Storm (2nd series) #2

Issue Date: 
May 2006
Story Title: 
untitled
Staff: 

Eric Jerome Dickey (writer), David Yardin (artist), Jay Leisten (inks), Matt Milla (colorist), Mike Mayhew (cover art), Randy Gentile (letterer), Kate Levin (production), Cory Sedlmeier (associate editor), Axel Alonso (editor), Joe Quesada (editor-in-chief), Dan Buckley (publisher)

Brief Description: 

Ororo has nightmares about the loss of her parents to a fighter plane when she was six years old. In the meantime, the poachers find out that the girl who offered to sell Ororo out has been leading them in circles. She tries to warn Ororo, but is herself hit by a dart and passes out. Most of the men continue to chase Ororo, while one stays behind with the unconscious girl. A teenage T’challa intervenes and saves her from getting raped. He then follows and takes out the other men, who in the meantime have caught Ororo, despite her consciously manifesting her powers for the first time. T’challa fights and beats the leader in hand-to-hand combat and finally introduces himself to Ororo before she succumbs to the sedative. Moments later, he finds they are surrounded by armed youngsters.

Full Summary: 

(Six years earlier)

Cairo, a time of strife as bomber planes fly over the city. Ororo recalls her father claiming that they fought over land and oil, whereas her mother said they fought over God. David Munroe wondered why would a god need a man to fight for him? Man fights for the selfish needs of man. From below, soldiers turn their weapons on the plane. Not too far away in the rubble, David Munroe photographs the scene, not dismayed by the threatening looks of the soldiers.

Later, he joins his family at home. On Ororo’s wishes, they decide to eat at home, instead of going out, joking that Ororo is already running the house, as she will one day run the world.

Elsewhere, the soldiers finally manage to shoot down an enemy fighter plane. The plane falls and veers towards the Munroe’s house. N’dare who – along with David – is standing close to the window is the first to see the plane coming in. Panicked, she tries to reach for her daughter, but winds sweep the girl under a heavy wooden table. The horrified faces of her parents are the last things she sees as the plane crashes into the building.

Six-year-old Ororo awakes in darkness, buried, trapped as if in a coffin. She screams and screams until she is finally freed. Next to her, she sees the dead bodies of her parents. She shakes her mother’s corpse, begging her to wake up. Ororo finally takes the red pendant her mother is clutching. Helplessly, she turns to the children who freed her, who are looking at her with pity and tells them they won’t wake up.

(the present)

Twelve-year old Ororo wakes up from her dream, tears still in her eyes. The weather echoes her sadness with rain. She hates it when that happens.

Not too far away, the poachers marvel at the appearance of rain in the desert in a clear night. They realize that the weather is being manipulated and that they are near the prize, as the one who had his camera stolen by Ororo states. The prize that eluded his father and his father before him.

He never understood all of their civil wars, one of his companions states. That thing in Rwanda. Hutus…Tutsi… that Ethiopian-Eritrean thing… Sudan… And in America… America probably has the dumbest of it all. Dark-skinned don’t like light-skinned… never will understand that one.

Suddenly, something about a tree they pass seems strange to him. The first man suggests he read Willie Lynch – “The Making of a Slave.” Then, he will understand their mentality. Why they were bred to betray each other. That’s American doctrine, right? the second man asks. They are in Africa. He sticks a knife in the tree trunk.

Truth is universal, his friend remarks. The second man disagrees. He believes that Africans and Americanized blacks are different and don’t have much in common. When Africans were shipped to the New World, slave owners divided the Africans, beat the culture out of them, stripped them naked. Very psychological approach. To further maximize it, slave owners took away the Africans’ gods. Stripped them of what bonded them, religion. Santeria, Candomble, Voudon. Gave them the God they believed in, the God they wanted them to have. Brainwashing 101.

And the point of his little sermon? the first man asks. He was just saying. He talks too damn much, the first man states derogatively. The second man stares at the thief girl that offered to sell Ororo out. L.A. face, East Oakland booty. Been so long since he saw a girl like that…

Suddenly, something grabs his attention. He sees his knife again. The girl’s been leading them in circles. The girl begins to run and scream Ororo! Loyava keeneck qwi! Their warning. “Trouble has come.”

Ororo is startled awake by her rival’s voice. The girl comes running towards her. Ororo grabs the camera and begins to run as well, the poachers after the two. The other girl stumbles and falls, the men almost upon her. The first man sees Ororo and calls her wind-rider, his “prize of all prizes.”

