It’s been a long while since I’ve sat down to read a comic book from cover to cover. I mostly reach for novels and magazines for my recreational reading, well, more like I reach for my Kindle, but you catch my drift. But, as a child I devoured comics. If I wasn’t reading Tolkien or Rowling, I had a superhero-centered comic book in my hands, and more than likely it was an issue of The Uncanny X-Men.

The X-Men brought something to the table that I had a hard time finding in other comics at my young age. There is spectacular relatability written into every character and situation crafted for these stories, all the while honing in on the fact that the characters in question have these fantastic abilities.

I want to be there in the school or on the Blackbird with these heroes, fighting the good fight. I want to be a part of their team, their fellowship, because I relate to their friendship, insecurities, humor, and desire to be a part of something bigger than themselves. There are politically and socially charged comparisons all through the series to relate to, and that’s something special.

This story formula does become tiring to some people, though. With movie after movie, book after book asking us to follow a particularly gifted group of people on a dangerous adventure, sometimes the industry needs a little variety. But, according to movie studios and publishing houses, I’m not alone in my love for the sci-fi team trope.

Hollywood has taken advantage of the countless team-based superhero stories found in comic books, and I certainly down blame them. Audiences still love to see the leader of the pack take a bullet for their friends, to see the brains of the group stand up for themselves against those who deem them weak, and to see the self-proclaimed misfit take a turn for the better by helping someone you’d never expect. We love to see characters react to one another, and what better way to do so than having a variety of personalities working together as a team?

Heroic favorites and old foes (who, you guessed it, also work in a team) return for the latest installment in the X-Men film universe, X-Men: Apocalypse.

Here’s to Apocalypse being as stand-out as the latest films in the reboot, and to discovering where the filmmakers plan to take our favorite team of mutants next.