Byrnesque: Jean Grey of the X-Men

John Byrne is one of those people from my past who’s work evokes an emotional response. He made me love Jean Grey of the X-Men as a child. She was my first comic book crush and I was devastated when she sacrificed herself. In the mid eighties that was all retconned and suddenly she was found encased in a cocoon. The Phoenix force hadn’t possessed her, it physically took her place? Jean has died and come back a few more times, and that’s not old at all. My Jean is still dead, and I wish they went forward with the alternate take on the character where her powers were stripped but that never officially happened. Either way, I will always have John Byrne’s stories and those are the best.

That was a long winded introduction of my homage piece to one of my favorite Byrne renderings of the character. It appears in the Art of John Byrne and like many of the other pieces in the album it is glorious. I fell far from the mark when attempting to re-render this illustration, but I like where I landed. This is a pose that I revisit from time to time so I should probably give it another shot, at lease the linework. As this one stands, I really enjoyed working with the violet lines.