Giant-Sized X-Men: Storm #1: The Ghost in the Machine

First of all, the art was absolutely beautiful. Dauterman’s art is truly delightful. It’s nice to see women with distinctive features, in comics — especially Storm, who is often absolutely whitewashed. Storm, Emma, Jean and Monet all look like individuals. All though they’re all terribly beautiful, they don’t all look like the exact same Platonic Ideal white woman who’s been given slightly-different skin tones, and that’s something that should be absolutely standard and not at all praiseworthy. Yet, in comics, this is a perishingly rare quality for an artist to have. So, yes, I will praise Dauterman excessively for doing his job.

Beyond that, the landscapes were impeccable. The World looks like an impressionist painting that was put down on paper while the artist was on five tabs of acid, and that’s exactly what you want for a micro-universe developed in what is essentially a teapot. Visually, this story was a pleasure to read.

From the perspective of the writing, Hickman is an extremely limited artist. There are, perhaps, ten characters (out of the entire X-Men pantheon) who he can write with any sense of believability. He is a misogynist who can only write women when they are submissive or in the traditional ‘bitch’ vein. It takes what amounts to a miracle for him to write nuanced characters like Jean or Storm with any believability. That miracle occurred, in this issue. Jean shows compassion, but she isn’t a housefrau banished to the land of rubber gloves and male service. Storm is very firm about who she is, and what she wants (it was nice to see Hickman address why, exactly, this matters when she could just be resurrected: it’s important, to her, that she fight to remain who she is) and she gives one of her patented Goddess Speeches without coming across as ridiculous.

Hickman has always written Emma and Monet well (even if he only tends to hit one note for them) and having Money describe Cypher as ‘the Bambi of the X-Men’ was absolutely perfect.

In short, this issue was very enjoyable. The resolution seemed a little easy, and I don’t really see how this will define her story for ‘years to come’ unless Storm’s story turns out to be based in her resistance to resurrection. If that’s the case, the next couple of years could be extremely interesting.

Do yourselves a favor and pick this one up.