Havok & Polaris pencil sketch, 1981

Here’s some pre-Christmas treats!🎅

After the All-New, All-Different X-Men debuted in the Summer of 1975, the original members were fragmented. The Beast found a new home in the Avengers, while Angel & Iceman went off to form the Champions, but I was always hoping to see more Havok & Polaris—my favorite reserve X-Men duo! Aside from this sketch being kinda hard to see, from the sunburn down the right side, and the pencils being quite light, there’s another interesting point: Byrne stopped drawing X-Men sketches after he left the book. So, this may be just before he left, maybe Havok & Polaris’s reserve status was a loophole, or possibly his hard cutoff took some time to form? Ya gots me, I dig ‘em either way!

Art from 1981 - 11x14.