X-Men Shojo Manga: First looks
Marvel and Del Rey announced this weekend at the New York Anime Festival that they plan to publish two new manga series based on the X-Men. The first project, scripted by the husband-and-wife team of Raina Telgemeier (writer and illustrator of The Babysitter’s Club graphic novels) and Dave Roman (creator of the comic Agnes Quill), will focus specifically on the X-Men team, with the storyline fashioned as a private school shôjo comedy. (Shôjo manga is aimed at girls and often covers popular subjects such as comedy, romance, and drama.) As the only girl in the all-boys School for Gifted Youngsters, Kitty Pryde, a mutant with phasing abilities, is torn between the popular Hellfire Club, led by flame-throwing mutant Pyro–and the school misfits, whom she eventually bands together as the X-Men. Indonesian artist Anzu will illustrate the two-volume series, which will go on sale in Spring 2009.
The nice folks at Del Rey Manga have provided us with looks at the character design sheets by Anzu, starting with Mystique:
Then we have Wolverine:
Jean Grey, going a little bit Hellfire Club on us:
And finally, we also have Magneto:
It should be noted that these are only concept sketches from Anzu for the X-Men shojo project and are not representative of the art from the Wolverine shonen manga nor the final character designs. Also, Wolverine will not be a featured character in the shojo X-Men project.
So are magneto and wolverine gay now?because they look like it.
Actually, this is a typical look for male characters in shojo. I was struck by how well the artist who is not Japanese had captures the style.
Yeah because it is so fucking hard to draw an anime character.They are the same fucking thing except for the hair.
So your not a fan I take it. You ought open your mind some and take a look at some of Clamp's work for instance if you think everything is all the same. They manage to do something different in different styles in almost every book they do.
Obviously you have never read, watched or have had any experience with X-Men in any way, if you had, this would make you want to rip out your own eyes. This is just made to pull in teeny bopper girls into the X-Men franchise.
wow. you obviously havn't tried drawing well in that style, have you?
Then why read such an article? Just ignore it if you don't like. Unlike RL where you have to face things or deal with things you don't like, in the internet, you can just turn a blind eye to anything that you hate or don't even care about… Why check and post on it?
"Capturing the typical look" of a style doesn't make it good. I like manga, but i also know to see it as it is and acknowledge the downfalls of a title's art/story/writing, and when it doesn't work. And believe me this is nowhere near the best shojo manga has to offer.The art really inst that good, the poses are stiff & awkward, especially Mystique and Jean's shoulders, and the anatomy & colouring are awful by professional standards. This looks like it's been drawn by an amateur doujin artist.Marvel has some excellent artist, it's a shock to see they've lowered their standards so low for this. Anime's pretty big here in South East Asia, so there are some artists who are actually good at it, it's an insult this person got the job.Character designs are unoriginal and indistinct, they just took whatever stereotype model is popular and pasted the character's features on. Yea, "typical" alright.
Of course they look gay…in shojo manga they are gay.
NO in yaoi they are gay. I read lots of shojo and most are about the relationships between a guy and a girl-nothing I read centers on gay relationships. Trying reading some before you make sweeping judgements,
Hello, troll! Are you having fun here?
actually it's quite hard to draw the same thing over and over and over and over again
I don't see what the point of making something like this is… it just seems like some horrible fanfiction. Aiming something towards a different audience is fine, I just don't see why that had to make it a 'shojo manga' with this horrible art. In my opinion, we are over-saturated with manga style books… taking the series in another direction is cool… I would have hoped it would have been something I've haven't seen a thousand times before though… what a disappointment… also, I pray that this artist learns to color OR that the book is in black and white…. eww
The only reason this crap is being made is cause it will sell. I personally don't see a need for xmen to be re- created in this way. Are we destined to see every successful cartoon remade in this "skinny little rich boy style". Don't know about everyone else but I'm over it.As usual, majority rules but has lame ideas!
the anatomy looks awful and stiff, especially in the shoulder areas (makes them look manly). not to mention giving mystique inward pointing cutesy school girl feet, since when was that her character?. i have nothing against anime, but i have everything against horribly drawn anime made just to get a certain crowd that doesnt know better interested in the x-men series.
Both Mystique and Jean Grey look as though they're taking a really deep breath and hunching up their shoulders. And while I like this version of Magneto a bit better than the super-muscled way that he's usually portrayed- Wolverine looks pubescent, and I can't bring myself to like it. Sure, it's the style of Shojo, but he doesn't belong in that kind of work. His short, wiry, muscle-bound appearance is his character. Hulk Hogan wouldn't appear in Shojo, so why Wolvie?
