“To me, my X-Men!” The famous quote by Professor Charles Xavier has been repeated countless times over the past five decades. Marvel‘s mutant heroes have gone from the brink of cancellation to the top of the comic industry while forming an enduring franchise and a massive library of characters. Now, one fan has successfully taken it upon himself to illustrate an icon for all of the characters who appeared in the first volume of Uncanny X-Men.
These icons are the work of artist and designer Scott Modrzynski, who drew upon all 545 issues of Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1. Modrzynski not only illustrated the main characters, he also noted every major costume change with a new icon and included the villains and supporting characters. Even characters who appeared on only a single page or panel were also represented, which is why the total number of illustrations is well over two thousand. Modrzynski drew the characters in chronological order, and he personally cited this as his favorite sequence: Cyborg Monkey, Maggott, and Stan Lee as the Watcher.
“I’m a lifelong lover of comics, and I can’t speak for all comic fans, but I think a lot of us have this collector’s mentality,” shared Modrzynski. “How many times have you picked up the final part of a six-issue storyline that you hated? That last issue isn’t fixing anything. It’s the need to have a complete set. I got a germ of an idea for this when I was doing basically the same with WWF wrestlers.”
“I had to put the X-Men idea aside until I finished with the wrestlers, and when I finally came back around to it, I was just planning to create the main X-Men cast and maybe turn it into a print,” continued Modrzynski. “But then I ran into two problems: there are a number of characters that would border the cut-off line, so how do I decide who is in or out? And which costumes should I include? So I scrapped that idea and said, how insane would it be to just recreate everyone that ever appeared in Uncanny X-Men? So issue by issue I went, in my free time, and I ultimately wound up with 2,535 icons in all.”
According to Modrzynski. it took two years to finish this project, and the results of his labors can be seen at allxmen.com. Modrzynski also sent us close ups of several X-Men icons, which you can see in our gallery below. If you’d like to purchase some of these X-Men creations as buttons, check out Modrzynski’s Etsy shop. You can find more of Modrzynski’s art at Mojo’s Work.
What do you think about these X-Men icons? Let us know in the comment section below!
Images: Scott Modrzynski
