In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics).

This is a special SUB-set, which is "Claremontisms," which are honoring one of the bits that Chris Claremont frequently features in his work (especially his X-Men work).

Today, we look at how people would often refer to Storm as a "weather witch."

The first time that Storm was called "witch" PERIOD was in X-Men #100, when the All-New, All-Different X-Men were forced to seemingly fight against the original X-Men (the original X-Men turned out to be robots as, well, come on, this is comic books, it always either robots or mind control...I guess occasionally doppelgangers, too). "Marvel Girl" calls her a witch..

That was the go-to insult for Storm for the next few years. Otherwise, her most common nickname that other people gave her was "Wind-Rider," but, well, that's obviously not insulting, so it was not used as much. "Damn you, wind-rider!" "Oh man, did you hear him use the W word? Daaaaamn!"

The first time that "Weather-Witch" was used was during the Dark Phoenix Saga, when Sebastian Shaw thought it to himself in X-Men #134...

and #135...

The first time someone actually SAID it to Storm was precisely 50 issues after "Witch" was first used to insult her, as Magneto shouts it at Storm after she attacks him on his mutant base after he declared war on the rest of the world (Magneto sinking the Russian submarine in this issue, killing 150 seamen, would haunt Claremont for a long time as he tried to absolve Magneto of their deaths as best that he could)...

Meanwhile, in the famous "X-Men in Tokyo" story arc, we see Silver Samurai refer to Storm as a "Wind-Witch" in Uncanny X-Men #172. Wind-Witch is basically just a variation on Weather-Witch, but it is important to note that it was used more than a few times also over the years. The Reavers, in particular, seemed to be fond of calling Storm a "Wind-Witch."

Just a few issues later, in Uncanny X-Men #178, Storm and the X-Men take on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants while Mystique is sneaking into the X-Mansion to kill Professor X to get Rogue back (Mystique sort of figured that Xavier must have stolen Rogue from her). During their fight, Pyro even refers to Storm as a weather-witch in his THOUGHTS, which means it REALLY has taken off as a name for her, as people are even THINKING of her that way...

Uncanny X-Men #280 is the end of the Muir Isle Saga. Bizarrely enough, Chris Claremont did not even finish out his final story arc on Uncanny X-Men, with Fabian Nicieza coming in to work off of Claremont's plot and, I really don't know about this final issue - Claremont isn't even credited for the plot for this issue, but you'd have to imagine that Nicieza was working off at least a ROUGH plot from Claremont as to how he wanted to end the storyline, right?

Anyhow, the X-Men take on a Shadow King-possessed Legion and he is none too pleased with Storm's attack on his possessed body...

More "Weather Witch" goodness to come!

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One of the most unusual usages came in the pages of Fantastic Four #250. This is because this is not actually Storm, but a Skrull disguised as Storm. However, since Gladiator doesn't know that, then it still counts as calling Storm "Weather Witch," as that is who Gladiator is directing his comment to....

This issue was a blast, by the way. Byrne got to draw the X-Men for the first time since he left X-Men, but without using the ACTUAL X-Men (and thus, he didn't have to coordinate with Chris Claremont). Plus, he had Captain America and Spider-Man show up (and he got to throw in an awesome homage to the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15). Finally, by using Gladiator against the Fantastic Four, Byrne got to sort of have the FF fight Superman, which was very clever.

Okay, we close it out with a recent example, Extraordinary X-Men #14, from Jeff Lemire's X-Men run. The X-Men had been running afoul of the World-Eater, a creature that devoured dimensions and had set its sights on Limbo. The X-Men team up with a group made up of survivors of the World-Eater's past dimensional victims. Before they team-up, though, they have to first fight the X-Men (thinking that the X-Men are working WITH the World-Eater). One of their members, Spectra, possesses Storm and another one of their members, Jack Craw, calls her a "Weather Witch."

Even people in OTHER DIMENSIONS know the nickname/insult! Wow!

That's it for this edition of Drawing Crazy Patterns - Claremontism Edition! If anyone else has ideas for things that get repeated a lot that you'd like to see me spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!