Soft Moments for Black Women: Storm’s Date Night & Freakum Dress

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating, especially here. The first kiss I remember seeing in comic books was between Ororo Munroe (Storm, if you nasty) and Daniel Lone DesertEagle (Forge, if you techie). The image of Storm, a Black woman, being intimate with Forge, a Native man, is the image of romance that sits above the fireplace in my mind. I say that to say this: it’s not often in comics where we get to see a Black woman having a moment of softness and intimacy without being over sexualized, a plot device to move a male character’s story to be moved further, or just to have the rug taken out from underneath. Storm is the first Black woman, dark skinned Black woman at that, I saw have this moment in a comic book. I’ve always loved that for her. Now all these years later after having seen Storm married, divorced (looks into camera like Mr. Eddie from Abbott Elementary), and single again, we get to see not only an incredibly soft but cute moment for Storm in Al Ewing and Jacopo Camagni’s work in X-Men: Red #11. Al Ewing has been writing Storm with the best characterization in years. We’ve seen her become Regent of Sol, Queen of Arakko, scrapping in the mud, and stepping to Uranos (an Eternal so bad he had to be jailed underneath the jail). Storm has been on a hell of a run leading, supporting community, and being the ‘IT’ girl on Arakko. Now, she finally gets time to breathe with an incredibly cute date night with Craig (Marshall) of NASA.

For those that don’t kn…