I like Marc Sumerak's work. He impressed me with the debut issue of Guardians, and the second and third issues of Power Pack were a lot of fun. He has his misses as well, though, such as the recent debut of Machine Teen and now Ororo. The premise for this limited series barely makes itself known in this first issue, and the conflict between Ororo and a fellow underage thief is overdone. Still, taking us back to the childhood of one of the best-known X-Men is a great way to bring a character down to earth... or it would have been if the character wasn't acting more like the adult she becomes rather than the child she should have been.
Growing up as an orphan in Cairo, Ororo Munroe obviously didn't have a conventional childhood. She spent a great deal of time with other orphans and even had a father figure who watched over them all, but it wasn't at any orphanage. Ororo and her fellow wayward waifs were trained to be thieves, and Ororo was the best of them all. Her rival, Nari, hated Ororo and how she was preferred by their criminal teacher, and she cared only for herself. Ororo, on the other hand, showed promise of the hero she'd become, caring for her fellow thieves and taking risks to ensure their survival. Her life is about to take a dramatic turn, though, as she's about to be hired out for a special job for a mysterious and ruthless employer.
Barberi tells the story clearly though, but the art never really grabs the reader's eye either. Humberto (Crimson) Ramos's influence on his style is as apparent as ever, but there are times his work is reminscent of Todd (Wildguard) Nauck's as well. The biggest problem with the line art is the portrayal of the title character. Aside from her height, as compared to the other characters, there's not much in the way of visual cues that she's supposed to be a kid. She really looks no different than the adult version of the character.
Of course, Sumerak's script doesn't make Ororo sound much like a kid either. She still boasts the same kind of purple prose we see from the character in other comics, and it makes it remarkably difficult to relate to her. We see little bit of a mischievous nature in her, but not nearly as much as I'd like. I get that her circumstances require her to be far more grown up than she should be, but it would have been nice to see more innocence from the character.
Furthermore, we don't really see what makes her a great thief. We're told she's great, but other than being quiet, Ororo just doesn't exhibit the skills of anything more than an ordinary thief. The conflict with Nari is overstated to the extreme, and Nari's efforts to sabotage Ororo aren't all that logical. It's not even clear why she's not been rejected outright by the other thieves and their teacher. 4/10
