an adult all the more significant. When Ororo joins the X-Men, Jean Grey is the first to reach out to her, helping her acclimate and adjust to Western culture. Jean also helps Storm through her claustrophobia and overcome her panic attacks. The pair become quite close.

Despite inventing the weapon that robbed her of her powers at one point, the mutant inventor Forge wins Ororo over and the two of them remain a complicated romantic couple for a time, before that relationship comes to an end.

Storm later becomes the Queen of Wakanda when she marries the warrior she’d met in her youth, T’Challa. The two are a formidable couple until their harsh split after Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner, and the Atlanteans devastate Wakanda.

Joining, and in many cases leading, groups like the X-Men, the Morlocks, and the New Mutants has provided Storm with many close friends and allies, including Kurt Wagner, AKA Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Remy LeBeau, AKA Gambit, Piotr Rasputin, AKA Colossus, and numerous others. One friend in particular, the free-spirited ninja Yukio,  inspires Ororo to cut her hair into a distinctive mohawk.

X-Men founder Charles Xavier is a mentor and surrogate father-figure for Storm and the main inspiration for her becoming a mentor to other younger pupils, like Kitty Pryde and the New Mutants. Frequent X-Men team leader Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, is also a key ally in Storm’s life, though an on-again, off-again rivalry  grows between the two, beginning during her initial time as leader during his first leave of absence from the team.

Frosty Foes

Storm has a mighty list of enemies, gathered both during her X-Men career and her time away from the team. As part of the X-Men, she continually faces the likes of Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, the Adversary, Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister, the Hellfire Club, Dark Phoenix, and more.

Quite often, because of how powerful she is, Storm finds herself the target of villains who seek to use her as a pawn in order to exploit her abilities, sometimes manipulating her memories in an effort to control her. Loki Laufeyson, AKA Loki, is one such schemer, using Storm while she’s  powerless, by restoring her abilities and brainwashing her into thinking she’s the “Goddess of Thunder” in an attempt to discredit his stepbrother Thor.

Storm’s memories are also wiped for a time by the crazed scientist known as the Nanny, who planned on using her abilities to make orphans out of the world’s super-powered children.

Frequent X-Men foe En Sabah Nur, AKA Apocalypse, sees a special significance in Storm, attempting to turn her into a member of the Twelve—a group of mutants prophesied to bring about a new golden age of powered individuals as the master race.

Amahl Farouk, AKA the Shadow King, has been an ongoing mutant adversary of Storm’s dating back to a brief encounter in her childhood. Since then, the Shadow King returns many times to menace Storm, her teammates, and those under her tutelage.

Ride the Lightning

Like the raging weather she commands, Storm has racked up some tumultuous times, both on and off Earth, and during her exploits with the X-Men and beyond.

After Ororo was orphaned, she was briefly taken in by Achmed el-Gibar, an Egyptian master thief who taught her how to be an expert pickpocket. It was during her time as a young thief, in the wake of the death of her parents, that Ororo first encountered Charles Xavier in Egypt, years before he recruited her into the X-Men, when she attempted to steal his wallet. Coincidentally, this was the very moment the Shadow King  unleashed a psionic attack on Xavier, allowing Ororo to escape.

Ororo then left Egypt and, during the arduous journey that followed, killed a man in self-defense after he attempted to sexually assault her. Later, after saving the life of the young Wakandan Prince T’Challa, Storm returned to her ancestral homeland and was taken in by a village elder, Ainet, who taught her to control her burgeoning mutant powers.

While chasing a thief into a subway tunnel, alongside teammate and friend Jean Grey, Storm was halted by a crippling bout of claustrophobia for the first time since she joined the X-Men - the result of her being trapped under rubble as a child when her parents were killed.

Storm’s claustrophobia would rear its ugly head a few more times during her early adventures with the X-Men, including after Sean Cassidy, AKA Banshee’s home, Cassidy’s Keep, was attacked by Cain Marko, AKA Juggernaut, and Sean’s brother Thomas, AKA Black Tom Cassidy, and then again when Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom, transformed her into a statue of organic chrome. While frozen, Storm subconsciously controlled weather patterns all over the world, creating a raging thunderstorm.

