Sketch Fridays #104 – Corner Box Challenge 2

May30
by on 30 May 2025
Sketch Fridays #104 – Corner Box Challenge: Magik

I had so much fun drawing the Corner Box Challenge that I couldn’t stop thinking about others I could have drawn. So, instead of pining for what could have been, I just went ahead and did one.

While drawing another character from the X-Men universe was not accidental, drawing another character in the original X-costume was. This character is Illyana Rasputin, also known as Magik, who is a character most well-known from her time in the very first X-Men spinoff book, The New Mutants, which hoped to bring back the idea of superhero teens that the flagship book had left behind. In that book the characters were wearing versions of the original costumes the X-Men wore when the book started in the early ’60s.

I actually have not read much New Mutants, but those characters have become deep threads in the lore of the X-Men, so becoming familiar with them was inevitable. I know that Illyana’s story is a bit of a tragic one, often serving as a foil or plot point for her more famous brother, Piotr Rasputin aka Colossus, but has since become a beloved and unique character.

Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana with the rest of the cast in the woefully underrated film, The New Mutants.

I was most impressed with the interpretation of the character in the woefully underappreciated film, The New Mutants, where she was expertly played by the now ridiculously famous Anya Taylor-Joy, where they caught her manic and tragic nature admirably.

Also, as a matter of detail, canonically, when Magik summons her soulsword she also manifested a demonically armored left arm. Even with that knowledge, I made her right arm armored because I wanted to prominently feature it in the image without flipping it horizontally. I was able to further justify the choice–aside from the obvious point that none of this is real–was that in the movie they armored her right arm instead of her left, as well.

I don’t know how many more of these I have in me (there’s at least one more corner box that I find intriguing), but it is a rare art challenge that I have quite enjoyed tackling (this and the 6 Fan Arts have been the only premises I’ve found inspiring enough to participate in).

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Sketch Fridays #103 – Corner Box Challenge

May23
by on 23 May 2025
Sketch Fridays #103 – Corner Box Challenge

I’m not the most competitive person, but I have been known to take up a challenge or two if it meant getting the opportunity to practice a skill. I’ve had fun with the 6 Fanarts Challenge a few times, and it’s always in the back of my mind.

Kyrun Silva (of Taurus Comics) sent me a new challenge that looked too much fun that I couldn’t ignore it. Created by cartoonist, Rich Smith, the Corner Box Challenge tackles a staple of classic (mostly Marvel) comics: the corner box.

While not pioneered by Marvel, I would say they are the ones most associated with the practice. These are rectangular boxes that would appear at the top left of a comic book’s cover that held the relevant information of publisher, price, and often publication month. Marvel even allowed artists to be experimental with the practice. The article, “The Lost Art of Comics Corner Boxes“, by Jessica Plummer on Book Riot thoroughly covers the history of corner boxes (and has a lot of great images and examples).

Being who I am, I had to tackle an X-Men corner box and the one from the original early ’60s comics intrigued me. I figured it would be fun to tackle those rudimentary costumes. Also, being me, I had to construct a narrative reason for the image.

To me, since they’re still new heroes at this point, Cyclops (Scott Summers), Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), and Iceman (Bobby Drake) have been surrounded not by supervillains but angry citizens who want to express their bigotry toward mutants. Iceman is a hothead (ironically) and Marvel Girl is already being coaxed by the power of the Phoenix Force (brought to a head in the fantastic Dark Phoenix Saga in the comics); they both want to fight back because they are legitimately feeling the threat of attack. Cyclops gestures to stand back, wanting to rely on diplomacy, cooler heads, and their shared humanity to get through the fracas.

This was a lot of fun (albeit time consuming) and I think I’ll try my hand at another a bit down the line.

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