"Mutation: It is the key to our evolution. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years, but every few hundred millenia.... evolution leaps forward." - Professor Charles Xavier
As a child, I was enamored with superheroes, their worlds, and their viewpoints, but none more other than the mutant peace-keeping taskforce who were the colorful, interesting, and damn sure exciting X-Men. My father raised me on the legendary animated cartoon series of the early 1990s, the very first comic book that I ever read was a copy of Chris Claremont & Jim Lee's "X-Men #1" that a family friend of my mother's parents had given to me when I was eight-years-old, and I came of age in my own right with the film series (the original two Bryan Singer-directed films being my standout favorites). So when I decided that I wanted to do a montage series dedicated to Marvel's "Children of the Atom" powerhouse, somewhere in early-to-mid 2010, I knew that I had to do the characters an incredible amount of personal justice if I were going to do the series correctly at all.
This task was one which would prove to be daunting when I finally got around to executing the series, but nevertheless, it turned out to be a task which was very worthy of my time, money, and effort alike. I wanted this montage series (the first since my move away from MySpace.com) to be one which energized and validated me as an artist, so I had a few rules for myself:
This task was one which would prove to be daunting when I finally got around to executing the series, but nevertheless, it turned out to be a task which was very worthy of my time, money, and effort alike. I wanted this montage series (the first since my move away from MySpace.com) to be one which energized and validated me as an artist, so I had a few rules for myself:
1) Stick to my own canon.
2) Don't play favorites with the characters who I enjoy over others.
3) Don't shoe-horn characters into the series just to satisfy fan-service.
4) Give every montage entry of the series all of what I had to offer, emotionally.
2) Don't play favorites with the characters who I enjoy over others.
3) Don't shoe-horn characters into the series just to satisfy fan-service.
4) Give every montage entry of the series all of what I had to offer, emotionally.
That was it. Those were my demands of myself. And, truth be told, I can honestly say that I accomplished all of those personal goals of mine, beautifully. I put countless hours of my life into completing this complex series, even when I was tired beyond belief or when I found myself with limited time to actually work on the entries, but I managed to swing it and I'm very glad that I did. This series, along with several others, has become one of the crowning jewels of this self-created artform of mine.
The franchise that Stan Lee & Jack Kirby launched decades before I was even born has played an influential role in my life. The themes of racism, prejudice, injustice, and alienation are all things which I can relate to on a large scale as a human being, as well as an ethnic minority in modern America. To this day, I still consider the experience of my father taking my brother and I to see the powerful first film on it's opening day, twelve years ago, to be one of the best and most important of my lifetime.
My intense personal connection to the characters was the main reason why I chose to use my own viewpoint of their cosmologies and aesthetics as the thesis for the way that I treated them atmospherically. As I do overall with most of my favorite franchises: I view them as all convieniently existing in the same continuity and universe alongside each other with certain details of their "official" continuities being negotiable in terms of existence. This is the reason why I primarily only used photographs stemming from the "616"-continuity and the first two Bryan Singer films in my montages, because I view all three of those entities as being one in the same. Hell, the comics universe is retconned and rebooted and re-examined so often, why shouldn't I use my own canon as the definitive version at this point, right?
I did make very rare exceptions though: Every so often, I used a shot which originated from the non-Singer "X-Men" films as long as they were generic and fell absolutely in line with the events of my own merged canon of the "616"-continuity or the first two "Singer" films. Basically, any photos that originated from "X-Men: The Last Stand," "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," or "X-Men: First Class" were used in a generic sense which absolutely does not add any validity to the movies that they originated from. But, for those who did enjoy those movies that I mentioned, you should feel free to view my work in any capacity that you please. This way, it works out for everyone.
When it came down to the structuring of the series, I wanted to experiment: Although he's not my favorite X-Man, I gave Wolverine a triple-feature montage as a reward for being the most recognizable and transcendent character of the brand; I chose U2's song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" for Professor X's montage because of the character and song's mutual connection to Dr. Martin Luther King; I granted Magneto, the X-Men's archrival (much like Stan Lee, I've never truly viewed the character as a villain, as much as I have an anti-heroic freedom fighter), an entry because I thought that it was vital to the context of the story to both examine the character's complex history as the co-founder of the team, as well as how that influential role of his would later play into all of the characters' futures in very different ways; And most notably, I included the respective canon-authorized children of Cyclops and Wolverine into the series by providing Cable and X-23 with their own montages while I granted Rachel Summers a cameo in Psylocke's entry.
When it came down to the structuring of the series, I wanted to experiment: Although he's not my favorite X-Man, I gave Wolverine a triple-feature montage as a reward for being the most recognizable and transcendent character of the brand; I chose U2's song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" for Professor X's montage because of the character and song's mutual connection to Dr. Martin Luther King; I granted Magneto, the X-Men's archrival (much like Stan Lee, I've never truly viewed the character as a villain, as much as I have an anti-heroic freedom fighter), an entry because I thought that it was vital to the context of the story to both examine the character's complex history as the co-founder of the team, as well as how that influential role of his would later play into all of the characters' futures in very different ways; And most notably, I included the respective canon-authorized children of Cyclops and Wolverine into the series by providing Cable and X-23 with their own montages while I granted Rachel Summers a cameo in Psylocke's entry.
On a more intimate note, from the inception to conclusion of this project, many notable things happened in my life that I'm glad all happened during my time working on this particular series: I became an uncle to twin girls, I turned in my first spec-script to a creative team, and I even managed to find myself in jury duty for the very first time, all while working on this very project. To have wrapped up that important era of my life with the extremely well-recieved adrenalated series concluder entitled "Not So Pretty Now/Just Like You Imagined," was purely kismet. And as fate would have it, I completed the final entry for this montage series on July 14, 2012, which also happened to be the 12th anniversary of the original film's release date.
Now, at long last, I gladly present to you this completed full-length compilation of my entire project on the 20th anniversary of the animated series' original airdate. Happy Halloween and enjoy!
X-Men:
Professor X: Pride (In the Name of Love)
Magneto: Please
Jean Grey: Gone (V2)
Storm: Electrical Storm
Beast: Hell
Gambit: Back In The Saddle
Rogue: Into The Void
Jubilee: The Unforgettable Fire
Iceman: In Time
Shadowcat: Paradise
Colossus: Metal
X-23: Immigrant Song
Cable: The Becoming
Bishop: Wanted Dead or Alive
Psylocke: Lovers in Japan
Nightcrawler: Non-Entity (V3)
Emma Frost: Sunspots
Archangel: The Day The World Went Away (V2)
The X-Men (Series Concluder): Not So Pretty Now / Just Like You Imagined
Dreams.
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Montages, the artform thereof, and all subsequent works featured on this blog page are owned by DaiQuan M. Cain and are subject to copyright (#185729-V) under the U.S. Copyright Law of 1976 & the U.S. Library of Congress. Any thievery, unauthorized usage, or infringement of said work(s) and copyright(s) will result in a fine of up to $250,000 or more.