The End?

According to Bob Layton's website:

"This piece, penciled by Jackson (Butch) Guice was slated to be the cover to X-Factor #2--which featured a story revolving around the Beast--Hank McCoy facing off against the powerful size-changing mutant known as Tower.  However, it was deemed unsuitable because the editors felt it was too soon for a mere, single character on the cover of a team book."

http://www.boblayton.com/Art%20Gallery/artgallery_page4.htm

Santa Claws

We conclude our week of holiday themed X-Men art with this subscription ad, featuring Santa Claws by John Buscema.

Yuletide Greetings!

This hastily colored festive image comes from Comics Interview 76, which I featured in this post:

http://unpublishedxmen.blogspot.com/2012/04/7-days.html

Scroll down for the original black and white art.

Merry X-Mas!

Happy Holidays to all the readers of Unpublished X-Men!  Today we bring to your attention Marvel Holiday Special #1 from 1991, which featured a short story by Scott Lobdell and the late, great Dave Cockrum.  The best part is that this story leads directly into the splash page for the now classic Uncanny X-Men #98 by Cockrum and Claremont!

Marvel Holiday Special also features a cover by Art Adams, also posted for your holiday enjoyment.

Classic X-Men Week Finale - Carlos Pacheco

 From the One Minute Later Gallery at Comicartfans:

"Recipe for a Carlos Pacheco One Minute Later:

Start with an unpublished X-Men pencil pin-up by Carlos. Find Jesus Merino (via their mutual art agent) and have Jesus ink the pin-up. Next, meet Carlos in person at Wizard World Philly 2011 and explain to him the One Minute Later concept and show him the One Minute Later sketchbook. Watch as Carlos tranforms the piece into Classic X-Men One Minute Later by adding FOUR characters (Angel, Beast, Ice-Man and Havok) and tightens Nightcrawler. Viola!!!!"

The commission was based on this piece which appeared as an X-Men poster, and a double page spread in X-Men: The Ultimate Guide.

I could not find a good scan of the poster, but this cover for Dolmen, a foreign language publication is much better in quality.  (Click for a larger version)

Here is a link to the One Minute Later gallery:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=779747&GSub=118778

Update!  Here's a better version of the image from X-Men: The Ultimate Guide.  Right click to view the larger image, and please pardon the seam in the middle of the scan.

Classic X-Men Bonus: Ron Lim

Generally we only post three days a week, but Ron Lim's take on Classic X-Men #1 was too good to be left out.

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=24896&GSub=83006

Classic X-Men Week: Dave Cockrum

Here's Dave Cockrum's take on Classic X-Men #1, along with the original art.

Images from Comicartfans:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=845187&GSub=81502

Classic X-Men Week - Art Adams

Here's an interesting look at the evolution of a cover:  The original version of Classic X-Men #1 by Art Adams.

The prelim sketch below was credited to John Romita.  Was he teaching Art how to tighten up his layout?

Below is Adams' second prelim, based on John Romita's poses, perhaps.

And here we have the final Classic cover!

Along with a recolored version.

Finally, we have a recent commission showing how Adams would attack this composition today!

Most of the images come from Marvel Comics of the 1980s:

http://marvel1980s.blogspot.com/2010/09/1986-classic-x-men-covers.html

Havok!

Here's a most excellent Havok sketch by Jim Lee.

Fantastic!

Fantastic was a British comic magazine published in the 1960's.  It contained comic strips as well as black and white reprints of Marvel Comics stories.  Here are a few X-Men related pinpus from the magazine.  More pinups can be found in this Flickr gallery, courtesy of tinybatch:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinybatch/sets/72157622759068050/

While some of the images contain art from the comics, many of them appear to be original art produced for the magazine.  Feel free to try to identify the artist of each piece.

100th post - Apologies to Brent Anderson

In honor of the 100th blog post on The Unpublished X-Men, I would like to take a moment to thank all the viewers who have made this blog a success.  I'm glad to see so many people share an interest in the behind-the-scenes rarities that have I have gathered here.  I would also like to take a moment to present the original art I used for the banner image at the top of the blog.  Here is the original cover to The Marvel Comics Index by Brent Anderson.  Unfortunately, I had to make some changes to the original art to make it fit into a banner.  Nightcrawler and the logo have been moved down, and the Angel's wings were much too big to fit into the image without some tucking and folding.  The red X was removed, and the original X-Men were resized.

In addition, I had the good fortune to purchase a printer's proof of the original black and white lineart a few years back, and I am presenting it here for the first time.  Right click on the images to view them with more detail.

Once again, thanks for coming back to visit time and again, rest assured that I have many more rarely seen works of art in store for the next 100 posts! 

X-Men Animated

Steven E. Gordon did character designs for both theX-Men Evolution and the Wolverine and the X-Men animated series.  Here's a design for Psylocke.  You can find more of Steven's work here:

http://stevenegordon.blogspot.com/

Two Toms

The Official Marvel Index to the X-Men contained some great interior pieces which I will be featuring from time to time.  This one comes from issue #3 published in 1987.  Art is by Tom Grindberg and Tom Palmer.

Ultimate X-Men

I'm not completely sure which issue this unpublished Ultimate X-Men cover was for.