Sacrificial New Mutants Cover

Barry Windsor-Smith's unpublished cover for The New Mutants #43, followed by the published version.

Thanks to Marvel Comics of the 1980's for the find!

Lifedeath 3

Lifedeath 3, the sequel to Lifedeath (Uncanny X-Men 186) and Lifedeath 2 (Uncanny X-Men 198), has the unique status of being an unpublished X-Men story you can buy.  The art for the story was completed by Barry Windsor-Smith, but rejected by Marvel due to the story's dealing with suicide.  However, years later he reworked the story, replacing Storm with his creator-owned character Adastra from his series Young Gods.  

Here's a link to Barry Windsor-Smith's website, where you can also find a direct link for purchasing the book.

http://www.barrywindsor-smith.com/studio/adastranews.html

Happy Anniversary!!!

I just realized that January 24th marks one year of blogging about Unpublished, Rare, and Commissioned X-Men art.  For those new to the blog, we tend to feature unused art on Mondays, rare but published art on Wednesdays, and Commissions or Sketches on Fridays.  Here are a few highlights of the first year:

To show my commitment to unpublished X-Men art I hit the ground running, and reached into my personal stash to bring you a rare scan of an unused page from X-Men Special Edition by Dave Cockrum:

http://unpublishedxmen.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-new-all-different-revisited.html

I restored the artwork from Uncanny X-Men annual #3, to correct a major oversight in the printed version:

http://unpublishedxmen.blogspot.com/2012/03/uncanny-restoration.html

And with much help from Professor H., a classic piece of unpublished art by Barry Windsor-Smith was reimagined as if it had been published.  Roy Thomas himself was thrilled to see this artwork!

http://unpublishedxmen.blogspot.com/2012/06/barry-windsor-smiths-first-cover.html

Stay tuned, because we've got a lot more rare and unpublished artwork coming in the next year!

Wounded Wolf

This was an unused cover for X-Men 205 by Barry Windsor-Smith, courtesy of Comicbookartwork on Tumblr: http://comicbookartwork.tumblr.com/post/33504505969/uncanny-x-men-205-barry-windsor-smith-x-men

Barry Windsor-Smith's First Cover

Greetings, children of the atom!  Normally we bring you a new post on Tuesdays, but this find was so astounding, we're starting the festivities early!!  Today we have a rare treat for you, a fully colored rendition of Barry Windsor-Smith's unused cover for his first published comic, X-Men 53!

Special thanks to Professor H for the wonderful colors!

http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/

Here is the original cover.  Faintly, at the top, the title is pencilled in: "The X-Men Featuring The Rage of Blastaar!"  This kind of logo was replaced with Jim Steranko's new X-Men logo as of issue 50.  However, most likely the artist didn't know about the new logo as he was producing this art.

Also, the faint lettering at the left reads:  "Extra: We discovered an English Jack Kirby!"

Above, I have photoshopped in a quick approximation of what the logo would have looked like.

You can see the originals, along with more unpublished sketches from this issue at the Barry Windsor-Smith Unofficial Blog:

http://somethingicwaes.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/barry-windsor-smith-originales-de-x-men.html

Finished inks are courtesy Stephen Donnelly's comicarfans.com post here:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=345430&GSub=27878

Finally, for your perusal, I present the published cover!