Ororo tries to drag the other girl to her feet. She just shouts at Ororo to run, not to be the slowest zebra. The poacher is pointing his gun at them. The girl shoves Ororo out of the way and is hit by the dart.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the poacher repeats her words as he strides towards her. And you are the enemy, she snaps, struggling with the words, as the sedative is already staring to take effect. Nothing but a petty thief, he snarls. Calling him a “thief of nations,” the girl passes out. The other poacher who made the lewd comment about the girl before observes amused that she played him against the stereotype.

The other men leave, chasing Ororo, leaving only him behind with the unconscious girl.
He turns towards the girl, beginning to undo his belt. “Once you go black…” Suddenly, somebody touches his shoulder and he turns around.

A little later, a teenage boy, dressed only in a loincloth, leaves the unconscious man behind and carries the girl somewhere safe to sleep off the sedative. He begins to follow the other men’s trail.

Ororo is still running for her life, trying to evade the darts shot at her. Panicked, she thinks that she doesn’t want to die like this, a thief and not be able to see her parents on the other side. Then the winds lift her as a thunderstorm starts. Terrified, she flies, but loses concentration as another dart rushes past her.

The boy has reached the hunting party and takes out the last man. Ororo is finally hit in the back and falls hard. The first poacher picks up the camera she’d been clutching all the time and calls it a shame her being reduced to being a thief. He advises her not to fight the effect and go to sleep. She will be worth a fortune.

He tells his men to rope her. He plans to keep her tranquilized and, tomorrow, he will contact the Bull. He turns around, as his men don’t react. Instead of them, he finds the teenage boy staring at him. The poacher grabs his rifle, as he demands to know where his men are. The boy tells him to battle like a man. Undeterred, the poacher warns him and tells him to leave. Still, calm the boy taunts him, asking if he is terrified of an unarmed boy. The taunt is successful. He throws away his weapon.

Drowsy, fighting to stay conscious, Ororo watches the battle, admiring the boy’s panther-like grace. Even as a boy, he is already a warrior. The boy takes out the man and turns towards Ororo. As he gently lifts her up, she asks for his name. T’challa, he introduces himself. She thanks him before losing consciousness. Calling her “beautiful windrider,” he tells her sleeping form that she is welcome. Suddenly, he finds himself facing several armed young men.

Characters Involved: 

12-year-old Ororo Munroe

teenage T’challa

Thief girl who dislikes Ororo

Poachers

in Ororo’s memories:

six-year-old Ororo

David and N’Dare Munroe

Soldiers

children

Story Notes: 

Regarding Rwanda: Once, Hutus and Tutsis lived in harmony in Central Africa. About 600 years ago, Tutsis moved south from Ethiopia and invaded the homeland of the Hutus. Though much smaller in number, they conquered the Hutus, who agreed to raise crops for them in return for protection. Even in the colonial era -- when Belgium ruled the area, after taking it from Germany in 1916 -- the two groups lived as one, speaking the same language, intermarrying, and obeying a nearly godlike Tutsi king. Independence changed everything. The monarchy was dissolved and Belgian troops withdrawn -- a power vacuum both Tutsis and Hutus fought to fill. Two new countries emerged in 1962 -- Rwanda, dominated by the Hutus, and Burundi by the Tutsis -- and the ethnic fighting flared on and off in the following decades. It exploded in 1994 with the civil war in Rwanda in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Tutsi rebels won control, which sent a million Hutus, fearful of revenge, into Zaire and Tanzania.
Eritrea formed part of the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum until the 7th century. Thereafter, Ethiopian emperors maintained an intermittent presence in the area until the mid-16th century, when the Ottoman Empire gained control of much of the coastal region.
In World War II, Eritrea was captured (1941) by the British. Ethiopia had long demanded control of Eritrea on the ground of ethnic affinity, but Britain occupied Eritrea after the war and, beginning in 1949, administered it as a UN trust territory. In 1950, the United Nations decided that Eritrea was to be made independent as a federated part of Ethiopia, and in late 1952 this decision became effective. In late 1962, the Eritrean assembly voted to end the federal status and to unify Eritrea with Ethiopia. After 1962, Eritreans who opposed union carried on sporadic guerrilla warfare against Ethiopia and the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was founded. In 1972 a rival insurgent group, the Eritrean Popular Liberation Forces (EPLF), was formed and battled the ELF for supremacy.