The real problem is that it looks incredibly boring and generic.Also, it seems very weird to be surprised that a non-Japanese person could draw like this. That is like saying that white folks can't play the Blues.
I'm quite concerned that this will turn the X-Men – a series made compelling by its treatment of "otherness" or "minority" as a form of empowerment – into a brainless experiment in profiteering. I don't consider anime trivial by any means, but I don't see how reducing a politically-charged series to the level of middle-school love triangles achieves anything of artistic merit.
Damn as someone who likes BOTH Manga and Marvel Comics I have to say this makes me cringe. If you are going to have a redux of X-Men, do it in a way that is true to the spirit of the characters. A happy metro looking LOgan? Please. A slender mid twenties angry looking Magneto? Blashpmey!
Wow….. This is going to be interesting…..Although I do like anime, this seems a bit of a breech in all things sacred and Holy. I mean, really! People grew up with the original X-Men and X-Men: Evolution characters as idols…. Now they just look like freakish-back-in-time-yet-modern-barbie-and-ken.However, upon going back and reading everything and the excerpt of what the manga is supposed to be about(gasp! Wolverine won't be featured?!), I suppose some of us might accept it. Er, possibly….Anyways, upon the hope that they keep to what they wrote, and the story line will indeed be a high school setting this may be worth looking into. (Although I have indeed seen the sketch of what Beast might-or-will look like, as well as Nightcrawler. For Beast: Oh dear, what have they done to the poor Man? For Nightcrawler: Que jaw drop and gasp.)Although, the single-girl-in-an-all-boys-academy is a bit overdone.Here's to the hope that they touch up their art(or just redo it….) and work on that whole age-defying-look. Really now, Jean Grey in leather? Wolverine happy? And where are his sideburns….?
ehh…wolverine(sp?) doesn't look like wolverine anymore…so does magnetoI hope the manga is good…and it's doesn't change the whole plot
O My God, I like anime and I like X-Men, I hate…no scratch that, I loath these images, what on earth were they thinking?! Hiring this particular artist–I bet a cheap one at that–to do such a tremendous title redux such as X-Men, come on now?!…my advice to the artist, learn more on anatomy, maybe in a 100 years or so you'll manage, as for fashion sense, you're beyond help, what planet are you fromanyway? do you even read X-Men?! Jean Grey wouldn't want to be caught dead in that outfit! You must be some ugly Otaku with no fashion sense at all.
I'd read this. Ive never real been into comic books, but I do love manga. As long as they don't mess with the characters to much I think this is a good idea. BTW Wolverine looks cool, I for one think that he was getting uglier in each remake.
Oh for hlls sake… This is giving manga style a very poor name. The art looks so generic, as if the artist hasn't found her style yet and just started drawing two months ago. And wth kinda anatomy is that? They all look like they've been stretched out to hell and their heads are too small. That's, like, the most basic artist errors ever. And girls read Marvel comics already! This idea sounds like the worst fanfiction to grace the web ever and will isolate the female crowd that woulda been interested in the first place. The only girl in an all boys' school? Oh man. It doesn't look like this artist can even draw guys as male.
Why couldn't they just make a normal manga that would appeal at least some to the original audience? It's not like creating a poorly drawn manga version of a comic book will draw in anymore of the female audience. (I am a girl)They could have at least gotten a better artist, and what the hell is Jean wearing?It's not like she's some teenage goth girl who needs to hide the vampire bites with a collar or something like that.And Wolverine needs at least a little bit of muscle. He doesn't look like he has any of what makes him Wolverine; muscles and hair. He doesn't even have any hair on his arms! It's ridiculous! HE probably isn't brutal at either.Also the 'only girl at a boy's school' story doesn't make any sense.It just doesn't make any sense. Any Dean incompetent enough to let a girl in the school should be fired.Marvel, I'm disappointed. (By the way, you already made a manga. It was called Snikt! and it was awesome)
SO KAWAII DESU NYOO ^O^;;And by that, I mean TERRIBLE. The anatomy is worse than Liefeld, the characters don't look like themselves at all; more like some emanciated random-ass mass produced generic animu characters that had prominent attributes (see: Wolverine's claws. Remove JUST those, and you wouldn't recognize him at all) glued on afterwards.
To be fair, these are all design and style sheet drawings, not final art. They will tend a bit towards the generic, as it's to be expected that other artists will follow along. Things will be tweaked and improved on, of course.
