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STORY: "Stormfront, part 1"
(23 pages) The X-Men travel to Kenya to rescue Storm's
village, which has been enslaved by the trickster god
Ananasi.
What you need to know:
Issues #77-78 feature a bizarre discrepancy about the
title. The covers say "Psi-War, part 1" and "Psi-War,
part 2." The actual stories say "Stormfront, part 1"
and "Storm Front, part 2." [sic] Most people go
with the cover and call it "Psi-War", but I'm giving
precedence to the actual stories, if only because they go to
the press later.
Psylocke suddenly returns to the active
roster, partly because they need a telepath for this story,
and partly because she's got handy teleporting powers at
this stage. The fact that a slow-burning story about
Storm suddenly turns into a Psylocke story about telepaths
raises the question of whether plans changed somewhere along
the line.
Ororo's village has been taken over by a
character claiming to be the trickster god Ananasi, who has
put everyone in a magical trance. He's a genuine
mythological figure and, as shown here, he's associated with
spiders. His name is usually given as Anansi.
Unfortunately, Anansi is from west African mythology, and
this story is set in the east, but there you go. As we
find out next issue, he's actually the Shadow King.
"Ananasi"'s plan is apparently just to
lure the X-Men to the village and get Psylocke to attack
him. (So why was he trying to stop the parcel reaching
Storm in issue #71?) Because of the way he's prepared
the villagers' minds, this unleashes a "radical psionic
event" which disables most telepaths and gives the Shadow
King control of the psionic plane. This was actually
alluded to in other series at the time, notably in Cable,
and seems to have been deliberately intended to depower the
telepaths. It's quietly forgotten about very soon.
Ainet is a new character, and never
returns after this story. Basically, she was Ororo's
mentor during the time she spent living in Kenya as a
"goddess." She's also a magician.
Maggott isn't desperately enthusiastic
about returning to Africa (which seems a little
over-sensitive, given that Kenya is nowhere near his home in
South Africa). Apparently he's avoiding something
there. Naturally, this never gets resolved before he's
written out.
Comments:
An odd story, this, which starts off with Storm and
African mythology (even if it's the wrong African mythology)
and suddenly veers off into the astral plane and a starring
role for Psylocke, who seemed to have been quietly written
out of the book until now. It's hard to avoid
concluding that plans have been significantly changed, and
Kelly's planned set-up for a Storm story is now being
pressed into service for the Psi-War plan.
Still, there's quite a bit to
enjoy here. Plenty of little character moments, and a
relatively imaginative retread of the "villain shows the
heroes the worst fears" routine. German Garcia's art
is the highlight of the book, with some beautiful visuals
based on the spider-god, although the closing fight on the
astral plane is a bit cluttered.
FEATURE CHARACTERS
Wolverine
(last in Uncanny X-Men #356), Psylocke
(last in Wolverine vol 2 #126), Storm, Cannonball,
Maggott, Marrow and Cecilia Reyes
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Eeny and Meany (both next in issue #79)
VILLAIN
The Shadow King
GUEST APPEARANCES
Doctor Strange (between Man-Thing vol 3 #2 and
his own story in Marvel: Shadows & Light #2)
Cable (between X-Force #75 and Cable '98)
Emma Frost (between Generation X #40 and #42)
Spider-Man (between Spectacular Spider-Man vol
1 #256 and Sensational Spider-Man vol 1 #27)
OTHER CHARACTERS
Ainet (first actual appearance; from behind the scenes
in the previous issue)
Written: 31 May 2006
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