I resisted drawing Sunfire for quite some time. He’s not an X-Man and I kind of resent him for so often declining membership.
But when my X-Men RemiX to-do count ended up at 79, I told myself I needed to do one more since 80 is such a nicer number to me. (Don’t get me started on that; it’s one of my quirks.) Sunfire beat out quite a few other D-List X-Characters for one reason alone: that he’s the ONLY Asian male x-character. I feel like that’s really pathetic of Marvel, particularly with the slew of Academy X characters recently created. How did an ethnicity that makes up 2/3 of the world’s population get so overlooked?
Drawing Shiro has forced me to admit to the few things I appreciate about the character. 1) JoeMad’s AOA redesign was absolutely genius. 2) I guess it makes sense that some powerful mutant superheroes would rather not be X-Men. It’s more realistic, I suppose. Still, someone in the X-House should have actively sought out another Asian male mutant to fill his spot.
Although Claremont handled Dani well, I’d say that his most interesting and intriguing New Mutant character was Illyana. The idea of Magik and her struggle to reconcile evil with goodness is fascinating to me.
Though she was always a good-guy, her powers come from pure evil. She’s got a sinister side unseen in any X-Person before her, save maybe Wolverine.
Most comfortable shrouded in hellish, demonic imagery, you get the sense she would do anything, no matter how amoral, to further her goals. Fortunately, her goals are usually defending her friends.
(By the way, am I the only one who assumed she was screwing Sym?)
Of all the Generation X characters, I was most excited about and in love with M. She was perfect… that was her power. So cool– especially juxtaposed with all the misfit characters of Gen X .
When M came out, I had an Algerian friend who was very similar to the character– beautiful, smart, spoke like 5 languages, and rich. She approved of M’s personality, stating that Algerian girls are indeed like that… prissy, I guess. She did not however understand why they made her black. “There are no black people in Algeria,” according to my friend. But I was like, “Oh what does she know, it’s Africa– I’m sure there’s some black people there.” LOL!
So, I wonder if that’s the reason behind M’s constant skintone fluctuations. Like, did creators just want a rich African girl, arbitrarily pick Algeria, assume she’d have to be black, later realize that the population is 99% arab, and then make her lighter to retroactively say she’s arab now?
Or does she just have vetiligo? 😉
In any case, my M would probably be like original M… when she wasn’t so bitchy and probably just a biracial black/ arab girl… played by Tatiana Ali in my movie.. hehe!
So yea, I can’t tell whether I’m biased because he’s a ghey, but Victor is my favorite of the Academy X squad. My pal Femmes-Fatales on DeviantArt points out that it’s insensitive to make the lone queer less human looking than everyone else. You’d think I, being as militant about political correctness as I am, would agree. But… I just really like Anole! I think he’s cute! LOL!
Maybe I am swayed by his behind-the-scenes creation story– how he was originally supposed to commit suicide to show both Hellion’s and Elixir’s reactions as cold and caring, respectively. This idea was scrapped when writers and editors realized that offing a gay character for the sole purpose of developing straight characters was fucking lame. And now Anole has proven to be more popular, and quite frankly, a better character than either Hellion or Elixir!
I also like that Anole has been shown to disapprove of Cyclops’ leadership.
Oh yeah, anti-heroes.net > members gallery > fanboy for for your X-Rated versions of the boys. Hooray for my first Japanese dick in a long time! And my first lizard dick! ^___^
I decided to go balls to the wall with Longshot and really show him how I see him. He’s a star. He’s a charmer. And he had some serious dated hair.
I’m not a big proponent of doing fan-art of characters I don’t know. If you’re not a FAN, then it’s not fan-art. That said, I will admit that I’ve not read a single issue with Nezhno in it. Well maybe he’s in the background of some of my books, but I don’t quite care to check right now. My excuse for including the kid is… well, he’s an X-Man, and he looks kinda cool. From what I’ve gathered, he’s half Wakandan, half German and a pacifist. Storm was his teacher and he has vibranium tattoos to keep his mass/ strength-building powers in check. It has been foretold that his powers will eventually kill him (not surprising, he IS brown, after all. Can’t keep their asses alive for too long, can we?)