This shall fail horribly.I think they're taking the dearly loved X-men and turning this….WAH!!!!But I have to say that I saw nightcrawler and I think it's fairly good.Imagine that Eiichiro Oda doing it. Now THAT would be awesome.I'd hope that he'd make Nightcrawler a roronoa-zoro type. I'd buy the book then.I'm going to read the scans online (onemanga's sure to have it)If it's good I'll buy it but if it isn't….I'd look at it online because of nightcrawler
good job on adapting american characters to japanese… and no they r not gay… everything in manga is over done and this style is for romantic comics… so they r over done
What's the point in even making this? Why does everything have to be taken over by anime now? This blows… it's going to ruin everything that I hold dear…
Well,I'm not such a BIG fan of Shoujo,(I'm not even a fan)But well isn't Magneto supposed to be…..ahem….OLD!?he was in WW2 people!He's old!He isn't all hott looking and all twentish.Also isn't wolverine supposed to be MANLY!!Where the hair,the muscles,the shortness.The fans don't want a freakin Orlando Bloom wolverine WE WANT HUGH JACKMEN!Y'know they are making everyone younger than they are.Mystique is probably around now…about 60 years(Nightcrawler's probably 40).As I said earlier,Magneto must be 60-70+.Wolverine is over 100 yrs old. I say that this will probably end the way people care for X-men.
well if anything… i would like to read something 'bout me so, can you tell me where i can buy it at, other than Japan ??
what next, hannah montana "manga"?
Square-Enix called. They want Zack Flair back for another Final Fantasy VII remake.
Hm…they look ok, I guess. This reimagining is kind of good. Except for Wolverine: Totally lacking the intensity that naturally comes along with his character. Terrible, terrible…
Its hard to imagine the x-men charakters like this..If anybody knows Wolverine:Snikt!(by the japanese manga artist Tsutomu Nihei published by Marvel)? I mean this IS Wolverine … the 'hairy' 'manly' M-A-N … I think he has to be like that or he will not BE Wolverine.Maybe a nice guy with claws but not Wolverine…And .. I'm sorry.. Mystique with clothes? Looks kind off strange.Ang magneto reminds me on an old Final Fantasy guy.But ok, try it…! Maybe I will read it just to know how great the old x-men stories are :D
Mystique has/had clothes in a lot of her different incarnations (her original design, in the cartoons, and in her own comic series), and her clothes here seem to be a direct riff off of that. Not really so strange.
it seems like the whole world is revolving around anime now, how sad.They freakin` killed these characters.
Yep, but the shojo style don't match with wolverine, is not wolverine, is the gay version of Woverine, shaved and washed….
I read it today in class. I didn't like it. Yeah, the guys are pretty good looking, but Kitty Pride reminds me of a fucking character out of Twilight. By the nineteenth page I was just looking at the pictures. The story is just like Ouran High School, except Kitty Pride isn't a girl dressing like a girl, Hellfire Club isn't a Host Club, and there aren't any other female students. D: I think they could have done better with the story. It feels like they just copied stupid Twilight.
It really sucks…. It's obvious that the proyect was a completely disaster
Hmm…. I miss Wolverine's sideburns!!! That was classic… But why don't your characters have a trapezius? They look freakish to me with those straight shoulders.
Im a major fan of both manga/anime and marvel comics and I gotta say this is just terrible.What bugs me the most is that the character designs don't seem to stay true the the actual characters themselves.They've got mystique in shorts looking like she's some semi-shy insecure school girl when she's anything but.Wolverine looks more like the character Zack from final fantasy (whom i absolutely adore) and just plain looks like he's an immature semi-arrogant brat.Wolverine was never immature. Jean grey has the look of that cold frigid b**** back in shool who couldn't be bothered to waste her with those she considered beneath her, when in the comic she was one of the most kindhearted of the lot. Magneto is the calm leader with a fierce sense of determination and a brilliant mind to match.Here he looks like an angsting teen who just got told up by some newcomer who will inevitably become his rival.The designs simply don't reflect their true personalities.I won't bother to get started on the anatomy,plenty others have already done that for me.
Well it's looks good to me and im a pretty big fan of X-men. My opinion is that the artist should keep wolverine old and magneto alittle older and buffer. Thats just my opinion…
Hey i for one think this looks really brilliant! =D I love how softly the characters have been drawn and would really like to read this comic. Wolverine and Mystique are especially cool, and i can’t wait to see Gambit! xD