Stunning X-Men Fan Art Imagines New Team of LGBTQ+ Mutants
A talented artist, by the name of Karen Charm, on Twitter recently posted an amazing piece of fan art depicting a fictional X-Men series featuring a group of young LGBTQ+ mutants first created and introduced by Vita Ayala and German Peralta in the 2019 X-Men destroying event Age of X-Man. The mock cover looks so legitimate that many on Twitter originally thought it was announcement for a new X-Men team, before realizing it was just a gorgeous piece of original art.
Charm's Generations of X team is comprised of six mutants, all of whom are explicitly queer and were introduced, in 2019, in the background of the series Age of X-Man: Prisoner X. Prisoner X was a 5-issue series that ran as part of the truly weird Age of X-Man event, which happened directly before the 2019 relaunch of the X-Men franchise with Jonathan Hickman's House of X/Powers of X. While the series focused on Bishop, Polaris, Dani Moonstar, Beast, and Gabby Kinney, writer Vita Ayala and artist German Peralta managed to introduce many new queer characters of color into Marvel canon. These characters included Cam Long, Leonara Eng, Jacob Williams, Aura Charles, Monica Sellers, and Liana. Charms features these six mutants in their Generations of X team roster.
Charm's mock cover for Generations of X, looks so real because they followed the series' naming pattern that the X-Office has been doing since the Krakoan Age started, and because they so effectively used Tom Muller's new X-Men title font and design. Since the Dawn of X started, many new X-Men series and events have playfully used classic titles in a reimagined way, such as Kate Pryde's pirate book being called Marauders and the recent Inferno event. Generations of X is a playful twist on the beloved Generation X series, first debuted in 1994 and relaunched in 2017, a comic which featured new generations of young mutants being trained to be future X-Men. When reached for comment about the inspiration for their gorgeous fan art Karen Charm had this to say:
"The first thing going into this piece was that I love the original Generation X and wish they would bring that title back for another volume (the last one by Christina Strain was great!). Though the name is weirdly dated, it finally occurred to me that it could easily fit to the new naming conventions of the Krakoan age and also be a space for all the classes of X-Men in training (there are so many). That led to the second thing, which is that Vita Ayala has done such an amazing job in New Mutants to focus on those junior teams while introducing a bunch of queer and trans mutants of color into the background. I wanted to bring them to the front and imagine what a book for today’s future X-Men might look like!"
Cam Long, the white tiger looking character, is a Chinese-Irish 19-year old who is non-binary, has enhanced reflexes and senses, and is dating Aura Charles, a bisexual 20-year old Honduran mutant with wings who can fly and throw out psionic energy orbs. Jacob Williams, also known as Brutha Nature, is a 17-year old Black trans boy with plant manipulation and communications abilities, while Leonara Eng is a Chinese trans woman in her early 20s with powerful telekinesis and some telepathy. Rounding out the team is Monica Sellers, a pink-skinned Scottish American 18-year old who is non-binary and can morph their arms into long rubber-like appendages. Liana is a 19-year old Black bisexual woman who has telekinetic abilities and can shoot beams out of her eyes. Vita Ayala themself, a creator known for their emotional, respectful, and relatable depiction of queer and trans issues, commented "oh my goodness!!!!" on Karen's art piece, clearly impressed with Charm's ingenuity and talent.
The six characters that Karen imagines in their new Generation X-esque team are a unique bunch of young queer characters that would honestly work great on a team together, and have already been seen out and about on Krakoa in Ayala's run of New Mutants, illustrated by Rod Reis. Thankfully, Ayala was able to get these iconic new kids into the X-Universe before the relaunch, and hopefully Karen Charm's gorgeous art will inspire the X-Office to make Generations of X a reality. Make sure to go check out Karen's (@karen_xmenfan) LGBTQ+ filled Generations of X fan art on their Twitter feed.
Source: Twitter