Today’s sketch is of a medieval/fantasy version of COLOSSUS that appeared in X-MEN 1/2. Years back, Wizard Magazine and Marvel offered Todd and me the opportunity to work on an X-MEN 1/2 project. I had always wanted to draw THE X-MEN, as they were a huge favorite of mine back when I was starting to read comics– so I was very excited about the opportunity this project offered. I was very disappointed, however, when I learned that the editorial folks for this one-shot wanted to steer the focus of the story into an ‘Elseworlds’ kind of direction. These would not be the X-MEN I was so fond of and had long wanted to take a crack at. This adventure would instead be in a fantasy or sword and sorcery setting. My disappointment was short-lived, though. Once I got down to the task of designing the clothing and surroundings for the story, I began to really enjoy myself. I should have known going in that it would be enjoyable, since I’ve always been such a huge fantasy fan…. but I had my heart set on the ‘real’ X-MEN. Todd wrote a really wonderful story that was a lot of fun to draw… and we ended up enjoying working on this ‘X-MEN as D&D’ type of tale so much that when things went completely South with my relationship with Marvel at that time, Todd and I immediately began to have discussions about creating our own property that would be something that would allow us to continue our enjoyment of the type of subject matter we had just worked on.

Those discussions are what led to our beginning the TELLOS book at IMAGE. I don’t know if I’ve written about this before… it feels like I might have. My last post about THE MANNITES came from looking at an old folder filled with the original designs I had done for that proposed series…. and the designs for the X-MEN 1/2 were in there, too…. so I thought it would be fun to re-interpret one or more of those sketches.

OK…. that’s it for today.

This is Entry 305.

Mike