X-Men: Marvels Snapshots #1 Variant Cover

11x17 bristol board, inks over printed bluelines

Variant covers! They’re often cool images that don’t have much to do with issue they’re attached to but that’s certainly not the case here. The main covers for Marvels Snapshots were gorgeous Alex Ross paintings but this variant was drawn by the issue’s main penciller, Tom Reilly, and a lot of the story’s emotional resonance carries over to this cover.

A lonely orphan in a Nebraskan state home quickly becomes obsessed with the superheroes emerging at the dawn of the Marvel age. He zeroes in on the Fantastic Four, a family irrevocably transformed by a plane accident (sound familiar?) but have turned their personal disaster into a force to inspire and help others. Drawn to their heroism, especially that of his idol Reed Richards, Scott Summers thinks that if he can crack the code to what drives these heroes then maybe his own tragic circumstances will finally make sense.

However, his journey of self-discovery goes horribly awry when his mutant powers emerge and he’s left with a gaze that destroys everything it falls upon. Terrified that he might just be the kind of monster that his superhero idols fight, Scott is tempted to hide himself from the world forever. But when a crowd of people are trapped under falling industrial machinery, he refuses to stay a bystander when his frightening vision can save their lives. In that moment, Scott Summers decides who he’s going to be: someone who will always try his hardest to stand up for those in need and hopefully, as the title of the issue goes, the rest will follow.

Tom Reilly’s style is a blend of modern and classic aesthetics and the end result is something that’s beautifully timeless. On this cover he transforms iconic early superhero appearances into menacing silhouettes to represent young Scott’s turmoil at how he places in Marvel’s superpowered world. The interiors of this book are equally rich and this standalone issue is both a fantastic Cyclops character study and a genuinely sincere story about an unknowingly autistic kid’s struggle to fit into a world that he can’t quite make sense of. If you haven’t read this, you really ought to. It’s a very satisfying and heartfelt one-and-done read.

I will note that Scott is rocking a pair of plaid pants, a go-to accoutrement of the 60s X-Men, in the original inks here but they’ve been swapped for a more muted pair of khakis in the published version. Were the plaid pants too period-specific for a cover that was meant to seem timeless? Or were they simply too much of a crime against fashion? Either way, given Scott’s sense of style in general, if he showed up wearing a bright green plaid suit in a current day book I’d be wholly and unfortunately unsurprised.

(thanks to Carl for letting this one go during Comic Art Live because when I signed up for this site I admit to seeing this in his gallery and jealously coveting it from afar haha)