A while ago, Bryan Singer, the director
of this summer's forthcoming action blockbuster
The X-Men,
cornered me in a Brighton pub with a sharp stick and threatened
to have my eye out unless I came
up with some radical changes for their costumes.
Unfortunately, my suggestions never
went further than the design stage, but I think the
reader will see how I've managed
to modernise their look, without betraying
the spirit of the comics on which
the movie is based.
Let's get straight to the good stuff.
WOLVERINE is the fans' favourite, so I took extra special
care over this design, spending all
of 5 minutes' hard work creating
a distinctive, yet faithful design. I always felt, through my
6 minutes time as a fan of the X-Men comics,
Wolvie should have a handbag, so
he could store his keys and make-up and tammys safely and discreetly,
so I
made it the central feature of his
costume. In the movie, Wolverine is responsible for buying all
the X-Men's milk and fags and soup.
The X-Men's Leader is CYCLOPS,
a responsible, level headed man with the awesome power of glaring
at people through
a special lens. Again, I felt that
the key to updating the classic X-Men costume would be to incorporate
a ladies'-
style handbag, but my wrists started
to ache and all I could draw was a coffee mug with six legs and
a tail. I feel that
his look could best be described
as sexy, with a bevelled edge. In the movie Cyke is in charge
of all the team's shoes.
As well as being asked to redesign
the X-Men's costume, I was also given a design brief for their
special X-MEN CAR.
This design was one of three I had
originally planned to put to Bryan. The other two were, unfortunately,
eaten by a fox,
or a fox-shaped animal, who was
attracted to my shed-cum-studio by the lambs' corpses I use to
decorate the exterior. It is based
on my nan's Hillman Imp, but incorporates
an ejector seat, missiles out the headlamps and a fuck-off big
stereo with a CD
cartridge that can take up to FIVE
albums at a time. (I suggested that Bryan might like to make use
of this feature for comic
relief, perhaps with Rogue and Professor
X arguing over wether to listen to Black Sabbath or Vengaboys
on their way to Magneto's
mum's for a fight.)
At this stage, the deadline that
Bryan had set me was fast approaching, so I must confess to slightly
rushing these last two designs.
Here we see the X-Men's mentor and
trainer PROFESSOR X, the most powerful telepath the world
has ever known,
despite his having had both his
legs bitten off by a wolf in heat, and his torso replaced with
a big coffee mug. As well as telepathy,
Prof. X can do long division and
handles all tax issues pertaining to the X-Men's fight against
crime.
Last, but certainly not least, here
is the villain of the piece, MAGNETO. With the mutant ability
to manipulate the forces of magnetism,
Magneto can move objects such as
iron filings, milk bottle tops and blakeys on shoes by the power
of his mind, and as such
constitutes a greater threat to
mankind than Hitler, Stalin and George Bush combined. There is
a brutal scene in the script where Magneto
goes into a dentists and nicks all
the fillings out of people's mouths. (Bryan also told me that
he had cast none other than
the Shakesperean actor Sir Ian
McCaskill to play the Master of Magnets!!!!)
Alas, all of these drawings I've
presented you were rejected by Bryan at the last moment, who was
informed that he'd have
to employ the services of a professional
designer at 20th Century Fox, and not "the first person
he threatened in a pub". I have
recieved no payment for this work
and will be watching the film closely on its August release to
see how much of it was stolen by
these overpaid Yank hacks.