Storm would soon have to watch as Jean became conflicted between her feelings for her friends and loved ones and her new destructive impulses as Dark Phoenix—the result of a cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force that had given her incredible new powers. Though it was eventually revealed to not be the true Jean, but rather the Phoenix Force itself posing as her, “Jean” eventually sacrificed herself in order to save billions of innocent lives, a loss which Storm and her X-Men teammates were all heavily impacted by.

Following Jean’s apparent death and Cyclops’ departure from the team, Storm was made leader of the X-Men, and rose to the occasion. Cyclops would eventually return to challenge Storm as leader, but Ororo worked past her own insecurities to stand up for her position.

Storm was later turned into a vampire by Dracula, who sought her out for her prowess as a thief. Dracula later would be defeated by a mutant Storm had taken under her wing, young X-Men recruit Kitty Pryde, who at the time was possessed by Dracula’s daughter Lilith.

During a battle with Sentinels, Emma Frost swapped bodies with Storm, and while she was able to get her body back, she didn’t trust Frost for the violation. While battling the monster alien invaders called the Brood, Storm chose to end her own life rather than have the Brood egg inside of her hatch and transform her into one of them. However, discovering that she could also control cosmic solar energy, Storm overloaded her body and killed the egg. Then, while drifting unprotected in cold space, she was saved by a caretaker member of the alien Acanti race, who helped her heal and return to her old self.

Storm challenged, and bested, the Morlock Callisto after the sewer-dwelling mutants kidnapped Warren Worthington III, AKA Angel. Almost killing Callisto in the process, Storm was named new Morlock leader. After resenting Storm for a long time, Callisto finally grew to respect her.

Storm lost all of her powers after being shot by government agent Henry Gyrich, who wielded a weapon invented by the mutant Forge. While she rested and healed, she fell in love with Forge, but their relationship ended once she discovered that he’d been the one to craft the device that stole her abilities.

After some time away from the X-Men, as she processed the loss of her powers, Storm would again become involved with both her longtime team and the younger New Mutants, helping possessed New Mutant Xi’an Manh, AKA Karma fight off the Shadow King’s influence. Storm would briefly have her abilities restored by Loki, who wished to usurp his brother Thor’s status by making her the “Goddess of Thunder,” and even equipped her with the hammer, Stormcaster. But the X-Men and the New Mutants arrived to help and therefore she rejected Loki, finding herself powerless once more.

Fully part of the X-Men again, Storm bested Cyclops in combat, despite her lack of powers, when Cyclops openly challenged her over who should lead the team moving forward.

Sometime later, Storm and Forge’s paths crossed again when his mentor, who was possessed by the Adversary, convinced her that Forge had turned evil. After being tricked into almost killing Forge, the Adversary banished them both to another dimension where they spent a full year together and rekindled their romance, while Forge was able to invent a device to finally restore Ororo’s powers.

Returning home, Storm rejoined her teammates, but soon after, all of the X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary. The team was resurrected by an Omniversal Guardian named Roma, but initially opted to keep their resurrection a secret and operated out of Australia during this period.

After the X-Men were attacked by the Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, Storm was captured and a S.H.I.E.L.D. LMD was used to fake her death. Nanny then transformed Storm into her pre-teens in order to more easily contain her, but Storm’s claustrophobia would then provide her with enough power to overload Nanny’s systems, creating a window for escape.

Storm, in her younger amnesiac form, would meet fellow mutant thief Gambit while being targeted by the Shadow King in New Orleans. She would later introduce Gambit to the X-Men. Storm would also eventually be restored to adulthood on the island nation of Genosha.

When the X-Men split into two distinct strike teams, Storm would serve as co-leader alongside Cyclops. During this period, Forge proposed to her, but her hesitation led him to leave her.

A glimpse of an alternate future, during Apocalypse’s attempt to use Storm to form the prophesied Twelve, revealed just how unbelievably powerful and omnipotent she could be if she gave into the full extent of her powers and became a wholly elemental being.

Following “M Day,” when a deranged Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, caused half the world to lose their powers, Storm was reunited with T’Challa in Africa, accepting his marriage proposal. Together, they opposed the Superhuman Registration Act, and Ororo would go on to juggle her duties as Queen of Wakanda with her heroic duties around the world.

