Entry 150: Astonishing X-Men #52

 

Well look at what the cat dragged in-- the cover to ASTONISHING X-MEN #52!

Well done, cat.

Not your typical X-Men cover, I think. Convincing the editors to let me go with this idea took some doing. You know how they tell you to pick your battles, well I picked one. But now I'm left to wonder, if I've only got so many battles I can fight, did I pick the right one?

I did 3 sketches for this cover. Before I say anything about the sketch that we went with I want to say a little about the 2 other sketches that we didn't go with.

Here are the other sketches.

Going into this cover, I didn't know anything about what would be in it other than that it would be about Karma. So how to make a cover about Karma was completely open.

I talked about wanting to do some covers with a more graphic look back when I posted about my cover for issue #53. Initially that's the direction I wanted to go for this cover. Karma's power has a nice graphic-ness to it. So I thought using that as inspiration was a nice idea.

I like the first one, with the color, pretty well. But I didn't feel like these were really images about Karma. They were images about how Karma is pretty and has a power. You know what I mean? So I wanted to do an image that was about her character and made you more interested in her as a person. This is essentially what all my Shield variant covers have been about, so the idea led me towards doing something more in line with my Shield covers.

 When I used Karma's character as inspiration I began to think about the tragedies of her past. I thought about the realities of having a young woman with a cybernetic leg. Getting dressed, trying to look pretty, and needing to maintain your ugly robot leg. I thought about how she's a lesbian and has had a history of liking the wrong people. I'm by no means an expert on her, but I did a little bit of reading, and I started to really feel for her. I ended up wanting to do something sensitive and a little tragic.

Sensitive and tragic are not common descriptors for X-Men covers... So, long story short, I picked a battle. I made an argument. There is the small compromise of the leg being more teched out, and I had to move her other leg so that it didn't go behind the bar code, but, over all, I got to do the cover I wanted. Ultimately everyone was happy. And I'm glad the folks at Marvel were willing to do something a little out of the norm.

 Some small things I'd like to point out:
-Totoro! I realized that Disney has the licensing for Studio Ghibli films and that Disney of course now owns Marvel. I'm no legal expert but I think that makes it okay for me to have Totoro in a Marvel comic... If not, then what's a Totoro? Never heard of him.
-Also, there is a double shout-out to the disbanded band Sleater Kinney and to the artist of that concert poster, Tara McPherson. I like both that band and that artist, but more importantly I thought Karma might like them.
-There's a cross on the wall. Did you know that Karma is Catholic? Or at leased she was. Not sure where she lads with the whole religion thing these days but that stuff is hard to shake.
-And my personal favorite shout out-- There's a Snar-Fled clock.

And while we're talking about Karma, did you know that I designed her current outfit.

I know her costume isn't a big departure from what she's worn for years, but my first take on it was quite a bit different.

I thought it might be cool to give her a mask. I like masks on super heroes. Ultimately the mask went, but the first note I got was to clean up the shoulders and collar.

After that they asked for some different sleeve configurations.

As you can see, we're getting closer and closer to her old look. We went with the third 3rd option, minus the mask. Oh and we had to change the pink because that's the color of her power and that might be to much pink. So we went with yellow. And yeah, we're practically back to her old look.

So next up is my cover for Astonishing X-Men #53. Oh wait. I already posted about that one... So I guess that's it then. My last Astonishing X-Men cover. Good by Astonishing X-Men. We had our ups and downs but over all it's been really good. Now I'm going to go back and read all my Astonishing X-Men cover blog entries while listening to "Way We Were."

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