Storm (Ororo Munroe) debuted in 1975's Giant-Size X-Men #1, at which point she was living in Kenya as a "goddess."  The general outline of her back story was established in a number of piecemeal flashbacks in her early appearances.  The key early issues are X-Men vol 1 #96 and #102, fleshed out a little in later appearances.  Some early appearances, including one key flashback, are marred with topical references which have had to be blurred over in subsequent stories.

The ultra-obscure Uncanny Origins #9 is the first serious attempt to pull everything together, and ends up having to bridge a lot of continuity gaps - for example, no previous story had shown Ororo discovering her powers.  The original material from that issue is included in the listing below.  Since then, matters have been further complicated by a rather gratuitous appearance in X-Men: The Hidden Years, and an entire miniseries set during her time in Cairo.

At time of writing, a second Storm miniseries is underway, which appears to be in the process of revising parts of her continuity.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 2.
Newborn Ororo in the maternity ward with her parents, David and N'Dare Monroe.

STORM vol 2 #1, page 18 panels 1-3 (flashback)
Generic scenes of infant Ororo with her parents in New York.

STORM vol 2 #1, page 18 panel 5 to page 22 (flashback)
After encountering race riots, N'Dare persuades David to accept a job as a photojournalist in Cairo, where she hopes they will be safer.  David agrees that they will start packing "the next day."

X-MEN vol 1 #102, page 7 panels 1-3 (flashback)
The Monroes leave their apartment in Harlem for the last time.  They are moving to Cairo, where David is going to work as a journalist.  Ororo is six months old.  The year is given as 1951 - twenty five years before the issue was published.

UNCANNY X-MEN #265 (flashback)
Now old enough to talk, Ororo has a picnic with her parents.

X-MEN vol 1 #96, page 17 panel 2 (flashback)
A slightly older Ororo goes for a walk in Cairo with her mother.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 3
The Monroes at home, moments before the crash.  Ororo is now six.  (From here, the scene leads into a repeat of the flashback from X-Men vol 1 #102.)

X-MEN vol 1 #102, page 7 panel 4 to page 8 panel 6 (flashback)
Cairo comes under air attack.  One of the planes is hit by flak and crashes into the Monroes' house, collapsing the building and killing Ororo's parents.  As originally printed, this flashback is set explicitly in the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the attacking planes belong to the French air force.  The reprint of this story in Classic X-Men #10 contained extensive revisions to the dialogue to remove all topical references.  Current continuity has the crash occurring as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which would imply that it's now an Israeli aircraft.

X-MEN vol 1 #96, page 17 panel 4 (flashback)
Ororo lies unconscious in the rubble.

X-MEN vol 1 #102, page 8 panels 7 to 9 (flashback)
She wakes up, sees her mother, and screams.

X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #7, page 30 (flashback)
Ororo spends hours trapped with the bodies of her parents.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 5
She finds a tunnel...

X-MEN vol 1 #102, page 9 panel 1 (flashback)
...and reaches the surface.

(Storm vol 2 #2 has a marginally different version of this whole sequence, where Ororo is dug out of the wreckage by rescuers and sees her parents' bodies at that point.  This is rather more plausible in many ways, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of requiring a revision to the long-established rationale for Storm's claustrophobia - namely, the fact that she was trapped underground with her dead parents.  Fortunately, the flashback is presented as a dream scene, so I'm just going to give priority to the original version in X-Men vol 1 #102 and the other stories which follow it exactly.)

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 6 panels 1-3
Weeks later, Ororo is begging on the streets of Cairo when she is approached by some of Achmed el-Gibar's child thieves.

X-MEN vol 1 #102, page 9 panels 2-3 (flashback)
The children talk to Ororo, and take her to see el-Gibar.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 6 panels 4-6
El-Gibar tells Ororo that she won't survive without his help.

X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #7, page 3 (flashback)
He accepts Ororo as one of his thieves and trains her to pick pockets.  She steals her first wallet.

X-MEN vol 1 #117 (flashback)
Ororo steals Charles Xavier's wallet (meeting him for the first time).  He telepathically freezes her and recovers it.  Then the Shadow King attacks him, and Ororo escapes.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 7
Ororo has now been a thief for several years, and has become el-Gibar's favourite.

X-MEN vol 2 #60 (flashback)
Ororo steals the Heart of Candra jewel.  El-Gibar takes it from her for safe keeping, though he returns it to her when she leaves Cairo.

ORORO: BEFORE THE STORM #1
Ororo outwits the Cairo police.  Evil archaeologist Dr Barrett hires el-Gibar's thieves to retrieve the Opal of Ozymandias from a pyramid.  (He intends to use it to revive Apocalypse.)

