johnbyrnedraws:

“Doodles” by John Byrne on the back of X-Men #113, page 26. 1978.

Page from Uncanny X-Men #4 Annual by John Romita Jr, Bob McLeod & Glynis Wein. 1980.

A member of John’s forum asked:

Comic Link recently auctioned the original art from page 26 of Uncanny X-Men #113. Unfortunately, I was unable to win it, not only because of the beautiful art on the front of the page, but because there appeared to be two full body pencil sketches of who appear to be Margali and Jimaine Szardoz. I know this page was originally published 2 years prior to those characters’ first appearance in Uncanny X-Men Annual #4. Can you and would you be willing to tell me more about these sketches? They appear to be your work, and they are painfully beautiful. Were they intended as character designs for those characters? Were they intended for another purpose?

John’s initial response:

Those were doodles, not meant to be specific characters. Sorry!

When another member showed him published images of Margali and Jimaine, John further replied:

First time I’ve seen those characters. It’s not inconceivable that Chris made a xerox copy of the back-of-page doodles and gave them to JRjr and Nowlan as reference. Heck, he may even have asked me if he could do that. SO long ago, who remembers?

John Romita Jr is listed as co-creator of Margali along with Chris Claremont.

The original question was posed by one of the hosts of The Great X-Pectations Podcast. I bet this will make for an interesting discussion on an upcoming show.

Anyone think John Byrne should get some official credit too?