Marvel Comics has tagged a group of elite artists "Stormbreakers," its new moniker for artists in its "talent distinction" program, previously known as Young Guns.

The inaugural group of Stormbreakers are Natacha Bustos (Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur), Juann Cabal (Guardians of the Galaxy), Carmen Carnero (Hellions), Josh Cassara (X-Force), Iban Coello (Venom), Patrick Gleason (Amazing Spider-Man), Peach Momoko (cover artist), and R.B. Silva (Fantastic Four, Powers of X).

For the next two years, Marvel will assign these artists to high-profile series and storylines, give them exclusive opportunities, and promote their work on a special section of their website.  The artists were selected by portfolio review.  Four of the artists (Bustos, Cabal, Carnero, and Coello) are from Spain; Cassara and Gleason are from the U.S.; Momoko is from Japan; and Silva is from Brazil.

The Stormbreakers program picks up from Marvel’s Young Guns, which the publisher launched in 2004 and ran until 2014, then picked up again in 2018 (see "Marvel’s Young Guns").

The program is named after Stormbreaker, a hammer forged from the same metal as Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, which became an important factor in a number of Marvel stories; the writer Walter Simonson introduced Stormbreaker in Thor #339 in January 1984.