So I'm sitting down to work on one of my commissions the other day
and I had to draw this character for the first time. I remember drawing an
alternate version of him, once, but this was the first time anyone has asked
me to draw the original costume of Mr. Sinister.
This was also one of those occasions where I was asked to draw a
character I didn't know much about, nor care for. Sinister appeared during
one of the periods where I'd stopped reading any X-titles, which happens
from time to time. I have never been one to continue buying a book out of
misplaced loyalty, when the quality of the book slips. It was one of those
times.
Visually, I never liked Sinister, either. You have to give him one
thing, he certainly anticipated the trend toward costumes that resemble
bondage and S&M gear. And, what the hell are those things hanging down his
back? What are they made of? And, just how long could you wear something
like that before you took the scissors to them? They gotta be noisy,
rustling around behind your back all the time. Or a breeze blows and one of
those straps bumps your leg while you're intent on some illicit genetic
engineering project and you jump, ruining ten years' work in the process.
Another problem with this guy's look, and I'm not the only one who
has remarked on it, he shares many features with the X-Men Colossus. He's
not the first one, back in X-Men (around #110) there was a fill-in issue
with a character called Warhawk, with virtually identical facial features
and hairstyle. Considering the way that comic characters are drawn, with
little facial definition beyond the most basic outlines, it's always best to
differentiate your characters as much as possible, though hairstyle, color,
etc. Unfortunately, Warhawk had light blue skin, as Colossus' "organic
steel" was often colored and Mr. Sinister is "blue-white", so there's even
more confusion possible. The first time I saw a pic of Sinister, I thought,
"What the hell have they done to Colossus, now?" On top of the facial
similarity, they have him wearing this outfit with horizontal
"segmentation", which looks similar enough to Colossus' armored skin to add
to the confusion.
So, you can see how I thought this guy could use a new look.
Unlike most of my columns, as I said, this is a character I knew
very little about, so it was off to the WWW for info. I found a couple of
helpful sites, to gather some background on Sinister. One of the best is:
Well, it turns out that Sinister is an old guy, about 150 years old,
now. He was a doctor in Victorian England, named Nathaniel Essex (aren't
there too many Nathaniels in Marvel, now?) who was eventually ostracized by
society over his unorthodox experiments. He has been ret-conned into X-Men
history, manipulating events to bring Scott Summers and Jean Grey together,
having determined that their offspring would be mutants of unusual power.
Like most grand manipulators, he can't build his brave new world
without copious quantities of innocent blood mixed in the foundation.
Sinister was the force behind the so-called "Mutant Massacre", which
virtually wiped out the Moorlocks and he fought the X-Men in the "Inferno"
crisis, a demon invasion he helped to orchestrate.
He's not a nice guy. We get that. But, does he really need to dress
like that? Would a "Victorian gentleman" go in for the pseudo-bondage suit
and the weird "cloak"? I don't think so. Would he dress a bit strangely?
Sure, everyone did in the Victorian era.
And, of course, one of the things I wanted to do was to keep him
recognizable.
First thing I did was do away with the horizontal segmentation.
Next . . . the stupid "cloak" thing.
To keep something of the look of that cloak, I gave him a regular
cloak with that "torn" look to it. I made the boots less oddly flamboyant,
and gave him good villain gauntlets!
Oh, and another thing. Who, other than Ming the Merciless can stand
to wear one of those foot-high collar things? I had to ditch that and go for
a regular collar. I didn't screw around with his hairstyle, because, as I
recall, Colossus is dead, so he isn't using it.
Short column, this month. Last month wore me out and I've been busy
trying to catch up on commissions.
