Uh, nope… The image being referred to is actually 1990s or later. I think you missed the reference to what the others were talking about.
That’s is indeed Shadowcat with the crew-cut and faux claws. She had some martial arts schtick going on at that point, I think.
IIRC, the cover is from 1999.
Indeed, according to actors who are made to wear skintight leather, such garb is so restricting that it makes it difficult to accomplish any normal human activity, such as sitting, walking, raising one’s arms, not to mention all the acrobatic stuff that superheroes supposedly do.
I mean, sheesh, if you can’t do something as physically untaxing as sitting down in a costume …
Oh, I dunno – Michael Keaton fared pretty well in the first Batman movie, even with a costume that didn’t let him turn his head…
It depends on what you mean by “fared pretty well.” I thought the point of Scott_plaid comment was that in real life form-fitting leather would make you into a squeaking stomper with the agility of Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Yes.
Apparently, they stretch pretty well after a while, but yeah. The DVD of the X-Men movie has a pretty funny bit in the special features where the actors try to climb over a wall wearing their costumes for the first time. They end up falling down laughing and then spend several minutes strategizing on how to best manage this in skin tight leather.
Looks cool, though.
And of course, it allows them to work into the movie dialogue the in-joke gag when Logan says something about the outfits and Cyclops replies something like: “What did you expect, yellow spandex”?
The martial arts thing has been going on for a while. I know she’s recieved some sort of training from Wolverine and I think she got some from some old master or whatnot.
The claws she has attached are break offs from Wolverine back when he lost the adamantium.
I dunno. He barely moves at all when he’s in that costume. In the opening scene, he just snares the badguy with his batarang and shuffles the other one over to the ledge. He defeats the Joker’s thugs with a few short movements of his arms and one big kick that I think Michael Keaton said permenantly fucked up his hip. In the belltower he mostly gets beat up and attacks with short punches.
I think that’s a really good example of where a leather costume completely eliminates the mobility of a character at least partially known for his acrobatics.
Did they ever explain how that wasn’t… stupid? Wolverine’s bone claws broke all the time - why on earth would she use those instead of metal claws if she really wanted to cut stuff?
And thus I’m reminded why I mostly gave up on the X-Men by that point…
That is some remarkably ugly artwork, and not just because of the costumes. Everyones’ faces are oddly twisted, Psylocke has lumpy boobs, Rogue has a lumpy butt, Colossus is a big ol’ pile of lumps, Phoenix’s hair looks like it was originally smoke from the background of a 70s rock concert poster - well, basically everything about it sucks.
I remember that line, and I never understood, besides the possibility of looking rediculous, why the put-down of spandex? 
In the only moderately impressive fight scene in the movie, Keaton goes head-to-head with a sword-wielding goon in the bell tower, blocking the swings with his forearms and creating sparks galore. Offhand, it’s the only time I can think of where Keaton is moving relatively quickly.
I haven’t seen enough advance material to know if Christian Bale will look equally ineffective in his suit. I hope not.
Argh, no! The costumes are horrible, no doubt, and the group picture may be overly busy, but that is Arthur Adams, perhaps the most influential comic artist of the last 20 years! I say this because he inspired the styles of a lot of more-popular “superstar” artists like Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Joe Madureira, and especially J. Scott Campbell. He is widely-regarded for extreme detail, “cute” faces, curvy women (without degenerating into embarrassing “bad girl” art cliches). I can’t link to them from here at work (and not because they’re dirty or anything), but there are plenty of examples of Adams’ art online that would definitely change your mind and maybe make you appreciate his unique and influential style.
Maybe so, I’m not an expert, but that picture is unequivocably ugly and I can’t look directly at Jean for fear of petrifying.
However, my own spelling abilities are very much equivocal.
I agree with BBVL’s defense of Art Adams. The man is fantastic, but he had awful material to work with for that cover. He actually put in a lot of quality X-Men artwork in the past (if you ever run accross the X-Men Visionares: Art Adams trade paperback, you can take a look).
Well I found this site, and the best I can say is “eh”. Nothing really grabs me, sorry.
If what you say about his influence is accurate, that explains why current comics are so pathetic.
Dude, that cover sucks. The person who did it either churned it out in under 30 seconds or just plain is no good at art.
First of all, I’d like to note that I’m going to use my 4,000th post to discuss superhero costumes. Somehow, that seems just about right. Hi, I’m Kyla, I’m a geek.
Anyway, you’ve got it pegged - while the colorful costumes look fine on the printer page (and really, are better than monochrome because colorful things are pretty and attract the eye), they do indeed look ridiculous on actual people. The all-black costumes showed up in the comics after the movies came out, but now we’re phasing back to the old school blue and gold, because, as Cyclops says in, Astonishing X-Men #1: “…quite frankly, all the black leather is making people nervous.”