After Emperor Haile Selassie 's overthrow in a military coup in 1974, the two insurgent groups united to fight against the Ethiopian government's forces. Fighting increased and by 1976 the Eritreans had virtually forced the government forces out of the province. However, the Ethiopian government, with massive amounts of aid and troops from the USSR and Cuba, was able to defeat the Eritreans in 1978. After their defeat, the insurgents were forced to return to sporadic guerrilla warfare. During the 1980s, the rebels continued their attacks on Ethiopian troops and eventually Eritreans controlled most of the countryside.

In 1991, the insurgents succeeded in capturing Asmara and the ports, giving them control of the province. That same year the United Nations scheduled a referendum on Eritrean independence. In 1993, after 30 years of warfare and the death of an estimated 200,000 Eritreans overwhelmingly voted for independence, and Isaias Afwerki, formerly the principal leader of the EPLF, became the new nation's first president. His party, renamed the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), became the only viable political organization.

A border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea broke out in 1998 when Eritrean forces occupied disputed territory. Fighting was largely inconclusive, with many thousands killed on both sides, until May 2000, when Ethiopian forces launched a major offensive, securing the disputed territory and driving further into Eritrea. A cease-fire agreement signed in June called for a truce, the establishment of a 15.5 mi (9.6 km) UN-patrolled buffer zone (in Eritrean territory), and the demarcation of the border by UN cartographers. The war hampered Eritrea's efforts to rebuild its economy and made the previously self-reliant young nation dependent on foreign aid to feed its citizens.

Peacekeeping forces arrived in significant numbers by Dec 2000, and there was steady, if sometimes fitful, progress towards the goals of the cease-fire agreement in 2001. Late in the 2001, the government arrested a number of opposition leaders and journalists and closed private newspapers; elections scheduled for that December were indefinitely postponed. In Apr 2002, the Hague Tribunal issued a complex ruling on the disputed border that favored Eritrea in some locations and Ethiopia in others. Ethiopian resistance subsequently delayed finalization of the border, and Eritrea refused to enter into discussions with Ethiopia.

Four years of drought led to a food crisis in Eritrea by 2002, requiring substantial international assistance, and conditions have not improved significantly since then. The political and human rights situation in the country also deteriorated. In 2004, Amnesty International accused Eritrea of persecuting religious minorities, using torture, and detaining thousands for criticizing the government.

Tensions with Ethiopia escalated in 2005, as both nations bolstered their forces along the disputed border. Frustrated with lack of progress on the border issue, Eritrea restricted UN peacekeepers movements in October. In November, the United Nations called for Eritrea and Ethiopia to reduce their forces along the border and for Eritrea to end restrictions on UN forces, and expressed concern over Ethiopia's failure to finalize the border; UN sanctions were threatened for noncompliance. Eritrea rejected the ultimatum and in Dec 2005, forced those UN forces from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Russia to withdraw. The same month, a Permanent Court of Arbitration claims commission ruled that Eritrea had violated international law in attacking Ethiopia, and that Ethiopia was entitled to compensation.

The poachers quote William Lynch, giver of the William Lynch Speech: The Making of a Slave--A speech by the British-born, Caribbean plantation owner that visited Virginia to describe how best to "break" and control slaves. The legitimacy of this document has been questioned.
Vodun (a.k.a. Vodoun, Voudou, Voodoo, Sevi Lwa) is commonly called Voodoo by the public. The name is traceable to an African word for “spirit.”. Vodun's can be directly traced to the West African Yoruba people, who lived in 18th and 19th century Dahomey. Its roots may go back 6,000 years in Africa. That country occupied parts of today's Togo, Benin and Nigeria. Slaves brought their religion with them when they were forcibly shipped to Haiti and other islands in the West Indies.
Vodun was actively suppressed during colonial times. “Many Priests were either killed or imprisoned, and their shrines destroyed, because of the threat they posed to Euro-Christian/Muslim dominion. This forced some of the Dahomeans to form Vodou Orders and to create underground societies, in order to continue the veneration of their ancestors, and the worship of their powerful gods.” Vodun was again suppressed during the Marxist regime. However, it has been freely practiced in Benin since a democratic government was installed there in 1989. Vodun was formally recognized as Benin's official religion in 1996-FEB. It is also followed by most of the adults in Haiti. It can be found in many of the large cities in North America, particularly in the American South. Today over 60 million people practice Vodun worldwide. Religions similar to Vodun can be found in South America where they are called Umbanda, Quimbanda or Candomble.

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