In a recent showcase of gorgeous comic art, X-Men member to leader of a more cartoonish and cute version of the team. The X-Men have adopted Kawaii (or "cute") forms in many appearances on a number of variant covers in recent years, being featured on titles including House of X/Powers of X as well as main X-Men books. Now, the Kawaii X-Men have another cover to add to their appearance list while being led by Rogue in beautiful rainbow-colored artwork.
The Kawaii X-Men featured on this cover art is just the latest occasion of the heroes being drawn in this iconic style. In fact, Marvel released the ‘Marvel Kawaii’ line in 2012 which depicted its characters in the style of Kid Robot and Tokidoki. The Marvel Kawaii characters were slapped on a number of products such as shirts, hats, and other accessories. In recent years, Marvel Kawaii characters have mainly been seen on variant covers of multiple Marvel Comics titles, with this latest cover art being no exception.
In a Tweet by Rian Gonzales, the artist posted a series of four original pieces of artwork featuring multiple comic book characters from both DC and Marvel Comics. Gonzales wrote in the Tweet, “Didn’t participate in #PortfolioDay for a while so here it goes! I’m Rian, a comic cover artist who uses primarily gouache, watercolor and rainbows!” One of the images - a variant cover for X-Men #1 - features Rogue, drawn and colored in the unique style of the that the artist described in their Tweet. The cover art shows Rogue standing amid a number of Kawaii X-Men including Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Polaris as their apparent leader.
The other images present in the Tweet features two pictures of Silk and one with DC's current Batgirls playing video games. Each piece of cover art is done in the same iconic style unique to the artist. The artwork featuring Rogue is the only one with kawaii characters, though the others still retain the same level of gorgeous rainbow color work and expert-level illustration. The Tweet, understandably, received nearly 2,000 likes as the artwork is unique, fun, and eye-catching.
Marvel's new X-Men team was only recently assembled and includes some surprising picks (including Polaris, who was chosen via fan vote), so it's great to see them getting the same awesome art that other, more established iterations of the team have received in abundance. While utilizing the fun and cute kawaii X-Men, Rian Gonzales brought to life gorgeous rainbow cover art at the very center.
Source: Twitter
