X-Men: The 10 Most Impressive Uses Of Storm’s Powers (original) (raw)
Storm is one of the most powerful X-Men, and truly one of the most powerful people in the Marvel Universe. Her ability to manipulate and control weather should be enough to cement her status as a powerhouse, but over the forty-plus years the character has been around her power has only grown.
She's been de-powered, empowered, and everything between over the course of her career as with the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four (one of only three people to make the trifecta). Here are the ten most impressive uses of Storm's power, ranked.
10 Worlds Apart
One thing the X-Men does and well is fighting each other. Cyclops and Storm have butted heads a few times, even when she had lost her powers (she still won), usually over the direction of the X-Men.
In X-Men Worlds Apart, Cyclops was in the thrall of the Shadow King. His optic blasts are nothing to sneeze at, but Storm simply deflected them with cords of lightning. Her power was so great and fearsome that the Shadow King possessed all the assembled X-Men just to defeat her. It didn't work.
9 Pressure Vessel
Through her ability to affect the weather, Storm can manipulate air pressure. Her agency over this is enough that she can create a massive enough disturbance in air pressure to punch a hole through a mountain.
That probably changes a villain's outlook on getting into a fight with her, but if that's not enough, Storm has also demonstrated the ability to control air pressure inside a person. That's right. She can turn someone into a balloon of air, and she can decide whether or not it pops.
8 Became The Storm
Storm used to have - still does, a little bit - an issue with claustrophobia. This manifested early on in her X-Men career when she and Jean Grey first went into the NYC subway. Doctor Doom (and Arcade!) took advantage of this by imprisoning her inside a metallic cocoon.
She transformed all right, into a being who had effectively merged with the elemental power of the storm she summoned to get free. This potential for metamorphosis within Storm signals power beyond any real conception.
7 Energized Portal Back To Earth
In one of the quieter and more character-focused moments of the early Chris Claremont years on the X-Men, a de-powered Storm seeks out tech-wizard Forge to help get her powers back. Except he's got problems of his own. Long story short: they both get trapped in an alternate dimension.
This goes on for a year, but then Forge, using parts from his own cybernetic leg, creates a device that is able to restore Storm's power (somehow). With her electrical energy flowing again, Storm was able to open a portal back to Earth and get home safe with Forge.
6 Controlled Jet Stream
Despite being a fairly constant presence on the X-Men, Storm moved around a lot. Her tours of duty with other groups included one with the X.S.E., otherwise known as the X-Treme Sanctions Executive, which somehow isn't a product of the 90s.
While hanging out with this paramilitary unity, Storm and the others are trapped inside the Blackbird under the Atlantic Ocean. The jet is sinking, the pressure is rising but Storm manipulates the Mid-Atlantic current, and surfaces the jet and crew to safety.
5 Static
In X-Treme X-Men, Jean Grey innocently finds out how far Storm's electrical manipulation actually goes. The two old friends go to get some ice cream, and Jean being Jean, tries to get a taste of Ororo's telepathically (boundaries, Jean. Boundaries).
Only she can't. All she perceives when trying to read Storm's mind is static, a product of Storm being able to manipulate the electrical field within her own body. This same resistance to telepathy frustrated the Shadow King as mentioned before, and others, like Emma Frost, on a couple of occasions.
4 Solar Winds
It's one thing to control the wind. It's another to control the solar wind. But that's exactly what Storm did in X-Men Gold #1. Storm's power on other planets - and in space - is nearly as great as it is on earth, if not more so.
She proved that to the dismay of the Sentinels when she brought down solar winds on the Earth's atmosphere and harnassed them to create lightning bolts in the extreme upper atmosphere to destroy Sentinels in space. She was still on solid ground, though.
3 Lightning Rider
Storm can fly pretty fast as it is, creating tornadic and hurricane-force winds to propel her along. Few things on Earth are faster than lightning though and it just so happens Storm can control that, too.
Storm is able to boost her crazy airspeeds to even more by casting a lightning bolt and then riding on the spear of the bolt. Nearly everyone would like to try and ride the lightning (inadvisable) but Storm actually does and the bad guys have no idea what hit them when she arrives at Mach speed (and 10,000 volts).
2 Stormcaster
For a time, Storm possessed the Asgardian weapon Stormcaster. Eventually, she lost it, but like everything good in comics, it came back. Ororo used Stormcaster one last time to confront the Dark God Uovu, who took over the role of deity to the Uzuri tribe after Storm left for the X-Men.
Cruel and twisted, Uovu needed to go. With Stormcaster, Storm took on a god and turned him to dust. Though Stormcaster left her once again, it's doubtful that Ororo even actually needs it at this point.
1 Silver Surfer
Next up from gods are cosmic beings, and Storm has dealt with them, too. When Silver Surfer got into a scrape with Black Panther (her former husband and hopefully future MCU castmate) Storm showed the former Herald of Galactus who's boss.
She gathered hydrogen atoms into an atmosphere around Silver Surfer and then manipulated those atoms to blast Surfer with lightning. With Storm's power able to extend the fundamental building blocks of physics, there are theoretically no limits on her powers.