Marvel Rundown: STORM #10 kicks off Thunder War with a bang!

1 week ago 10

Face front True Believers! Summer is in full swing. I know the days may be long, but the Marvel Rundown is here to provide you with all some relief from the scorching heat. This week’s main review, we go through space and time to check on Storm as the Thunder War starts off with a bang. In the rapid rundown we look at Amazing Spider-Man #8, mourn the ending Iron Man #10, and check in with the momentous 250^th issue of Moon Knight. Sit back and relax as the Marvel Rundown begins now!

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Storm #10

Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Color Artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
Cover Artist: Mateus Manhanini

Back in Timeslide #1, we were promised a Thunder War and this much anticipated event has kicks off with a bang as Storm journeys to the deep reaches of space and into pocket universes themselves to marshal her forces against the incoming threat of Hadad, the first storm god, in this week’s Storm #10.

X-Confession time, I haven’t been reading much of Storm. This is despite Storm being one of the best received titles in the From the Ashes era. Thanks in large part to its ambitious plots and fantastic art. This week’s outing is no different for the book. It is gorgeous and the scope of the story feels magnificent to behold, but I will not lie, as a cold read this issue was a bit much to follow at times.

What makes this issue a challenge to follow was not the quality of writing or the art, but instead the scope. Writer Murewa Ayodele has spent the better part of the series building up Storm’s power level and telling a tale about the deities of the universe. I expect to see cosmic entities in titles like Imperial or Phoenix, but not Storm. It’s a lot that made want to dig more into the series.

So, I did some research and read back issues. It was while doing research for this week’s column I found fans online complaining about this run as “Powerscaling Fanfiction”. It is true that I was previously taken back by Eternity possessing Storm the last time I checked out Storm was during the X-Manhunt event. I am here to push back on these assertions. It must be noted that even back as early as Chris Claremont’s run, we see early touches of Storm’s power as a “goddess”.

Ayodele’s rendition is not a break of the character. If anything, it is an exploration of this rich character that’s just as valid as the 20^th time they decide to give Storm a mohawk. We see a Storm that is fighting to protect those close to here with a powerset and learning to rely on her friends and not just her powers and skills. This is STORM. Sure, I was confused on my first cold read of the issue, going back to it after catching up and learning more about what Ayodele is trying to do with the character, I appreciated it a lot more.

Macroscale concerns overarching plot and character direction aside, this issue features some charming dialog between some of my favorite characters with Maggot and Storm just roasting Manifold. The pacing is swift and frantic at times that will leave you intentionally confused, but in a great way. I appreciate how Ayodele writes these characters. They feel earnest and real when they haven’t always felt that way.

The art by Lucas Werneck is astoundingly great as always. The way he manages to evoke grandeur and scale in the comic never ceases to amaze me. The splash pages are some of the most stunning art in the X-line in this era and it’s a perfect match for the kind of story Ayodele is telling. The power and energy in each panel and every page feels tangible. It is positively…electric. If Marvel paired almost any other artist with Ayodele on this book, I don’t think it would land as well as it does.

I really enjoyed Storm #10. The Thunder War is off to a great start and I am eager to see where this goes. I understand people that may be put off by Storm dealing with Eternity and the cosmology of Marvel, but I really encourage people to come in with an open mind and enjoy it for what it is.

