You could almost start calling Wolverine and the X-Men…Storm and the X-Men.
Jason Latour relaunched the team book focused on a new semester at the Jean Grey School. With Logan leaving due to events in his own solo book (Killable, 3 Months of Die) Storm is the new headmistress.
The writer answered fan questions on Comic Book Resources X-Position that shed light on his direction for the book and the fan-favorite weather controlling mutant:
“As we begin this story Storm’s in a very tough spot. With Xavier gone, she’s seen the core values of the X-Men really shift under her feet. She looks around at the JGS and most of the time the school is seemingly unrecognizable from the home she grew up in, it’s a bit of a madhouse obviously. But with Logan’s condition — it seems now more than ever that this is where she’s needed.
So that’s really going to make her question her role. She’s always been an effective leader of her peers, but the children are not that. In many ways she’s at square one with them. It’s really going to challenge her to look at her past honestly and to decide how much of Xavier’s X-Men was rose colored glasses and how much of it is applicable to the situation they now find themselves in.”
As Latour points out – by looking at Storm’s past roles you can see the potential for untapped uses of her power and storytelling:
“Well, with Storm more so than most characters there’s always been a bit of a battle between the version of herself that’s presented and what’s kept hidden. She spent years as field leader of the team, many of them without her powers. She’s been a thief, a warrior, a goddess– even the queen of the Morlocks. Really there are just tons of examples of how unafraid she is at getting her hands dirty. Yet there’s also the very moral, almost Teflon version of her that is the backbone of Xavier’s dream.
That dichotomy is a really interesting thing in a school setting. To a lot of these kids, the X-Men are aging rockstars, they’ve never seen Storm in her prime and in many ways she feels a bit disconnected with that period herself. Storm really has a lot she can offer these children, but are they things they’re willing to listen to? And what can they teach her about herself? If there’s one thing I hear again and again from teachers, it’s that their students continually push them to expand their horizons. So with Storm we’ll likely see that filter into her personality and even her power set. Is her power really as simple as making clouds and lightning? Sure, that’s how it’s manifested, but I definitely don’t think so. The physics in doing something like that alone are very intriguing, very powerful — it really opens up a lot of interesting ideas that I’d like to explore over time.”
Find out what happens with Storm, the kids of the Jean Grey School and the new Phoenix Corporation in issue 3 coming soon.
By Editor