Marvel Artist Pays Tribute to His Own Iconic X-Men Cover with New WITCHBLADE Art

One of the most identifiable X-Men covers of all time is back – in a whole new universe. The beauty of comics is that artists carrying other titles can refer back to their own work in intricate or sometimes obvious nods. Right as this famous image is gaining traction again, this iconic Uncanny X-Men cover is back in this artist’s homage to himself.

Uncanny X-Men #251 by Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri features one of Marc Silvestri’s most famous X-Men covers. It features Wolverine crucified on a giant X among a pile of skulls in the rain. The image is just so striking that Silvestri decided to bring the image back in a new way.

Image Comics has revealed Silvestri’s cover for the upcoming Witchblade #3 by Marguerite Bennett and Giuseppe Cafaro. In this variant cover, Silvestri recreates his iconic image of a crucified Wolverine in an eye-popping way – this time with a W and the main character Sara Pezzini similarly crucified in the rain.

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Marc Silvestri’s Uncanny X-Men #251 Cover is Iconic

The Image of Wolverine is Impossible to Forget

There’s only one Marc Silvestri. As original creator of Witchblade, he’s returned to help the ’90s series that’s also recently returned with a re-imagined take. The series went from a comic series to a TV adaption and back to a comic series, much like the X-Men it homages in this cover. Debuting just last month and dealing with high-stakes supernatural conspiracies, the new Witchblade series could one day become just as iconic as the X-Men, and this is all thanks to Marc Silvestri – if Witchblade receives the same treatment and reception that his X-Men cover did, that is.

Deadpool & Wolverine Also Paid Homage to Silvestri

Wolverine Has Found Himself Crucified in Several Mediums

Witchblade isn’t even the only piece of entertainment this year that has recreated the iconic Uncanny X-Men cover. Just this summer, around the same time as Witchblade, Deadpool & Wolverine was released in theaters. In a montage of Deadpool encountering different Wolverines across the multiverse, Wade finds himself in a recreation of the Uncanny X-Men #251 cover, where he finds Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine on the famed X. This just shows the staying power that a work of art like Marc Silvestri’s has – good art will always be emulated in decades to come. In the words of Silvestri himself,

The new
Witchblade
series came out the same month as
Deadpool and Wolverine
, and since then we have been contacted by comic book fans non-stop about the cover. Our fans mean so much to us, and we thought that this would be a great way to pay homage to them for support of my work and Top Cow through the years.

Whether it’s showing up in Deadpool & Wolverine or in the new Witchblade, the original cover art stands as a legend. In an age of unnecessary sequels and nostalgia traps, it’s nice to have one piece of media for fans who have been fans of an artist for some time. It’s also important that an artist’s work gets celebrated, especially by the artist himself. Marc Silvestri knows just how iconic his Uncanny X-Men #251 cover is, and he’s given fans a sequel in the form of a Witchblade homage. In time, maybe that W will mean just as much as that X – and maybe that’s the secret message Silvestri is trying to manifest.

Source: Image Comics