Final Verdict: Buy

The Rapid Rundown

The Amazing Spider-Man #8
Cover Art by John Romita Jr.
- Writer Joe Kelly,artist John Romita Jr., and inker Scott Hanna hate Spider-Man. For the past two issues, Spidey has been fighting this mysterious new character, Hellgate, and getting the snot beaten out of him. Except for two pages of Mary Jane drawn by Todd Nauck, this issue is a brutal high-octane fight, peppered with a touching memory of young Peter learning how to fight from Uncle Ben. This issue can easily be overlooked, thinking it is a comic version of Speed, but it shouldn’t. This issue encapsulates the best of the Spidey mythos, the everlasting underdog, fighting the good fight, and all for the greater good. From jump, Spidey is giving it his all, Kelly’s script and Romita’s storytelling fill the pages with Spidey’s despair as he struggles to keep innocent bystanders safe while battling Hellgate. Kelly’s inner dialogue for Spidey, cataloging his severe injuries and trying to figure out how to survive, along with Romita and Hanna’s textured and visceral art, creates an environment where you worry about Spidey’s safety, if not his life. And then they have the nerve to end it the way they did. – GC3
Iron Man #10
Cover Art by Yasmine Putri
- It is an unequivocal bummer to see Spencer Ackerman’s run on Iron Man cut short before getting even a full year to run. While the book has had its growing pains, it is Ackerman’s first time as a writer of an ongoing monthly book, its flaws lay mostly in its ambition outpacing the space it was given. Each issue has been jampacked with ideas and Ackerman has used the superhero medium to cross and mash up genres into a weird, wild, and compelling stew. From corporate thriller to espionage to cyberpunk to fantasy, this book has had it all. Ackerman clearly loves supehero comics and understands what makes them special. He leverages continuity and history to inform new kinds of stories and mashes up those various genres to tell stories that reflect real world anxieties on an epic scale. Of course it makes sense to have a corporate battle with a demon! Of course it makes sense to have a question about funding insurgents turn into a magical sacrifice for the “greater good.” This final issue manages to tie up most of the loose threads and plot points but definitely feels like it has had to short change a few. The heart of the conflict is the battle against Iron Man’s young protege and new, magical, Iron Monger. The young sorcerer comes to idolize Tony the “benevolent billionaire” and takes Tony’s moral compromises and personal foibles to their extremes. Tony is willing to make pragmatic sacrifices for the greater good but can often lose sight of the personal fallout. Taken to its demonic extreme, innocent bystanders become cannon fodder. Tony’s addictive need to be ahead of any enemy or problem becomes an addiction to dark magics. Giui Vilanova steps into draw this final issue and he’s a fantastic addition with a level of meticulous detail and big, wide open action layouts that give this final showdown an epic scope. Alex Sinclair’s colors are lush and vibrant and full of texture. All of the magic and explosions come to three dimensional life. He also sells the sheen and grime of Iron Man’s and Iron Monger’s armor. Joe Caramagna delivers clear and expressive lettering that flows well even with the visually packed pages. I’m going to miss this weird, creative book, which despite its short run goes in my personal pantheon of modern Iron Man runs alongside Chris Cantwell. – TR
Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #250
Cover Art by Davide Paratore
- It’s hard to believe that Jed MacKay has written 50 issues (along with an annual, and a Devil’s Reign one shot) of Moon Knight. Even if it’s across three different series, this has to be the longest tenure on the character and a tenure with a creator who loves this character’s long and bizarre history. Honestly this might be the best take on the character since Jeff Lemire’s run seeing the character form actual bonds with others and (sort of) shrug off that he’s Marvel’s looniest character. He at least remains Marvel’s lunarest character. Anyways in this legacy issue (Marvel sure loves legacy numbering to goose sales!), our hero confronts Asgardian gangster Achilles Fairchild who has been dealing, no joke, magical drugs to New York. The beauty of Mackay’s run on Moon Knight, and definitely on full display in this issue, is his ability turning superhero absurdity into thrilling action. But also, still saying this is kind of absurd and that’s okay. It’s why we read superhero comics because sometimes we get to laugh a little with them. This is the kind of comic where a hired supervillain would rather watch Magnum P.I. because he’s already been paid than fight heroes as a distraction and it makes sense. Or comic that can believably make a likable character out of Z-list villain 8-Ball. These are the kinds of things that MacKay has thrived on throughout this run. Maybe the only drawback to this anniversary issue is that Alessandro Cappuccio, who drew the majority of MacKay’s tenure until being lured off to more Ultimate Wolverine-like pastures, couldn’t make it back. That said his replacement, current artist Devmalya Pramanik, is more than up for the task of this issue’s battle royale. This might be some of the most expressive use of panel borders for action sequences in ages. Since Moon Knight is a funny book, they’re also adept at selling the comedy that’s so key to this book’s success which as good as Cappuccio was on the book, he never was as adept at. Pramanik, like many of his predecessors’ works on the character, is using this character to create some of the most singular looking comics at Marvel right now. The final page of this book feels like what might lead into a possible endgame for MacKay. Let’s hope with this new artistic collaborator that he has a couple more years in him to write this character. – DM