needed to emerge beyond just my first instinct of not all entries relating to Earth X include Daredevil with a high characters are going to wear the same costumes and that, collar and horns à la the character’s reinvention courtesy getting older and heavier as people do, you’d have an of Tim Sale (#5, May 1996), Dr. Doom by future Earth X out-of-shape Spider-Man. That was the smallest thought penciler John Paul Leon (#6, June 1996), and a Machine that I had when first sitting down with a piece of paper. Man revamp by Dave Johnson (#21, Sept. 1997). “Once I started to visualize making Captain America Krueger recalls his first conversation with Ross about somebody who looked like he had suffered the scars of the project. “He said, ‘So, Wizard contacted me wanting all these years of fighting and that in a way he had torn me to do what the Marvel characters would look like old away everything, the costume was ripped to shreds, and changed in the future… I have some sketches of things I’ve been thinking of and my basic idea is the skin was itself a patchwork quilt of scars, and then using the flag as a drapery on him, we’re gonna call it Earth X, the world has gone it suddenly took form as, ‘Oh, this isn’t a Earth X-Men, everyone has mutated. I don’t have any other ideas beyond these sketchsilly idea, there’s actually something here.’ So one decent concept on a character es and that. You do these ‘Time Slip’ stories; reinvention led to another and another. why don’t you do a thing on these characters?’ So I wrote a little paragraph on All these ideas just blossomed and then it seemed like, ‘Oh, okay, I’m not each of the characters doing to them laughing at this anymore and there’s what I did in ‘Time Slip.’ ” something visually dynamic here.’ ” Ross remembers, “As soon as I did that first sketch page I called Jim up asking if Ross reached out to writer Jim Krueger early on in the creative process. he would contribute some stuff to this. They had initially met in 1993 during I thought that he could write some the promotion for Marvels (Krueger notes, some background material in this jim krueger worked in the Marvel offices at the sketchbook, that would ground it with a little more depth. And that led to him time), and the pair quickly bonded over Courtesy of Jim Krueger. a shared love of Machine Man and 1970s Marvel-era Jack proposing a large reason for why, from my original premise, Kirby. Ross was an admirer of Krueger’s self-published book ‘If the entire world is all-mutant, how did that happen?’ ” Foot Soldiers, as well as his ongoing “Time Slip” feature in That very idea of a mutated populace was formed Marvel Vision. A kind of two-page What If?, “Time Slip” by Ross as a reaction to the ongoing success of Marvel’s featured reinventions of Marvel characters by an all-star X-Men. “The name Earth X is not strictly some kind list of artists including the likes of Mike Allred, Paul Pope, of rip-off of the alternate earth from DC’s timeline,” and Bill Sienkiewicz. Krueger would then pen origins for explains Ross. “It’s actually meant to be a reflection the characters based on the artists’ interpretations. Notable of the over-popularity of Marvel’s X-Men for 20 years
The Devil You Say! (left) A spooky concept sketch for Daredevil, by and courtesy of John Paul Leon. (right) Ross’ lumpy Logan and Jean Grey character studies. TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
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