As many of you know, X-Men vs. Street Fighter is my favorite video game ever. It combined my two favorite series and used an art style that has more heavily influenced my work than anything else. And although Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a true sequel, it hasn’t quite improved enough on the original for me to get that excited.
I was initially put off by the rendering on the in-game characters, specifically on the Marvel side. The shaders Capcom is using doesn’t look right on the superhero characters (yunno, the ones in spandex.) There needs to be a highlight and there isn’t. Its just a strong shadow and a midtone. This look is fine on the characters who are mostly skin or have loose cloth as their costume, but on guys like Cap America, Spidey, Mags and Deadpool it makes them look like… rubber, according to my other friend who works in CG.
Some of the girls look like drag queens and move really clunky. She-Hulk animates kinda doofy to me and Jean’s walk cycle is stiff unfeminine. Morrigan and Felicia have had their asses robbed from them. Felicia in particular really disappoints me because if you study her classic 2D sprite, her standing animation had this beautiful erotic hip sway, indicative of her Vegas showgirl storyline. I know it’s subtle and kind of a nit-picky complaint, but it’s things like that that made me such a devoted Capcom fan.
I’m very pleased with Storm, though. Her animation (I think because they used her 2D sprite as reference) is very graceful and her look is beautiful. Sentinel too (I think because he actually has strong highlights) looks amazing.
My major gripe deals with the revision of the fighting system. The “Verses” series is derived from Street Fighter, whose fundamental element of gameplay deals with a specific number of buttons assigned to punches and the same number assigned to kicks. It makes anyone who’s ever played a Capcom fighter easily pick up any fighting game in the library. This game however (in an effort to make it more accessible to newcomers) has removed the punch and kick system in favor of 4 general attack buttons. In other words, the button that is supposed to be light kick for everyone will instead be Ryu’s strong punch, Felicia’s light punch, and Cap America’s strong kick. Furthermore, one of the attack buttons is assigned to something called “Special Attack” which is that character’s pop-up (regardless of whether it was a punch or kick in the past.) But get this– “Special Attack” cannot be used to execute more than 90% of the Special Moves! What the hell? It makes up you have to re-learn characters you already know. The learning curve is low because the new system is favorable to the button mashing style of play. But I thought top buttons for normal and special move punches and bottom buttons for normal and special move kicks was easy, smart and made sense (and has been working for 20+ years.)
I LOVE that many of the characters have retained their themes from older games though. Storm has her kick-ass BGM from X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Morrigan has her amazing theme from Vampire Hunter, even Arthur’s Ghouls and Ghosts music is there! All are suped-up and remixed and sound great! Definitely getting this soundtrack!
I wasn’t going to make this a whole section of this review, but enough instances of it have influenced my opinion on the game enough to make it a major issue. 
There is also this crass sodomy joke in the intro involving Deadpool that feels out of place and doesn’t really sit well with me. Maybe I’m out of touch, but I don’t find anal rape all that hilarious. And we all know I am by no means a prude, and consider myself quite the proponent of sexual freedom. But this scene seems to be making a joke out of a gay sex act, thusly making fun of gays in general. Quite frankly, the joke reeks of being written by some pathetic closet case who really does fantasize about being penetrated by magical tendrils.
Despite the awkward control, I am still playing it. I mean, what it comes down to is Capcom deemed in necessary to proclaim that this is the “less serious” game by simplifying the control, while Street Fighter 4 remains closer to the classic “complicated” style as possible. From a marketing standpoint, it might make sense to emphasize the difference. (Whenever I dont like something new, I think about it from the money-making angle and always find my answer.) The cast really needs to get much bigger in order for me to keep playing, though. Somehow, though, given that they’re only releasing 2 characters at time, I don’t see us getting a full 20 more, which is a real bummer. Game sequels should never be… smaller than their predecessors. 
Thing is, I kinda created this character more than a decade ago in high school. My mutant creation was called “Savage” (OK, lame codename, but hear me out.) He had a blonde mohawk (this was in the 90’s– before mohawks were cool again,) Wolverine-esque powers, and a sexually ambiguous bent. The gimmick was that he was the son of Sabretooth and Birdie. His Sabretooth side caused claws to come out of his forearms (somewhat reminiscent of Batman’s glove spikes– but longer and in the reverse direction.) And his Birdie side gave him subtle sexy mental powers.
