Long John

This was a spur of the moment drawings I made after stumbling on the idea after waking up one morning. Alex Summers, aka Havok, is a Marvel character from the X-Men comics. In fact, he is the brother of the perennial leader of the team, Scott Summers (Cyclops).

I haven’t read too many comics featuring Havok aside from his appearances in crossover events and his first run as team leader of the spinoff series, X-Factor, in the ’90s. I know more about him than stories I’ve actually read.

The main reason my mind ended up on him was that his costumes have always been interesting, none moreso than his original costume created by comics superstar, Neal Adams, in the late ’60s, an era defined by bold graphic design. So iconic it was, that it remained basically unchanged until the late ’80s.

When I first met him, he was the leader of X-Factor in the second iteration of that team. Being a government agency, all the team members wore what amounted to synchronized suit designs, though each had its own personal flairs. Gone were the (most) of the skin-tight spandex, replaced instead with bulky jackets, thick boots, and thigh belts and probably pouched belts, too. While unremarkable overall, it is a fun––and very ’90s––design.

When I woke up the other day, I had a blurry idea to amalgamate the two designs, bringing back the austere nature of his original suit and laying it over a more practical, clothing-based design with a heavy jacket echoing his time in X-Factor. The main thing I was excited to draw was the homaging of the goofy headdress of his original costume into the epaulets of his jacket.