Those duties included joining the Avengers for the first time, though that would end when she sided with the X-Men against her new teammates during a crisis involving the mutants of Utopia. Namor’s destructive attack on Wakanda during this period led to T’Challa naming the X-Men enemies of his country and to the annulment of Ororo and T’Challa’s marriage.

Returning to her old teammates, Ororo took over as Headmistress of the Jean Grey School and fended off attacks from resurrected former Utopia student Kenji Uedo. She also became leader of the first all-female X-Men group, which included Betsy Braddock, AKA Psylocke, Jubilee, Rachel Grey, Anna Marie, AKA Rogue, and Kitty Pryde.

Following the death of Wolverine, Storm would become the X-Men’s only leader. A crisis would erupt after Inhuman Terrigen Mist was released into Earth's atmosphere, threatening mutants on a mass scale with a disease known as M-Pox. Assisted by Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, among others, Storm created a sanctuary within Limbo called X-Haven. Her actions managed to save the lives of many of her fellow mutants.

When the mists threatened to make the Earth unviable for mutants, Storm led her people to war against the Inhumans to buy time for the X-Men to rid the world of the mists. Though Inhuman Queen Medusalith Amaquelin Boltagon, AKA Medusa, destroyed the mist cloud, ending the crisis. Storm felt since she chose violence over peace that she could no longer lead the X-Men and asked Kitty Pryde to take over. As her first order of business, Kitty ordered Storm to stay as she was the heart and soul of the X-Men and a needed protector they couldn’t lose.

When Strom’s adoptive mother, Ainet, passed, she traveled to Uzuri, the African village she used to call home to pay her respects. But when she arrived, she came head-to-head with a death cult, led by the god Uovu who resurrected and possessed dead villagers, and turned them against Storm. She called for her Asgardian hammer Stormcaster only to find that it abandoned her, or so she thought. It arrived just in time for her to prevent her own death at the hands of Uovu and thanks to Stormcaster opening a portal near the X-Men, they arrived ready to help. They protected the villagers while Storm battled Uovu, using what waning Asgardian energies Stormcaster had left. As soon as Uovu was defeated, the turned villagers, including her resurrected family and Ainet, slowly disintegrated into dust. Before Ainet crumbled, she forgave Storm for leaving Uzuri. After burying the dead, Storm made a promise to herself to return to Uzuri as often as possible, not as a goddess or “wind-rider” as she was seen, but as a friend.

When Nate Grey, AKA X-Man, rewrote reality and created a pocket dimension utopia using the Life Seed, mutants lost their memories of their real lives, including Storm. She awoke in the mutant utopia and was still part of the X-Men, however, in this world, intimate relationships were outlawed and policed by the world’s police, Department X. This law was rejected by revolutionaries like the X-Tracts, led by Apocalypse. But the real reality started to bleed through when Storm had a shared vision with Magneto that showed them their past lives.

Speaking to him about it privately, she recognized that the visions felt like memories and asked if Apocalypse could be wielding reality-shaping powers, but their conversation was interrupted by X-Man, who sensed a disturbance elsewhere and needed them to investigate. They came upon a mysterious rift, which showed them more of their memories but X-Man blasted them away to close the rift. Storm and the X-Men soon investigated the murder of Clerk Moneta of Department X and thanks to Lin Li, AKA Nature Girl’s powers of speaking with nature, they not only discovered Apocalypse was her killer, but also that X-Man had created their world. This new information was confirmed by telepaths Clerk Psylocke (Braddock) and Jean. Storm and the X-Men raced to confront X-Man and when they did, he admitted everything and reverted reality back to its original form.

Storm soon traveled to Wakanda to help Queen Shuri and the Queen-Mother Ramonda during T’Challa’s absence. Once he returned, he informed them about the coming threat: the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, a detachment of Wakandans 2,000 years prior who established an empire in the cosmos that enslaved people. T’Challa had been captured by the empire,  mind-wiped and turned into a slave, which explained his absence. Still harboring feelings for T’Challa, he had changed and connected with General Nakia Cabral of the empire’s rebellion during his time away. She studied Nakia, and after seeing her bravery, valor and compassion, while considering the other battles she had to fight, Storm stepped aside, making room for Nakia in T’Challa’s life, and aided them against the threat.

