I was sketching one day a few months ago, and found myself thinking about the X-Men. I’ve loved the X-Men since I was a child, and bought tons of the mid-90s Kubert Bros/Joe Madureira books, and recently got back into them with the Bendis-written All-New X-Men series.They’re great books, and tell great stories, but something occurred to me — all these people are attractive. Gorgeous, actually. The outside world is supposed to fear and hate mutants, but until they start blowing up giant robots the X-Men are largely indistinguishable from a J. Crew catalog.

So I started thinking about what an actually-mutated human would look like. Just the word “mutant” invokes a certain mental imagery — something twisted and not human. I thought it would be interesting to take established characters and reimagine them as something maybe a bit more realistic.

And let me clarify — I don’t think I know better than Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This is just my take on an idea that I love.

So with no further ado, let’s begin…

I’m going to take you through my ideas for each of our new X-Men, with an illustration and a paragraph or two of characterization.

Let’s stick to the original five X-Men, plus Wolverine. Because what’s an X-Men project without Wolverine?

(Side note: I used frenden brushes for every single one of these pieces. They’re great, and he’s great, and if you’re an artist you should throw your money at him like a stripper.)

Enjoy.

CYCLOPS

This whole concept began for me when I thought about Cyclops. In the Marvel universe proper, Scott Summers is the quintessential X-Man — Xavier’s prized pupil, the team leader, the stoic face hiding the tortured soul.

But I find Cyclops largely boring as a character. Here’s a dude whose powers have made it impossible for him to make eye contact with another person since he hit puberty. That doesn’t breed confidence, that breeds introversion and self-doubt.

I imagine Cyclops as a wallflower, quiet and reserved; I gave him a very slight physique and goofy facial structure to match..

When I imagined what it must have been like when Scott’s powers first manifested itself, I asked myself one question — what if he looked at his hands?

Professor X and Beast helped Scott regain the use of his hands with some crude prosthetics, which only erode Scott’s confidence even further.

JEAN GREY

Jean isn’t outwardly disfigured like Cyclops. The biggest change I wanted to make to her is to give her more realistic proportions. For goodness sake, she’s an insanely powerful telekinetic! If I could lift things with my mind, the main thing I would lift is pizza to my mouth.

Kidding aside, Jean doesn’t need to get all chop-socky on anyone when she can debilitate them with a thought. She’s still up to kicking ass, but there’s no reason for her to be a twig like literally every other super-lady. I like curvy girls, and I feel they’re severely under-represented in superhero comics. So we have our plus-size Jean.

In terms of characterization, my take on this is simple: Jean is the most powerful mutant on the X-Men, and she’s the moral center of the team. She’s the leader, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t have been from the get-go.

BEAST

I like my Hank McCoy as neanderthal-esque as possible. I believe that the made-up scientists in the made-up world that I made up would view Henry as a nearly perfect human — a highly advanced brain, and a body with unmatched strength, speed, and athleticism. Also, opposable toes. You would trade your boring normal feet for opposable toes in two seconds, and don’t even try and tell me different in the comments.

ICEMAN

I’ve always had a soft spot for Bobby Drake, but his powers are possibly the most dubious of all. Let’s go back to the same “what did his powers do to him the first time” question — here’s a kid who can suddenly and unexpectedly drop the air around him to subzero temperatures. I imagine the first time he did this, he actually froze the air in his lungs, doing massive damage to them. So now he needs to wear a breathing mask and oxygen tank with special O2 mix to keep him upright.

WOLVERINE

A little beefcake for the ladies.

I originally hadn’t intended to include Wolverine in this project, but then I was once again stricken by inspiration. Logan routinely undergoes catastrophic physical trauma, yet for some reason he looks like this:

OMG SO SEXY.

Back on track — I accept that Logan is crazy old, I accept that his skeleton was bonded with Adamantium, I even accept that he has super heightened senses (even though his “main” mutation, the healing factor, has nothing to do with his senses being cranked up to 11), but why should he look pristine? How does our body heal us from catastrophic injury? It scars.

I believe that, in order for his power to make any sense, Wolverine has to have the most aggressive scar tissue ever imagined. So while he can be shot, burned, sliced, crushed, and ripped in half by the Hulk, his body should carry every scar. Dude should be tough to look at.

Jonah Hex was a strong source of inspiration for Logan’s look, but ultimately I wanted to do my own thing. And I couldn’t resist giving him the subtle “X” scarring over his left eye.

ANGEL

Warren Worthington III is the one character who I actually tried to make more attractive than his original depiction. For one, this will make his physical beauty stand in even more stark contrast to his average-to-monstrous looking teammates. Two, it will cause a nice balance to how I imagine his personality — manipulative, dark, narcissistic.

People who behold Angel for the first time will often be brought to tears by his appearance, as if ripped straight out of a renaissance painting. this will cause them to trust him, and Warren will use this trust to manipulate unsuspecting people (women especially) into giving him money, drugs, sex, whatever he’s after. He will use people as they suit him and toss them aside without a second thought. His teammates, the people he spends the most time with, will be very conflicted about trusting him, and rightfully so — he’s the X-Man by far most likely to betray his partners if it benefits him enough.