You Can Bamf If You Want To: The Art of the #80sXMen Hashtag

New images emerge almost daily from X-Men: Apocalypse, the latest installment in Fox and Bryan Singer's X-Men film franchise, set in the 1980s. Naturally, this has led to much discussion about how the '80s version of the X-Men look, and whether they could look better. After all, the body armor they seem to wear through much of the film has as little relation to 1980s fashion as it does to X-Men comics.

Prompted by artist Jamie McKelvie wondering, "why the X-Men in the 80s have more fancy and modern looking costumes than the X-Men from the first movies," the famously fashion-oriented cover artist Kevin Wada tweeted a suggestion that everyone should draw the X-Men in film-friendly '80s style outfits:

The hashtag #80sXMen was quickly coined, and the art rolled in. The idea of designing costumes suitable for the movie seems to have been left behind pretty quickly, in favor of all sorts of amazing '80s-inspired X-imagery. Some of the most exciting artists working today made contributions. In addition to Wada's own Cyclops, there's a Rogue by Jamie McKelvie, an Emma Frost by Babs Tarr, a Jubilee by Trungles, and a very eye-catching Flashdance-inspired Nightcrawler by former Uncanny X-Men artist Kris Anka.

As an X-Fan who lived through the '80s, I love seeing all the references the various artist made to the pop culture of that decade. Storm, for instance, can be seen dressed as Prince, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, and Salt-N-Pepa. There's also a Madonna-styled Emma Frost, a very Miami Vice Wolverine, and of course Sunspot dressed as his idol, Magnum P.I..

There was no way include (or even make it through) all the art in the hashtag, but you can look through it on Twitter yourself, and see far more great art than we had room for here. You might even be inspired to add your own!