Storm then helped Xavier and Magneto lay the groundwork for a safe-haven for mutants. Their intention was to create a sovereign island nation-state on Krakoa. To start, Storm began planting Krakoan flowers in Westchester at the X-Mansion, which grew into both gateways to Krakoa and habitats, with the mansion becoming the Graymalkin Habitat. Once the nation was built and recognized, Storm aided her fellow mutant heroes who were in the field against the anti-mutant organization Orchis, who was building a Mother Mold Sentinel. Though the mutants seemingly succeeded in their mission, they all perished in the attack. Xavier and the Five—five other mutants with the power of resurrection—restored them all to life with Krakoa’s newfound Resurrection Protocols. Storm assisted each team member as they returned to life in cloned bodies. Storm then addressed the mutants of Krakoa and reintroduced their formerly fallen brethren.

Storm joined Krakoa’s governing body, the Quiet Council of Krakoa, and represented the more idealistic aspects of the X-Men. When her friend and X-Man Kitty Pryde, who was going by Kate, couldn’t access Krakoa through the gateways, Storm joined her on her ship of Marauders to rescue mutants trapped in hostile territories. The Marauders were backed by Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw’s Hellfire Trading Company, and Storm’s one request of Kate was to deal with Emma due to their bad blood over the years. 

Meanwhile, Storm continued working alongside the X-Men and while rescuing mutant children from an Orchis research facility, the X-Men inadvertently freed Serafina, a member of the Children of the Vault—a highly evolved, dangerous super-powered group. Tracking Serfafina to Ecuador, they encountered the Vault. When part of the team entered the Vault, Storm called forth lightning as a distraction, but it engaged the Vault's defenses and affected her later, putting her in a coma. It wasn’t until Jean and Emma entered her mind and found her that she was able to come out of it. Though she was infected by a machine virus that would take her life within a month.

Despite the option of resurrection on Krakoa, Storm wasn’t about to die. Storm gathered a team of mutants that included Jean-Phillipe, AKA Fantomex, Monet St. Croix, AKA M, Doug Ramsey, AKA Cypher, and an Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) agent Ned, and they traveled to the World, a Weapon Plus base and research facility. There, they used a device to expunge the virus, restoring Storm to peak strength, but what they left behind was conscious, even sentient.

During a war between Krakoa and another mutant nation, Arakko, Storm was put into a contest by Otherworld’s Majestirx Saturnyne, where she used the stolen Skybreaker weapon, taken from Wakanda, which strained her relationship with her beloved nation. But before the contest, Storm met the Horseman of Death who was fascinated by her avoidance of death itself. In the first part of the contest, Storm was made powerless by said Horseman but she was still able to defeat them in battle. Krakoa was eventually declared the winner of the contest, and Storm returned Skybreaker, but her actions left her allies there unsure of their alliance.

Storm ultimately set her grievances against Emma aside after Shaw betrayed them all and murdered Kate, working together to resurrect Kate and take revenge on Shaw. Meanwhile, in her effort to protect mutants outside of Krakoa, she informed Forge about Russians making his old power-dampening weapons. After Kate was resurrected, Storm saw how Emma and Kate chose to take their revenge on Shaw, and realized it was time to move on from the Hellfire Trading Company’s business. Before leaving, Callisto asked Storm to be part of a killing ritual that would help restore her powers, after having lost them when the Scarlet Witch depowered mutants. Storm agreed and wounded Callisto in the ritual, allowing her to be resurrected with her fully restored powers. Storm then left the Marauders with respect.

When the Shi’ar Empire’s leader Xandra—daughter of former Empress Lilandra Neramani and Xavier—went missing, her aunt Cal’syee Neramani, AKA Deathbird, asked the X-Men for help. Storm, Cyclops, Jean and Izzy Kane, AKA Smasher, responded and found that Xandra had been kidnapped by Urr, Stygian leader of a rebel faction. Storm handled Urr and Xandra recognized that she owed Storm a great debt.

