While any longtime fan of the X-Men in general, and Storm in particular, will know of young Ororo's time as a thief on the streets of Cairo and the source of her claustrophobia, fewer might know about why she left Cairo. Fewer still know about her run-ins with the psychic entity called the Shadow King or her journey across Africa to find others like her. Even fewer might know that her journey from Egypt to Kenya involved an unusual travel companion, that of a particular Wakandan prince.
All of these details have been slowly filled in by various comic book writers over the almost 50 years since Storm made her first appearance, but it wasn't until Marvel tapped Jackson, an apparent life-long Storm fan, to novelize the heroine's early life that fans could see the full story all laid out.
At the start of Storm: Dawn of a Goddess, six-year old Ororo is having a hard time adjusting to her new life in Cairo. She and her parents have just moved to Egypt from America and as if the fact that being American didn't make her stand out enough already, the fact that she has blue eyes and a solid white head of hair makes her even more of an outsider. Despite her parent's attempts to calm Ororo's feelings, the young girl can't help but feel like her life in Egypt is far worse than before they moved to Africa. Unfortunately for Ororo, her problems are only just beginning.
It isn't long before a plane crashes into Ororo's apartment building and she finds herself orphaned. After crawling out of the rubble and realizing that she is alone and has nothing, she is recruited by an older boy named Moche to join his family of street urchin pick pockets. With Moche's teaching, she quickly excels at her new life and nine years later, Ororo is the leading earner in her new family. All that being said, Ororo does everything she can to stay hidden and unnoticed. In fact, in all those years, Moche is the only one who has even seen her white hair as she has spent years keeping it hidden from everyone else. While her mother claimed that Ororo's eyes and hair were a sign of some great family lineage, her mother never had the chance to actually explain what she meant, and Ororo can only feel that such striking features are a detriment to her current lifestyle.
Ororo finds her life turned upside down yet again just after her 15th birthday. For a while now, she had been noticing some strange feelings. While she has always been able to tell the exact temperature or when the weather would change, those strange feelings around the weather seem to be growing, and when someone new shows up at their hideout claiming to take over the gang, Ororo's sense of danger goes into overdrive.
Ororo soon learns that this newcomer is actually some malevolent creature called the Shadow King, and for some reason, he wants her and her budding abilities. Convinced that the only way to escape the Shadow King's clutches is to have whatever curse is in her cleansed, she decides to track down her mother's family in Kenya. Thus starts Ororo's journey across Africa, guided only by a strange pull inside her and a haunting vision constantly telling her to "come home."
While Ororo starts her trek alone, it isn't long before she is joined by a young man named T'Challa, who claims to be the crowned prince of the small kingdom of Wakanda. It seems the young man is on a bit of a walkabout after his father's recent death and plans to challenge his uncle and claim the throne when he returns. But, T'Challa doesn't feel he is ready for that yet and doesn't want to return to Wakanda until he is. When the young man learns that Ororo is headed to Kenya, he claims to be going the same way and the two make their long, slow journey together.
As they spend time together, the sparks of your typical YA teen romance take flame. Knowing that in the comics Storm and T'Challa would someday be married, I have to say that I kind of rolled my eyes at this apparent encounter. This felt a little too convenient for me and their romance a little too fast. That is, until I read the official history of Storm's early years and learned that Ororo and T'Challa traveling across Africa during this time in Storm's life was in fact Canon. So, while I initially felt like this romance just seemed like an excuse to have an expected plot device in a YA novel, it is actually fitting for the story and, quite frankly, a lot of Ororo's character growth comes from the two characters' interactions and budding relationship. This was far from a convenient storytelling point for the sake of fan service and I applaud Jackson for how she handled this chapter in the superheroine's life.
I won't go into too much detail about how the various plot points involving Ororo's flight across Africa played out or how her inevitable clash with the Shadow King went down. Suffice it to say that even though Storm: Dawn of a Goddess is just the start of Storm's journey to becoming a member of the X-Men, this is a nice, solid and complete story in and of itself. Any fan of the X-Men or anyone who enjoys novels set in the Marvel universe should enjoy this entry. I certainly did.
