Me again. Yeh I discovered X-Men c 79 (yeh I'm ooold) and was an immediate convert mainly cos of the impact of PHOENIX and STORM. I was a DC gal at the time and the nearest they had in strong female characters was Black Canary (mostly standing around in her fishnets - no contest :) Halle Berry can be good but she was hopeless as Storm. To this day I think Angela Bassett would have been perfect (did you see her in Strange Days? she has MUSCLES!) And Famkee Jenssen as Jean -jeez, she sleepwalks through 3 films with that one sulky expression cos she was basically a supermodel. Depressing. I bet Chris Claremont didn't like it much either, poor lad.. it is sad to find after all these years what awful dialogue he wrote, when I lapped it up at the time - but he really did have a good eye for an emotional moment , which comics did not have many of at that time, and I think a really ahead of his time perception of the kick assness of women, as well as giving a lot of positive airtime to gays and other minorities. He invented the entire Magneto as Holocaust victim/ gay bromance thing single handedly I think - not sure there was even a hint of it in the original X-Men..? not to mention introducing Kitty Pryde as probably the first overtly Jewish superhero..