Soon, Krakoa terraformed Mars with help from several mutants, including Storm who created weather and atmosphere on the planet, and dubbed anew as Arakko. The red planet was populated with a mix of mutants from Krakoa and Amenth. Storm then won the position of Regent of Arakko by defeating Nameless, the shape-shifter queen, and became the Voice of Sol, the sun’s official representative in galactic affairs.

Though her position was constantly threatened by challengers, and one such challenger, Tarn the Uncaring, rendered her powerless, but Storm prevailed and gained recognition from the Arakkii people. 

Soon, the Lethal Legion attacked a diplomatic meeting between S.W.O.R.D. and the Shi’ar, but Storm fought them off. S.W.O.R.D.’s Commander Abigail Brand desired to act on Arakko with a team of X-Men, but Storm knew that Arakko needed something more than a queen. So she destroyed the throne, and to fight for the Arakkii people, she formed a new Brotherhood of Mutants, inviting Magneto, Roberto Da Costa, AKA Sunspot and former prisoner of Amenth and Arakkii, the Fisher King, to join her cause.

But Brand had her own designs, forming X-Men of her own with her most volatile recruit, Gabriel Summers, AKA Vulcan, who clashed with the Arakkii mutants and their culture. While Storm and her Brotherhood managed tensions between the mixed groups on the red planet, the Shi’ar empress Xandra was assassinated, and the secret of mutant resurrection was revealed. Magneto soon joined Arakko’s leading council, the Great Ring, but the mutant Resurrection Protocol made two of the council members immortal, which went against the Arakkii’s cultural beliefs. Magneto offered to sacrifice his Cerebro backup, choosing death over immortality for the Arakkii’s favor. 

The news of the mutant resurrection capability caught the attention of the Eternals, who were created by the alien space gods, the Celestials, to protect Earth against deviation. Mutant resurrection gave them carte blanche to attack the mutants. Leading the attack was Prime Eternal Druig and he sent Uranos to Arakko, who dealt a serious blow to the Great Ring. Storm and Magneto fought valiantly, defeating Uranos but at the cost of Magneto’s life. As he lay dying in Storm’s arms knowing he had no backup to be resurrected, he asked her to watch over Xavier. She gave up her Seat of All-Around-Us to Lodus Logos and claimed Magneto’s Seat of Loss as her own. The power vacuum and escalating tensions between the Shi’ar and Mutants left intergalactic politics unstable, allowing Brand to swoop in and throw an unhinged Vulcan into the thick of things, breaking the Pan-World’s Treaty and going on the lam.

Meanwhile, Storm soon took some time for herself and started dating Craig Marshall, NASA astronaut and scientist who previously reported to Brand. He had also nearly given his life for mutant children during Uranos’ attack. But her date was cut short by Xavier who demanded to know Magneto’s last words. When she refused to tell him, he attempted to read her surface memories, but she repelled his psychic intrusion just as he taught her to do long ago. Xavier admitted he was afraid Sinister was still inside him—since he had infected his mind and implanted DNA into every mutant. Storm saw fit to reveal Magneto’s last wish, to watch Xavier not because of Sinister but because he would be alone in his dream. She then departed but not before declaring that she and Xavier were no longer friends.

Arrakko’s former ruler, Genesis, returned to Arakko, claiming it as her own and disagreed with Storm’s time of peace. Civil war soon erupted between Genesis’ followers and Storm’s allies. The Great Ring became divided as well and shattered with the forced fleeing of Storm and her supporters. Meanwhile, mutantkind’s Hellfire Gala was attacked by anti-mutant organization Orchis resulting in devastating loss. On Arakko, Genesis and Storm’s armies clashed, culminating in a battle between the two leaders over the fate of the planet as Genesis possessed the Annihilation Staff.

Meanwhile, Apocalypse, Genesis’ husband, joined the fight but in a turn of events was on Storm’s side. Battered by the fight, Storm clung to life but electrified the staff with lightning and it melted, thus defeating Genesis.

The Great Ring decided to exile Genesis and in talking with Apocalypse, Storm realized that rest was imperative before taking the fight to Orchis and doing what she does best: protecting mutantkind once again.