Ororo: Before the Storm wraps up, and you probably won't be surprised to learn that evil is vanquished.

It's pretty much an exercise in stock plotting.  The heroes survive apparent death in the penultimate issue's cliffhanger, and then come back to challenge and defeat the bad guy, who is ultimately defeated by an ironic failure to understand the small print on a magical artefact.  It's done quite efficiently, it's nicely paced, but there's certainly nothing new here, and Barrett, the villain, is an off-the-peg character if ever there was one.

The plan is for this story to be reprinted in digest format, which suggests Marvel see a potential market for it with the bookstore audience.  I remain very sceptical about these crossover books which try to appeal to the core direct market audience and the new bookstore readers at the same time.  They're very different audiences, and books like this are much more likely to fall between two stools than to straddle both markets.  Besides, it's surely going to take something more original than this to break into a new market.

It's not a horrible comic by any stretch of the imagination - and incidentally, I turned out to be wrong about them offering an origin for Storm's costume jewellery.  It's got clean, attractive art, and it bounces happily along its well-trodden path.  It could be a lot worse.  But it's hard to see what the point of the exercise is, other than a rather optimistic attempt to reach new audiences.

Rating: B-

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