ORORO: BEFORE THE STORM #2
Ororo and her friends Nari and Hakiim enter the pyramid and steal the Opal.  This wakes Ozymandias, who attacks them with his magically animated statutes.

ORORO: BEFORE THE STORM #3
Recognising Ororo as Storm from his precognitive visions, and knowing that she is one of the Twelve, Ozymandias gives her the Opal and lets her go.  Barrett betrays the thieves and takes the Opal.

ORORO: BEFORE THE STORM #4
Ororo outwits Barrett and tricks him into using the Opal, thereby turning him into a statue.  She briefly uses her powers for the first time, but does not realise it.

X-MEN vol 1 #113 (flashback)
Ororo receives highly advanced lockpicking training from Achmed el-Gibar.

STORM vol 1 #2 (flashback)
A generic shot of Ororo picking a pocket on the streets of Cairo.  (Listed separately because she's much older here than in most Cairo flashbacks.)

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 10
Now aged 11, Ororo has a dream about her parents, and tells el-Gibar that she is leaving Cairo.

UNCANNY X-MEN #267 (flashback)
Ororo hitches a lift south with a truck driver who attacks her and, it's strongly implied, tries to rape her.  She kills him in self-defence, by stabbing him with a knife.

X-MEN vol 1 #102, page 9 panels 4-6 (flashback)
Ororo begins her trek south to the Serengeti, which will take her the next year.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, pages 11-13
In Kenya, Ororo encounters a storm and uses her powers to control it.  This is the first time she becomes consciously aware of her powers.

UNCANNY X-MEN #226 (flashback)
Somewhere on an African plain, Ororo calls on the Bright Lady for the first time.  She mentioned the Bright Lady during Ororo: Before the Storm, however, so presumably it's something she picked up from her mother.

And now... Storm/Black Panther, version 1:-

MARVEL TEAM-UP vol 1 #100, back-up strip (flashback)
Ororo stumbles upon T'Challa fighting agents of the apartheid-era South African government.  She uses her powers to help fight them off.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, page 16
Ororo and T'Challa talk around a campfire.

BLACK PANTHER vol 3 #26 (flashback)
Ororo and T'Challa nearly kiss, but then go their separate ways.

Or alternatively, as of 2006:-

STORM vol 2 #1
Ororo joins up with a local gang of street urchins whose mentor knows Achmed el-Gibar.  A group of white soldiers come to the area looking for her.

STORM vol 2 #2
The soldiers attack Ororo, but T'Challa rescues her.

BLACK PANTHER vol 4 #14 (flashback)
T'Challa and Ororo share "many adventures together" until T'Challa suddenly breaks off their relationship to resume his royal duties after spotting his father's killer Klaw. 

The 2006 version of history, designed to retrofit Storm and the Black Panther with a motive to marry, is irreconcilable with previous stories.  It involves the characters meeting in different circumstances, and remaining together for far longer.  It's also tied in with the drastic revisions to Black Panther and Klaw continuity which appeared in Black Panther vol 4.  THis has the bizarre consequence of deleting Marvel Team-Up #100's back-up strip from continuity, even though it's the story that was supposed to justify the wedding in the first place.

Returning to the uncontroversial material...

UNCANNY ORIGINS #9, pages 17-18
Ororo finally reaches the Serengeti and meets the Masai tribe.  Mysteriously, they already know her name, and her coming has been foretold.  Ororo settles into her role as a "goddess."  (Some might say this goddess stuff is all a bit The Gods Must Be Crazy, but it remains stubbornly canonical.)

CLASSIC X-MEN #10 (flashback)
Ororo uses her powers to summon rain for the tribe for the first time, to alleviate a drought.

X-MEN vol 2 #78 (flashback)
However, Ororo has merely redistributed the rain and caused a drought elsewhere.  With the help of her mentor Ainet, Ororo steadily repairs the damage by using her powers more subtly.

X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS #5
Ororo stumbles upon the Beast when the Silver Age X-Men crashland in Kenya.

X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS #6
Ororo teams with the X-Men against Deluge, the first time she fights a supervillain (unless you count Barrett during the brief period when he's magically empowered in Ororo: Before the Storm #4).  Cyclops remains unconscious throughout this arc, in order to avoid contradicting Giant-Size X-Men #1, where he meets Storm for the first time.

X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS #7
Ororo and the X-Men defeat Deluge.

GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1
Ororo is recruited into the X-Men and becomes Storm.

Last revised: 26 February 2006