Art For Art’s Sake # 133: A Bit Of John Bolton’s Beautiful ‘X-Men’

by Richard Bruton

Another week, another Art For Art’s Sake – enjoy!!!

Love this from Walter Simonson on Facebook – the explanation as much as the art… the reason why a couple of Star Wars comics back in the day had HUGE Stormtroopers in them…

“I posted this cover because it represents something to me of the fun of comics back in the day. Maybe this sort of thing is still being done. No idea. But this issue of Star Wars began life as an Marvel Annual of John Carter of Mars penciled by Carmine Infantino. That title was canceled with the issue unpublished. And Marvel, in an effort to save a few bucks, mandated that the issue should be turned into a Star Wars story. It actually became two issues of Star Wars. I drew some extra pages in order to fill out the two issues and convert them into an acceptable SW story.

The basic idea was to use as many of the JC pages as possible with as few changes as possible. So extra pages were done and some panels were altered to a greater or lesser degree to get everything to fit together. That was my job, along with the covers. Chris Claremont wrote the original Annual and converted the writing in his story to a Star Wars tale. I don’t know that it was the best way to make comics, but it was an interesting intellectual puzzle to try to solve in a readeable fashion. And it was the second time I got to do something like that. I’d helped Steven Grant convert an issue of Tarzan into a couple of Battlestar Galacticas a little earlier. It was fun, challenging, interesting and curious to do, whatever the final outcome.

I chose this cover because the issues had these giant stormtroopers in them, stormtroopers that I thank never appeared in any Star Wars stuff again anywhere. And we had giant stormtroopers in the issue in the first place because they were redrawn.”

Sato Ozawa – Uchujin Rock

Andi Watson – Fin Fang Foom!

Chris Weston – Variant cover – Tales From The Quarantine – from Red Cabin Comics

Christian Ward – Dune #9 cover

I’m one of those who had seen this but never realised it was Tess Fowler – her Royal Wedding tribute

Evan Dorkin – Hopeless Comics…

A couple from the simply wonderful Sarah McIntyre that I missed earlier in the year!

“I’ve done a new poster! It’s for Lord God, a comedy musical written by Philip Reeve & Brian Mitchell, with music by Brian (the same team who created the fabulous Pugs of the Frozen North stage show just before the first lockdown, and The Ministry of Biscuits).

And more from Sarah:

“The Adventuremice are seriously cheesed off by this waterway blockage. (Original painting was sold via my shop.) If I look back at this blog post ten years from now, here’s a reminder of the Suez reference.”

Dima Ivanov:

“Loki piece for one of my patrons (an homage to the famous Leyendecker’s “Interwoven Socks” illustration).”

Alan Davis – The Knights of Pendragon #5 cover

Peach Momoko – Black Knight

Phil Noto – you know who…

Don Martin –

Declan Shalvey – Spidey

Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon – David Aja variant

Steve Rude – The Spidey Women

Marshall Rogers – The Batman Portfolio (1981)

And finally, we’ll end with a little treat from John Bolton‘s run on Classic X-Men.

By the end of its 110 issue run, the Classic X-Men reprint title was just that, a simple reprint. But, when it started in 1986, it was a far more interesting thing – and we’re not talking about the reprint issue. (Although, given that this Classic X-Men series reprinted the classic run of the Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and Paul Smith X-Men, those are pretty good too.)

No, the big selling point for Classic X-Men was what was included in the back, with Ann Nocenti and John Bolton doing magnificent work, crafting these gorgeous little vignettes that worked alongside the reprinted issue.

And that John Bolton artwork? Oh wow. This was the first time the English artist had done superheroes and it just looked completely different. His fine line, the multiple styles, the invention, it was a delight to see every issue.

So, here’s a couple of examples of very different Wolverines from that great little run.

First, positioned between X-Men #121-122, Wolverine taking a side job for an espionage agency and facing down a hunter…