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Uncanny X-Men Tribute Variant

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Uncanny X-Men Tribute Variant

By Me, After Byrne.

Jen Bartel
Nov 4, 2022
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Uncanny X-Men Tribute Variant

www.jenbartel.club
The Uncanny X-Men #141 by John Byrne

A while ago, Marvel reached out to me about participating in a variant cover event that would feature a current group of artists by having them homage classic covers, and I agreed to come onboard because I thought it would be a fun challenge.

This cover for The Uncanny X-Men #141 by John Byrne is possibly one of the most well-known and recognizable covers in comics history, and it’s been homaged many times by a wide range of ultra-talented artists, so needless to say I was a little intimidated. I did my best to give it the attention it deserved, so hopefully I did it justice! (I even went so far as to draw characters on that background poster knowing full well that they’d just be getting covered up, lol—truly clownish behavior on my part 🤡 but at least you get to see those hidden parts further down in this post!)

My version
Pencils (I didn’t submit thumbnails for this one and kept the pencils tight because there was no ambiguity about where the final art was headed—it’s an homage, after all.)
Pencils for the background poster
Base colors + simple shading
Final tone corrections
W/ type effects
Corner Box at full size


Yes, if I was a sane and normal human being I probably would have just reused the finished drawings of these characters I did on the poster, but because I wanted it to have a more solid/cel-shaded look in order to mirror the original cover, I chose to completely re-ink them with a hard brush and give them all a punchier palette, complete with halftones. Definitely more components than I usually complete for my covers, but it was fun (and I think worthwhile in the end!)

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Uncanny X-Men Tribute Variant

www.jenbartel.club
9 Comments
Joseph Benda
Nov 4, 2022·edited Nov 4, 2022

Truly beautiful art. I might need to update my phone background from the current wallpaper (your Jean Grey Hellfire gala art).

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El
Nov 4, 2022

So great! Any chance we’d ever be able to buy this as a print?

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