Bottom line is I could easily make the case for him being a terrible husband and her a horrible wife --he was distant controlling and manipulative, She abandoned the marriage and in the end betrayed the country, and could she really get so enthralled with Logan so quickly unless she already at least emotionally cheating with him?--but that all can be traced to the machinations of the X offices so they need to take a seat. There is no reason T'Challa wasn't a reoccurring character and valued ally in X books. They didn't want that fine but I'll have NONE of their b.s. After the divorce they didn't talk for half a year or more. They could have had them amicably split or give each other the big F YOU both good with me. Eventually they went the former. Fine but don't come with all this poor wronged Storm sssh. They both failed. Marvel and the X offices failed. They can all do what they will but as a consumer what you won't do is piss me off and get my money.
How did Storm abandon the marriage? Again, you're talking to somebody who's pretty much stayed away from comics for about 2 years. I know that she and T'challa chose different sides of the whole AvX debacle dealing with the Phoenix 5, but that is not abandoning the marriage OR Wakanda at all. One could easily argue that T'challa could have sided with the X-Men alongside Storm just like Storm could have sided with the Avengers alongside T'challa. If you are using this reasoning to say Storm abandoned the marriage, then the same would hold true for him. Its a double-edged sword. Neither character abandoned their marriage in this instance if it happened as I've just stated. They merely chose two different sides like Sue and Reed chose two different sides on the whole Civil War incident. They both just followed their convictions in this situation. I'd imagine Wakanda would have been essentially a place that was pro-Avengers because of the stance the Black Panther took on the matter. Storm would have been an outsider there for not agreeing with her husband if this were the case. If Ororo and T'challa disagreed on something major, the people of Wakanda will support T'challa over Ororo...unless T'challa has been compromised say by being taken over by an evil telepath or something and that knowledge is made known to the people. Look at how easily they turned on Storm in "Worlds Apart" for T'challa. She was never going to be BP's equal in the eyes of the people, so when he took a different position from her in the AvX thing, she had not choice BUT to go with the X-Men. However, in her heart, Storm never turned on Wakanda. If she knew for an instant that an attack upon the citizens of that country was coming, she would have been there in a flash front and center. She would have expected the X-Men to accompany her there in Wakanda's defense and would have let them have it if they offered any argument to the contrary. If the Phoenix 5 came after the X-Men and killed them including Storm while T'challa was someplace else with the Avengers and he didn't know the attack was going to happen, would that mean that he abandoned her? No, it would not because he would be ignorant of the fact until after the event took place. Same applies to Ororo in this instance.
Just because Storm is married to T'challa does not mean she has to lose her own identity. Losing her identity was part of the problem that happened with the way the whole marriage thing was put together from that terrible mini to some awkward instances early in the marriage in the BP issues (it got better in BP, though, as Hudlin came to know the character, Storm, better) that got so many Storm fans up in arms about it. She has a right to feel differently about something than her husband. Their views do not always have to mirror each other's. That said, Storm would not put a simple difference of philosophy above the well-being of her husband or her people in the event of an attack.
Regarding the Logan thing, that was bad writing, pure and simple. That was character assassination. I just write the whole Logan thing off as Storm being very vulnerable after the marriage and scraping the bottom of the barrel in rebounding with Wolverine. I've gone on at lengths on this board as to why its bad. We are agreed on this, though.
Back to your points, maybe you are referring to other instances where Storm abandoned the marriage that I'm not aware of or maybe there are depths and dimensions to this whole AvX thing that I don't know since I skipped the whole thing. I just went back and kinda glossed over certain aspects of it after I learned of the annulment on the internet.
To me, though, what T'challa did to Storm in "Doom War" was almost unforgivable. He was willing to let Doom kill his wife right in front of his face to protect the vibranium. He did not even show enough respect for her to remove his mask to look his wife in the eyes and express his sorrow for not saving her life as Doom counted down the span of time he gave BP to give him the pass code into the vault. Imagine if Doom had killed Storm and the last thing she saw on this Earth was her husband staring at her through a mask as he couldn't even honor her enough to at least look her in the eyes as he made this choice which placed her pretty low on his list of priorities. Would Scott do that to Jean? Would Reed do that to Sue? Would Captain America do that even to an innocent civilian? BP is supposed to be a hero. He should have saved his wife and thought to himself, "So what if Doom gets this vibranium? If Ororo dies, my world no longer exists. I am going to save my wife right now. Whatever it is Doom has planned, Storm and I will find a way to stop him together and get our vibranium back. When that time comes, I will take Doom's life with my own hands for what he has done this day."
Storm would have never consciously done to T'challa what T'challa did to her in "Doom War".
If you ask me, the fault is with the editors over at Marvel. I agree with you on that. I don't think it was good for the two of them to have a physical confrontation to end the marriage. It was really low class and trashy. I believe the way the marriage should have ended should've been with a heated, nasty fallen out between the two characters. They could have unloaded on each other (with Storm easily getting the better of T'challa in the argument since she had more ammunition to attack him with than he had to go at her) and ending with Storm leaving him. After that, he annuls the marriage. After some time where both characters have had the opportunity to reflect back upon the whole ordeal (he could reflect on how he abandoned Storm in "Doom War" as she should really drive that home against him in their argument making comparisons between him as a man in that instance versus Scott, Reed, Steve and others as I've done above while he brings up the things he did for her like finding her paternal grandparents. If he tries to use the Phoenix thing against her, she could have easily shut that down by turning the same arguments back upon him as I did earlier in this post), I think T'challa should have reached out to Storm apologetically and tried to reestablish a friendship with her (maybe, he would have an ulterior motive to win her back). She should be raw about it at first, but eventually, the friendship could be rekindled.
All of that said, I don't think the Amazing X-Men annual is Storm taking a nasty shot at BP just to be ugly about it. I mean, it could be interpreted that way. However, one must recall that Storm is a very private person. I can recall one issue where she had unearthed some treasure/loot she had been hiding in the X-Men's backyard back from her thieving days to help the team through some financial hardships during the Kelly/Seagle era. Jean commented on how despite Storm's closeness to the X-Men and to her (Jean is Storm's best friend) that Storm still plays her cards close to the vest. I think Jean was hurt by this revelation of Storm's secrecy. What I think the Amazing X-Men scene illustrates is the the emotional gulf that exists between her and T'challa EVEN given how they have rekindled their friendship on some level. Storm does not feel nearly as close to him as she once did during the marriage and felt that this was a personal situation with her cousin, Abuya, so she did not want him involved. I already brought up the X-Men 60-61 thing on how she wanted to confront Candra on her own and refused to allow Cyclops involve himself or the team in the confrontation. In that situation, she also saw the Candra thing as a personal matter, thus, she wanted to handle it alone. Storm was being in-character in the annual.
