X-Men Spec Art pg 1 of 4 - Kevin VanHook - Banshee, Psylocke, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue

X-Men Spec Art 1 of 4 - Kevin VanHook - Banshee, Psylocke, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue

This was the spec art that Kevin VanHook used to test out his skills for sequential interior panel page art storytelling and used as an audition when first looking for work. This eventuality landed on the desk of Jim Shooter (late 1991) at Valiant Comics, which landed him a job there, where he ultimately co-created BLOODSHOT.

Kevin and I first met and became fast friends when we worked together on the PROJECT POWER on set VFX (filmed late 2018 in New Orleans) movie for Netflix (2020, starring Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback).

I now have the full set now of all 4 spec pages and initially got 3 of the 4 pages when Kevin met up for dinner back in 2023 for a catchup and hangout. He has a lot of really great stories on his career in comics, the people he met and got to work with that are in every level of making history in comics. He has been a great friend to me, when things were slow for our industry he would check in with me and I will always appreciate that, since we both share a passion for VFX and comics.

The art and inking (seen in the bottom panel) are Kevin’s work. It’s unfortunate that we may never see formal published X pages, even though I know he had his hands on some earlier X pages helping out his comic friends on some high profile X books, but he wasn’t able to take any formal credit. His character’s stylings were unique enough and fit the format, as seen here, to tell some story with his designs. I really like how he portrayed Rogue best on this page. Very happy to have this unique set of pages for this little corner of comic history.