Storm #10: Kenji's Return
After returning home from her treasure hunt with Gambit, Storm encounters a monster that’s partly of her own making.
Of all the issues I’ve read so far, I think that Storm #10 has been the weakest. While Storm #8 played with the sense of community that Storm invokes in mutants and African Americans in the Marvel Universe, and where #9 was just a fun filler episode, #10 seems like any other tired, overplayed superhero storyline.
Pak’s writing is still pretty good for the most part, but the storyline feels bland. While it’s nice to see Storm interacting with the students of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, the storyline here is not particularly new or exciting.
It opens with narration from the antagonist, Kenji a former student of Storm’s. When Kenji went insane and began killing others, she was forced to kill him. It’s revealed that he was brought back to life by Harmon, the villain defeated by Storm in #8. It seems at first as though Kenji has forgotten his past and is no longer murderous. Though Storm is cautious, she allows him to stay at the school.
Part of the weakness, I believe is that Kenji reverts back to villainy a bit too quickly. As cyborg zombies attack the Morlocks in the New York tunnels, Marisol in Mexico, and Forge in Kenya, it’s revealed that Kenji is the one behind it. This occurs only a couple pages after he is allowed to stay at the school. Had it been drawn out a bit more and revealed later, I think it may have been stronger.
I felt that another weakness of the comic was that Kenji blames Storm for his situation. He accuses her of just not having accepted him as he is. “You never thought of me again…until I appeared to you in this sad, sweet form,” Kenji taunts Storm (19.3). I feel that the storyline of hero creates the villain is usually utilized in order to question the hero’s methods or to reveal their failings. That doesn’t really work here because Kenji was murderous before this comic. Furthermore, it takes a leap in logic as Kenji implies that Storm should have done something other than stop him from killing innocents. It doesn’t really make sense to me. Even though Kenji says that only when she thought him sad and scared was Storm willing to help him, this situation doesn’t make sense, because she still tried to be cautious and posted guards to prevent him from hurting anyone.
I don’t really care for the “You MADE me” villain storylines, and here it just seems like more of the same.
