Thursday, May 24, 2012

Seducing Storm part I: Marilyn's got nothing on Munroe

Ever noticed how hot Storm is?

Chris Claremont certainly has. In many ways, Ororo Munroe can be described as Chris' dream woman... Not only is she a strong, independent individual... Ororo also makes it a point to fight naughty evildoers in skimpy black leather outfits held together by either a choker or a slave collar... That's enough to make any SM-enthusiast pant and wince with excitement.


An awful lot of X-men villains found Storm to be totally irresistible. It goes without saying she wasn't too happy about all that unwanted attention. Luckily for those spurned yet smitten supervillains, there's always mind control...



Wait, wait... Lets not jump the gun, even though after this two parter who wouldn't be temped to jump in front of one? Sit back and lets review the seductors of Storm, starting with this sweaty, Morocco Mole cosplaying charmer...



Storm caught the lusting super villain's eye pretty young in life. As a little girl on the streets of Cairo, she survived as a pickpocketing thief under the tutelage of Achmed El Gibar. Unbeknownst to her, Cairo's master thief had promised the young girl to the crimelord Amahl Farouk... who was little more than a host for the psychic monstrosity known as the Shadow King.

The King sensed Storm's mutant potential and intended to groom her. Yet, he wasn't able to make good on his plans after he accidentally got his host body killed when Amahl Farouk was foolish enough to challenge a visiting Charles Xavier to a fight on the astral plane.
For more on that, click here


Half a lifetime later, the Shadow King had just recently acquired a new host when he came across Storm, and wanted a second chance. He failed, of course... and would try again later in Joe Kelly's 1997 run on X-men when he'd pose as the African goddess Anansi. Oh, and for the record, the reason Storm looks so young is the result of a mind control heavy story featured here.

Being inherently evil isn't the only way to Storm's heart. Sometimes just being a monarch will do too, as Arkon the Imperion found out in 1981's Uncanny X-men annual. Arkon rules over Polemachus, an extra-dimensional world that derives its light and power from a series of orbital energy rings.


Unfortunately, these rings regularly tend to lose their charge. Whenever that happens Arkon comes to Earth looking for help. That is, if by 'looking for help' you mean forcibly taking what or whoever you want. In this case, he figured Storm's lightning could recharge the rings, but sparks flew and young love soon was a fact. No mind control here, though it'd be pretty hard to resist the ruler of an entire world who also has a pretty big... quiver... he just dangles there for everyone to see.

Speaking of half naked rulers of all they convey... When the X-men were in the Savage Land, Storm and the others were captured and subjected to mind control experiments. But only Ororo caught the eye of Brainchild, the leader of the Savage Land Mutates...



Despite his boorish behaviour, its hard to feel threatened by someone like Brainchild. So, lets move on to true villainy... Storm was even able to melt the armor clad heart of Doctor Doom.



While her fellow X-men were fighting for their very lives, Doctor Doom invited Storm to dinner and the two of them actually had a good time making googly eyes at one another... That is, until Doom felt it was time to earn his keep as a villain and a dastardly deed was called for...


You see, an added aspect to most of the flirts Storm enjoyed with the bad guys, involved them wanting not only her heart... cos that would have been too easy...  No, every single one of them made it a point to exclaim their desire for her heart, body and soul... forever!

In this case, Doom turns her into a living statue... not just to imprison her, but also to preserve her beauty for the ages. As far as torture goes, that actually sounds somewhat poetic. Still, all a statue does is take up space and look pretty and even the good doctor knows a talented woman like Storm is capable of doing much more than that... So he improvises...


Imprisoning the original and building a robot double to use as your houseslave? Hardly behaviour befitting a king. At least Storm's next baddie beau had more class and a straightforward approach...


Yup... that's Vlad 'Dracula' the Impaler alright... He was so taken with Storm that he decided to make her his bride. Making an African American woman the princess of darkness just seems wrong or at least slightly superfluous. Moving on...




The Brood?

Well, yes... Storm and her fellow X-men were selected by the Brood Queen herself to be hosts for her daughters, she personally implanted them with the embryo of a Brood princess. As a side effect of that implantation, the X-men spent a few cosy, slightly dazed days with what they thought were Shi'ar... It wasn't until Wolverine's healing factor broke the conditioning that it became clear the team was being kept on the Brood homeworld, waiting for the eggs to hatch.

So, a monarch wants Storm to be hers and uses mind control to achieve that goal? I'd say the Brood qualify...

The X-men finally managed to escape the Brood homeworld on board Lilandra's royal space cruiser Z'reee Shar. Wolverine was the only one who knew what was going on after having defeated his own Brood egg, Storm was second to realise something was wrong.


After discovering her infection, she took one of the Shar's shuttlecrafts and fled. In the vastness of space, she managed to become one with the universe itself (don't ask)... An act that burned the Brood egg to a crisp, but also destroyed the shuttle... seemingly condemning Storm to die. Yet, she turned up alive and sort of well by next issue...



"The Acanti and I... Are one."

Ah, yeah... this one's going to take some 'splainin'... The Acanti are a sentient race of massive, brown and pink space whales that the Brood have hunted for ages. But the young leader of the Acanti, the so called Prophet Singer, has managed to stay free which is the one piece of good news.

Unfortunately, its mother fell victim to the Brood which left her child virtually defenseless. Enter Storm: the Acanti encountered her dying form in space and decided to kill two birds with one proverbial stone by placing her inside the Acanti for safe keeping. This allowed her mind to act as a mothering influence to the child leader of his ancient race.

And to be fair, she never looked better doing it...




Next time, Seducing Storm part 2: Ororo gets a mohawk and the supervillains keep on keeping on.







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