Welcome to your mid-week edition of Comics Relief, fangirls and fanboys! Lots of news from the big publishers this week, but first, DC Comics celebrates their leading ladies in honor of Women’s History Month. Read on for the full scoop…

DC Counts Down Their Top 10 Female Characters

It is safe to say that DC Comics has the most iconic female characters in maybe all of comicdom. As a way of celebrating Women’s History Month, the latest DC All Access video features a countdown of the most important female characters in the publisher’s long history. You probably already know which character lands at #1, but what’s odd about this list is who was left out. I mean, Big Barda and Amanda Waller are cool and all, but c’mon…even my mother knows who Catwoman is! You can see the full video below, and judge for yourself if this list is accurate or not.

Obama Makes His Marvel

Of course, DC Comics aren’t the only major comics publisher celebrating Women’s History Month. Marvel’s director of content and character development Sana Amanat introduced President Barack Obama at a Women’s History Month reception held at the White House. And it looks like she introduced him to Ms. Marvel too, judging by this tweet. What else do you think is on President Obama’s pull list?

Sana Amanat of @Marvel introduces @POTUS at #WomensHistoryMonth Reception! pic.twitter.com/mEW7mAeCPH

— Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) March 16, 2016

(SPOILERS) Meet Apocalypse’s New Four Horsemen

This week’s issue of Marvel’s Extraordinary X-Men features the kick-off to the big Apocalypse Wars crossover event, which introduces readers to the all-new Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. And what’s different about these particular horsemen as that unlike in years past, only one of them is actually a mutant.

Aside from Colossus, the rest of the Horsemen — who now reside in a dystopian future — feature non-mutant Marvel characters like Deadpool, Venom, and…. Moon Knight?!? (How random is that last one?) Maybe after losing constantly, Apocalypse decided humans were the superior species after all. You can see the first image of the gathered Horsemen, illustrated by Humberto Ramos, below: [Comic Book]

Mike Mignola Reveals Final Hellboy Cover

The end of Hellboy — at least for now — is almost upon us, and creator Mike Mignola has revealed the cover for Hellboy in Hell #10, the final issue of the character for the foreseeable future. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Mignola revealed that Hellboy in Hell wasn’t originally planned as a finale:

“I thought it would just be these odd little rambling stories. And then I did certain things in the book that I didn’t think would be a big deal, but they kind of turned into a big deal. And somehow, the dominoes started falling and I realized it’s not a bunch of unrelated stories. It’s one big story.”

When asked about possibly returning to Big Red sometime down the line, Mignola added, “He’s been dead for a long time. It’s really hard to ever say something is completely over when the character has already been killed and continues to walk around. So while this story is done and I have no concrete plans to do any other Hellboy stuff myself, it does end in a pretty interesting way.”

You can see the cover for Dark Horse Comics’ Hellboy in Hell #10 below. [EW via CBR]

Joss Whedon Talks Captain America

In a recent Comics Relief, we talked about the upcoming Captain America story that Avengers director Joss Whedon was writing for Cap’s 75th Anniversary issue, which he’s doing along with artist John Cassaday. Now in an interview with Marvel.com, Whedon talks a bit about why he’s doing this story, and how it originally was conceived as a crossover with DC/Wildstorm’s The Authority.

“I had had a very big concept years ago that I desperately wanted to do which actually was a crossover with Captain America and Jenny Sparks from the Authority. It was about Captain America early in his career learning about the history of America, what’s good and bad about how this country was formed, and how that’s reflected in Europe. And so he didn’t have this jingoistic bad view of Europe, and so the point that’s made in the little piece that we do here is how I wanted to end that which is him realizing what his purpose is, and it’s not, you know, to hit people.” [Bleeding Cool]

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy Crossover Gets 2 New Variant Covers

So it was just last week that a crossover between BOOM! Studios teen-centric Lumberjanes and DC’s Gotham Academy was announced, and already we have two new variant covers for issue #1. The covers are by Kelly & Nichole Matthews and Leila del Duca, respectively, and you can peep both of them below: [CBR]

Retro Toy Property M.A.S.K. Is Coming to IDW

While they weren’t as big in their day as similar toy/cartoon lines like Transformers or GI Joe, M.A.S.K. — which stood for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand — was nevertheless popular with certain fans, who still hold it close to their hearts. Now it’s been confirmed that because of IDW’s partnership with Hasbro, this will finally result in a new comic book series based around M.A.S.K.

The original show was about a special ops unit that (of course) wear masks to hide their identities, and who pilot vehicles that turn into other vehicles. So the car is really just a “mask” for the plane. Get it? Their enemies were V.E.N.O.M., which stands for Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem. Which is maybe the best evil secret society name ever. The movie version of G.I. Joe is set to incorporate M.A.S.K. into that universe, so I imagine the comics will follow suit. No creative teams or release dates have been given as of yet. [Newsarama]

Comics Artists Pay Tribute To The ’80s-Era X-Men

Although the X-Men debuted at Marvel in the 1960’s, it wasn’t really until the 1980s that the series became the publisher’s #1-selling title. It’s also the era when a lot of the current comics pros of today became fans of the series.

To pay tribue to the ’80s-era X-Men, artist Kevin Wada, along with Jamie McKelvie, Babs Tarr, Rod Reis and many, many others, paid tribute by creating all new art of the team in their ’80s glory days, using the hashtag #80sXMen. You can see a selection of these pieces in our gallery below, and a ton more at the following link: [Comics Alliance]

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IMAGES: DC Comics / Marvel Comics / IDW / Hasbro / Dark Horse Comics