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

X-Men 33 - The Outcast

Professor H was nice enough to step away from the wayback machine long enough fill us all in regarding one of the rejected covers for X-Men 33, and provides a color version of the cover as well:

"Gil Kane's X-Men cover ran into problems.  First, several changes were made, including the positions of both hands on both Marvel Girl and Cyclops, Cyclops' eye-beams were added, and a lot of minor rendering lines were added or redrawn on the main figure's hands. 

But then, the Comics Code apparently thought the main figure of "The Outcast" was too frightening.  So The Outcast was replaced by The Juggernaut (who had been on Werner Roth's rejected cover in the first place).  Juggernaut's hands were left unchanged from the previous version.  The figures of Marvel Girl & Cyclops were replaced with Iceman and Angel, and their floating heads were replaced with the faces of Cyclops and Marvel Girl-- taken directly from Roth's cover! 

(See this post "http://unpublishedxmen.blogspot.com/2013/06/x-men-33.html" for a look at Werner Roth's unused cover.)

Roy Thomas & Gil Kane would go on to collaborate on a wide variety of books, including the creation IRON FIST. 

For Gil Kane's cover, for contrast, my choice of colors, first on "The Outcast" and then on the background, was designed to highlight their otherworldliness and evil, as well as reflect the manic intensity of Kane's art. I didn't even bother trying to make it similar to the published version, and I specifically wanted it to be as "wild" and "demented" as possible.  I feel this manages to capture the look of the era (1967 was the "summer of love" and "psychedelia" after all) but also comes close to almost looking like a "black light" poster."

(Note that the second version is inked differently, and Cyclops is using his powers.)

(As always, you can catch Professor H in his wayback machine @ http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/)

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.

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/