Well, last week I received an email from a Janet-Elizabeth Black, who happened to still have a copy of the Poster this artwork became, and was kind enough to scan me a copy of it. So here it is, in full colour.
You should be able to click through for a larger version. The colours appear to be credited to Paul Mounts, whose name is added beneath Mark Farmer's in the finished poster.
As you can see it also bears the 'Mutant Genesis' logo, which was the name of the X-Men Office initiative which featured the launches of Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's adjectiveless 'X-Men' (Still technically the best selling comic book #1 of all time) and Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld's X-Force. It was a big deal. The moment where the X-Men truly became a regimented line of books, with a very specific identity.
It's important to remember this, because much as though Excalibur seems to be passed off by many people these days as just this quirky little off-shoot book, that nobody ever read, this poster comes from a time when that very much was not the case. Back then it actually sold pretty well. Certainly well enough to be considered to be part of this X-Family 'Event'.
It a really nice piece. Thanks for sharing, Janet.
In related news some of you might like to go over to Mark Farbrother's Blog, The Throne of Otherworld, where he's posted up a bit of info about the planned but abandoned Technet mini series from 1993. There even appears to be a small amount of artwork. Well worth a look.
Thanks for the plug Mark.
ReplyDeleteThis poster makes me want to dig out, and read the Excalibur issues again, especially those ones around issue 50, with the battle against Necrom!