storm

X-Men: Apocalypse doesn't come out in the US until May 27, but we've known for a while that it takes place in the 1980s. In fact, that's what inspired all the recent '80s X-Men fan art. Now the marketing team for the movie has gone a similar direction themselves, posting five images to the official X-Men Movies Facebook Page that insert characters from the movie into some classic '80s record cover art.

Who are the greatest ever X-Men? Over the coming weeks, we’re going to try to answer that question, selecting five X-Men at a time from across the franchise’s long history, and pairing up your votes with the opinions of our own panel of highly opinionated X-Men fans. Your scores will be added to ours to determine the top 100 X-Men. Today we're looking at two of the hottest X-Men, Firestar and Sunfire, the time-displaced Warren Worthington III, former villain Frenzy, and arguably one of the most important mutants of them all, weather witch and longtime team leader Storm.

In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.

There’s a lot to admire about Storm. She's not just a powerhouse and a figurehead. She’s a strong character, one of the first prominent black characters, and the first black female character to hold a major role in mainstream superhero comics. She's such a resonant and important character that it’s easy to see why cosplayers would want to adopt the mantle of Ororo Munroe.

On this day in 1975, comics were changed forever. The book that changed everything? Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum. The reason this book is so important? It's the first appearance of the X-Men. "But wait," you're saying, "the X-Men debuted in 1963's X-Men #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby!" That is also true, but here's the thing about those X-Men: Nobody liked them very much, and there was nothing particularly special about them. Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, and Beast were students a prep school for mutants who fought goofy supervillains in between training sessions. They were a second-string Lee/Kirby creation at best.

As X-Men:Apocalypse approaches, fans have been treated to a surplus of film stills and promotional images, including several posters showing the film’s opposing teams of X-Men and Horsemen. While Apocalypse and his mutant flunkies are dressed in armor, which we’ll accept, because it's Apocalypse, the X-Men are wearing black ops-style uniforms that look so much like the costumes from a Hunger Games sequel that you could be looking at a “Katniss and the Districts” band poster. There has been plenty of fanboy outcry about Jennifer Lawrence’s non-indigo appearance in the film’s promo materials, and righly so; Mystique’s sense of mutant pride has been a plot vehicle in both the past and current X-Men movies. While Mystique’s missing scales are a problem, what's even more worrisome is the lack of originality or care in the X-team’s looks.

In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.

It's no secret that white male leads have dominated comic books since --- well forever. In the '60s, Marvel and DC finally started to put a change to that with the addition of super-powered people of color, which led to some of today's biggest names in comics. But it still wasn't enough. Eventually the lack of diversity led to the onset of Milestone Media in the '90s, where Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T. Dingle crafted several intriguing characters. With an increasingly active black nerd, or blerd, community, new black characters are being created every day --- primarily through independent publishers, though Marvel has also kickstarted a focus on one of its most notable black characters --- but more on that later. To celebrate Black History Month, ComicsAlliance is running down our list of 20 Great Black Comic Book Characters. Our list considers old staples as well as some new favorites, including a certain katana wielding badass, space explorers and of course, plenty of superheroes.

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with 75 years of superhero comics behind us right now, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite characters in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know! This week we're taking a look at the X-Men's resident weather goddess, Storm, soon to be reimagined for the big screen in the forthcoming film, X-Men: Apocalypse. Join us as we examine Storm's place in comics history, her origins both on the page and behind the scenes, and the surprisingly storied history of her hair, as well as several other equally interesting facts.

In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.