Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #2: Cue The Imperial March

Ewing is really leaning into the Star Wars references, and I have to say that I love them all. From an impenetrable planet sized ball of death (a Death Sphere, if you will) to a rag-tag band of rebel fighters engaging with an army of computerized soldiers by sneaking through what is essentially a service-vent, this is basically one long Lucas-flavored homage pasted over with an X-Lore veneer. And I loved every second of it. 

This is batty space themed fun on every level, but that doesn’t mean that Ewing ever sacrifices his clear grasp of who these people were, or what their dystopian future has made of them. Destiny remains, essentially, a coward who is made brave by her love. Storm retains all aspects of her history (including her magical roots, that so many other writers seem to have forgotten), and Mystique has finally found a cause worth dying for. Aside from a plethora of fun little nods (the Brotherhood insignia is merely one of them) this story packs an awful lot of gut punches — the biggest of which I will not reveal here. 

In addition to this, Ewing has managed the difficult task of propelling the plot of the event as a whole — and he’s done so in a way that is both almost infuriatingly clever and strongly rooted in his profound understanding of who Storm is as a character. 

This story was not as layered or dense as Immoral X-Men, but it was incredibly well done. The level of craftsmanship in these two books, and the vast qualitative disparity between them and the third segment of their trinity, makes me wonder why Nightcrawlers (or any of Spurrier’s contributions to the X-Books as a whole) exists at all. Immoral X-Men and Storm and the Brotherhood, by themselves, make for a magnificent event. 

Andrea Di Vito has created some truly breathtaking art for this story. The ominous, golden orb that is The Death Sphere swells on the page like a honeycomb of doom; a woman’s skull is cleaved in two, leaving blood and metal clattering to the floor; worms writhe across the mottled surface of a mostly-dead arm. Jim Charalampidis and Rachel Rosenberg’s color work adds an extra layer of depth and worn down glory to the art. It’s visually stunning work.