A very different Juggernaut

This take on Juggernaut was done by Jack Kirby many years after he stopped drawing X-Men, and gives us a peek at how things might have been if he stayed on the book.

The sketch was printed in "Jack Kirby's Heroes and Villains." From www.whatifkirby.com:

"In the early to mid 1970's, Jack Kirby drew a sketchbook of characters he created and gifted it to his wife, Roz Kirby. In 1987, thanks to Roz Kirby and Greg Theakston, the sketchbook was printed in the hardcover book, "Jack Kirby's Heroes and Villains." It was complete until it was taken a part and individual pages were sold in the mid 2000s."

http://www.whatifkirby.com/gallery/comic-art-listings/jack-kirbys-heroes-and-villains-issue-1-page-51

Jack Kirby Week

Not only is this unused cover for X-Men #10 the oldest unpublished cover featured on this blog, but it is also the earliest X-Men cover still in existence.  We've also got a version colored by a friend of Unpublished X-Men, Professor H!

http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/

Number One

This week we'll be paying homage to the image that started it all, the classic X-Men #1 by showing art and homages published by Marvel.  First we have the original cover by Kirby and Sol Brodsky.  Sol is also attributed as the logo designer. (The art shown here is from Marvel Masterworks.)

Note the grass in the background and the lines coming from Marvel Girl's head.  While these were removed from the final cover of X-Men #1, they were left on the art stat used for this reprint.

Alex Ross did a painted version for X-Men Omnibus #1.

Dave Cockrum did the first homage cover when the All-New X-Men met Magneto.

And finally, Art Adams and Al Williamson paid homage to the homage when Classic X-Men #12 reprinted X-Men 104.

I also wanted to add that the Marvel Milestone Edition featured the reprinted version of the cover with the grass in the background, as well as lighter colored stripes on Magneto's force field.

Citizen Cain

Professor H has traveled in his wayback machine all the way to 1965 to bring us this glimpse of the Juggernaut's original design by Jack Kirby and Alex Toth.  

The image was found in blue line under the original art.  Alex Toth used blue line pencils while Kirby usually did not, so it's unclear who actually came up with the final design for Juggernaut.  The article accompanying the image also mentions that the notes on the border of the artwork imply that Kirby intended to have Juggernaut be the one to cripple Professor X.  Kirby didn't yet realize that Stan had revealed that Lucifer crippled Professor X just three issues earlier, since that apparently wasn't part of Kirby's original plot for that issue.  Juggernaut's real name, Cain Marko, was most likely an allusion to the biblical Cain who invented murder by killing his own brother.

The complete article appears at the Kirby Museum:

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/the-best-laid-out-plans/

And as always, Professor H's marvelous wayback machine can be accessed via the link that follows:

http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/