Ororo: Before the Storm starts to lose me with issue #3.

Part of the problem is fill-in art on half the book - a solution we don't often see these days, which makes me wonder what was so urgent about getting this book out on time.  It's far from bad, especially considering that it's fill-in work and no doubt produced on a tight deadline.  It's consistent with the established style of the book.  But the issue starts to look a little murky, and there are some very poor storytelling sequences - most notably on page 9, where an action scene is made far more confusing by having the camera "cross the line" twice in the course of three panels.

That's part of the problem.  The other part is that we seem to be drifting away from the book's main virtue.  The first couple of issues seemed to be giving us a nice enough little story about Ororo as a thief in Cairo, with Apocalypse thrown in more as a quest object than anything else. 

But this issue we've got Ozymandias turning up to give Storm a lecture about her destiny.  This sort of scene never works.  For one thing, it begs the obvious question of why she's never mentioned it before, especially when the X-Men were fighting Ozymandias.  I'm also getting a sinking feeling about the Opal that she's trying to steal, which bears a suspicious resemblance to the one on her costume.  Unfortunately, Scott Lobdell already wrote an origin story for that gem (it belonged to Candra), so it'd be a bit unfortunate if Marc Sumerak is about to do a second one.  Still, maybe it's just a visual coincidence.

Otherwise, it's basically another issue of jumping around and facing traps and monsters in the tomb.  And on that level there's nothing really wrong with it.  If you're actually looking for a "young Storm" comic then you should still be happy enough with it.  It just seems a shame to drag continuity into it when it could have been a happily innocent self-contained adventure, but there you go.

Rating: B

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