Street Fighter

Although cosplay has been present for decades within the comics, anime, and sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, social media has played an integral role in the thriving communities of costuming that exist, such as Cosplay.com and the Superhero Costuming Forum. Over the years, the cosplay community has evolved into a creative outlet for many fans to establish and showcase some impressive feats of homemade disguise, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics at conventions. 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.

I've never been good at playing fighting games, but when I was growing up, there were few things in this world I loved more than Street Fighter. I think I've mentioned this before, but my first memory of actually trying to make a comic was when I was ten years old and I drew the junkyard fight scene from Batman #425 and replaced the bad guys with Blanka and Dhalsim, and really, you can draw a pretty straight line from that to where I am today. I've even written a tiny little bit of Street Fighter comics myself, and I am still very much a person who thinks karate guys throwing fireballs at each other is the highest form of art. Of course, they didn't exactly make it easy for us to like Street Fighter back then. The games were great, sure, but if you wanted a little more story about it on this side of the Pacific, your options were pretty slim. There was the movie in 1994, and the cartoon that was somehow a sequel to it, but if you wanted to see those characters in comics, you had only one choice: Malibu's Street Fighter --- the comic so legendarily rough that it was canceled after three issues with an apology from the publisher.

The days of Sonic the Hedgehog being confined to his own, Sega-centric universe are long over --- he's met Mega Man in comics and done Olympic events with Mario in games --- but the speedy blue guy has quite possibly never been to a world as expansive as the one he's going to experience in August's Sonic the Hedgehog #275 from Archie. Not only is Mega Man involved in part eleven of the huge "Worlds Unite" event, but lots of other Capcom and Sega worlds will be part of the story, too. Street Fighter, Billy Hatcher, NiGHTS into Dreams and Monster Hunter are among the other franchises in the mix. Check out our exclusive reveal of covers by artists Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, Edwin Haung, Lamar Wells, Tracy Yardley, and Rafa Knight!

Although cosplay has been present for decades within the comics, anime, and sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, social media has played an integral role in the thriving communities of costuming that exist, such as Cosplay.com and the Superhero Costuming Forum. Over the years, the cosplay community has evolved into a creative outlet for many fans to establish and showcase some impressive feats of homemade disguise, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics at conventions. 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.

Q: Which video game series would you love to pitch a comic series for? -- @rrob_IV A: I'm not going to lie to you, Rob: I have always wanted to make comics about video games. I think I've talked about this before, but the first memory I have of actually trying to make comics was laying on the floor of a hotel room at Myrtle Beach one summer vacation, drawing a version of the junkyard scene from Batman #425 that had Blanka and Dhalsim from Street Fighter in place of the standard thugs. It was actually a pretty big dream of mine, and a few years ago, I actually got the chance to pitch a comic based on one of my all-time favorite games. I even ended up writing a pretty big chunk of the script. So, since you asked, let's talk about the time that I almost wrote a comic based on Final Fight.

Cosplay always goes mainstream at Halloween, with the witch and ghost and vampire costumes of yesteryear making way on the streets, and at parties and bars, for the sort of pop culture costumes we're more used to seeing at conventions. These days, everyone wants to be Iron Man. But a lot of comic fans take pride in going the extra mile at Halloween, and nowhere is that more true than at Toronto's annual Snailoween Party, organized by local retailer Silver Snail Comics. Cosplay photographer Paul Hillier was on the scene to capture some of the finest outfits of the night, and he's agreed to let us share them here at ComicsAlliance.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

If our weekly Ask Chris column isn't enough of definitive comic book (and pro wrestling) opinions for you, good news: ComicsAlliance is proud to present Here's The Thing, a series of videos where you can join our own extremely opinionated senior writer, Chris Sims, as he sits in his living room under a framed portrait of Destro, drinking a cup of coffee and sharing his opinion on comic books. This

I have devoted a pretty significant portion of my life to rescuing Princess Peach of the Mushroom Kingdom, and, as I have noted so many times before, I grew up a Street Fighter partisan, with Sakura being one of my all-time favorite characters. As a result, I am immediately and automatically down for anything that combines those two characters, no questions asked. It's my weak point, like if I was

I'm not gonna lie, folks: Street Fighter II has been a very influential force in my life. And not just in my love of media where people shoot fireballs out of their hands and kick people in the face so fast that their feet become a lightning-fast blur of pain. I mean that it has affected the way I actually see the world. Much like I thought New York City was basically The Warriors before I went th