Before there were Storm and Black Panther, there were just Ororo and T'Challa.

But this collected miniseries, which retroactively creates a teenage romance for the two heroes, feels forced. Sure, Marvel had to build a foundation for the highly publicized wedding of these two characters, but -- just like the ongoing Democratic primaries -- it seems like an awkward attempt to play the race card and lure black voters -- I mean, readers -- to its side.

Marvel gives its intentions away on the back cover, touting this as the "untold love story between Marvel's two pre-eminent black superheroes." The fact that they're both black seems to be sufficient motivation for them to fall in love, right?

The choice of romance novelist Eric Jerome Dickey to write the script is a fair indication where this story is going. Sure, there's action, but it's contrived and kind of dumb. The villains are pure cardboard, with flimsy motivations both for their unrelenting pursuit of Ororo and for their casual approach to murder among friends and foes alike. These bad guys are ridiculous.

The book instead focuses primarily on young Ororo, a petty thief in the streets of Cairo who is experiencing puberty -- and therefore is going through the joint turmoil of a changing body and her growing mutant powers. She has control of neither; hence, when she cries, it rains, etc. T'Challa, meanwhile, is walking around Africa in a loincloth, learning to be a king, and he happens to stumble upon Ororo's Oliver Twistian life just at the right moment to fuddle the villains' plans.

The dialogue -- and there's a lot of it -- is frequently redundant or cheesily overdramatic, but Dickey still manages to impart a sense of turmoil for the young girl. Still, I hope I wasn't alone in feeling just a little uncomfortable at his blunt presentation of way-underage sex between the virginal Ororo and T'Challa, who -- being a man and a prince, no less -- has had plenty of experience already. Still, he isn't too terribly wise in the sexual arena, or he'd know how lame it is to say to a girl on the morning after her first time, "God, you sound like my mother."

Ick.

It's not much better when she says, in the midst of a later battle, "I will always remember that you made me a woman, warrior." If that's not a groaner of a line, I don't know what is.

On the plus side, artwork by David Yardin (with an assist by Lan Medina) is excellent. Otherwise, this book is mostly for people who were swept away by the romance of Ororo and T'Challa's sudden nuptials and want a romantic backstory to support it.