Deadpool

The original Deadpool costume was padded with fake muscles. But when Ryan Reynolds showed up to play everyone’s favorite Merc With a Mouth, he had so many actual muscles, that the fake muscles looked ridiculous and made the costume too bulky. So the fake muscles were removed. That Reynolds dude is legitimately jacked. This is just one of the Deadpool facts in the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

Marvel's next big line launch was formally unveiled this week via a special edition of Marvel Previews, including new #1s for Avengers, Venom, Captain Marvel, and Star-Lord, new launches for Champions, Jessica Jones, Kingpin, Bullseye, Slapstick, and Solo, and new concepts in Occupy Avengers, Iron Fists, Mosaic, Infamous Iron Man, and Unstoppable Wasp. Following our roundtable discussion of DC Rebirth, the ComicsAlliance team got together to break down the highs and lows of the new Marvel NOW. Join Elle Collins, James Leask, Katie Schenkel, Kieran Shiach, and Andrew Wheeler as they pick out the books they're most excited about and the books they're concerned about, and discuss Marvel's approach to legacy heroes and the state of diversity at Marvel today.

Yesterday we reported on the leaking of Marvel Comics' Marvel Previews free magazine, unveiling their entire post-Civil War II line-up including comics such as The Unstoppable Wasp, Solo, Foolkiller and Prowler. Today, the magazine has officially been released via comic stores and online, confirming even more titles and creative teams, including a Kate Bishop Hawkeye book and the much awaited Gamora solo title from Guardians of the Galaxy screenwriter Nicole Perlman.

Marvel Comics has a fantastic roster of straight-up fun characters that don't need to be tied into the grim and gritty goings on of day-to-day modern superheroics. It's an aspect of the Marvel Universe the publisher has really leaned on in recent years with titles such as The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Howard The Duck and The Astonishing Ant-Man, but it seems that playtime is over thanks to Deadpool: Too Soon?, a new miniseries by Joshua Corin and Todd Nauck.

X-Men: Apocalypse opened in the United States in May; after five weeks in theaters it’s starting to wind down its domestic theatrical run. (Last weekend it grossed an estimated $2.4 million on about 1600 screens.) But while the movie is slowly vanishing from theaters here, it’s yet to even open in certain international markets, including Japan. Over there, Apocalypse doesn’t debut until August, so the film’s promotional campaign continues in full force on that side of the Pacific. That includes this latest trailer, in which the star of Fox’s other (and far more financially successful) 2016 superhero movie shows up to promote his more famous colleagues.

What do the colors of your favourite superhero tell you about them? We're applying traditional color theory to iconic comic characters, to see what we can learn about them. Our focus this time is on darker colors, and how they define both heroes and villains. Black and red are colors for dark passion.

Since the dawn of the Silver Age, legacy characters have been a staple of superhero fiction, and having a new character step into a well loved role can open up new opportunities for writers and artists to tell different kinds of stories. In The Replacements, we’ll look back at the notable and not-so-notable heroes and villains to assume some of the most iconic mantles in the superhero genre. Peter Parker isn't the only web-headed wonder in the Marvel universe, and this week we're looking at the heroes and the villains, the threats and the menaces, who have donned the webs and proudly called themselves Spider-Man.

For all the popularity Deadpool has enjoyed over the years, it's quite possible that his star has never shined brighter than in 2016. The dude is in about a dozen comics a month, he had a smash hit film (finally) that's earned the right to move into sequel talks, and he's still on more merchandise than just about any X-person without the words Wolv and Erine in their names. That includes action figures, of which Wade Wilson has has plenty. But there are more on the way, including his first from NECA Toys. NECA's made a smidgen of Marvel figures before, all in quarter-scale size as the license permits, but they've all been tied to the movie versions of the Avengers. Deadpool will be the company's first Marvel figure based on his comic interpretation, and actually NECA's first comic book-based figure from either the Marvel or DC lines. Anyone that's been collecting NECA's 1/4 scale figures knows the kind of detail they bring to the table, but if this is a glimpse of the potential to come from other comic-based figures, the competition just got real quiet.

Who are the greatest X-Men of all time? To mark the release of X-Men: Apocalypse, we came up with the ultimate list of the top 100 characters ever to wear the X as part of the extended family of Professor Charles Xavier's Westchester school. These are the very best heroes (and sometimes villains) in more than fifty years of stories about Marvel mutants fighting for a world that hates and fears them! The final list was determined by a combination of our expert panel's rankings and our readers' votes, and as you might expect, the results offer an amazing selection of icons, powerhouses, and gorgeous freaks --- not to mention a few unexpectedly popular weirdoes. But it wouldn't be the X-Men without embracing the appeal of the weird.

A fervent bunch, Deadpool fans don't particularly need to much reason to buy any of the mercenary's merchandise. Wade Wilson's fans show a devotion that's intense and impressive, while also being sometimes a bit weird. That suits though given Deadpool's own predilection for living right on the fringe of strangeness. For these folks, the new Hot Toys Deadpool Cosbaby collection is a no-brainer. I'll admit, even for someone who isn't all about the chimichangas, these these are so damn cute, it's hard not to start throwing money at the screen myself.