It’s spooky season! The X-Men have no shortage of characters going bad, whether they’re seduced by their darker impulses, possessed by demons or dark magic, or just having a really, really bad day. And when characters go bad, they signify it with crazier and more revealing costumes.
For Halloween, our team imagined some evil looks for different characters. What would these heroes look like when they fall into evil? What if they were villains for an arc? What if they’re pulled from a darker What If timeline? Thrill at the chilling looks our artists conjured, and follow them on social media … if you dare!
Isaiah Cox — Magik/Darkchylde
@isacoart on Instagram
@isacoart on Bluesky
She’s fresh out of Limbo and ready to scare the children. Behold … Darkchylde!
I’ve wanted to do a design on her since I created my Magik redesign last year, so this was such a fun opportunity. My main inspiration facewise was the split-articulation of Sarokichi masks, very creepy and uncanny, perfect for her!
The rest of her look is both an elevation and a degradation of my original Magik look: Her bodysuit has ripped into a tattered loincloth; her Soul Armor appears on both arms in a sharper, spikier design; and she loses her boots in favor of actual cloven hooves. My favorite aspects of this design are her horns sprouting from her forehead and her skullet haircut, suggested by my fellow collaborators in the Redesigning X-Men group. I loved the way she turned out and am happy that I gave her the powerful-yet-spooky aura that’s PERFECT for this Halloween season.
Trae Middlebrooks — Agent Moonstar
Trae.Drew.That on Instagram
Meet Agent Moonstar (DO NOT call her Dani), the Psychic Sniper, mercenary for hire. She’s a warrior and protector, but is more singular in her focus to rid the world of the worst kind of men, one psy-bullet at a time.
Dani Moonstar is one of my favorite X-Men of all time. She is, among many things, empathic, emotionally intelligent and a community-minded character. But What If events in her life altered her ideas about how to protect her community? Could that change her mission, her allegiances and even the expression of her mutant powers?
Truthfully, I thought about Dani wearing the Demon Bear as a cloak, and then went wild. I also wanted to incorporate the Indigenous American story of Deer Woman, which fit my concept of what a more vengeful Dani would be like.
Steve Lippert — Cannonball
@contextualthor on instagram
Here is my cannonball redesign! I don’t see him around in comics much lately, so I wanted to revamp him with some fresh, volatile style (see what I did there?) He’s just exploding to meet you!
Joshua Bruckner — Goblin Prince Alex Summers
@joshington_bear on Instagram
@joshingtonbear on Bluesky
I took an older Havok as the Goblin Prince design I’d made and cleaned it up. I pushed the Goblin Prince’s already revealing look into a streamlined, modern bodysuit with lots of fetish-friendly latex and mesh. Alex has a fashionable mullet-undercut combo, and the collar and metal rings echo the circles his powers make. He’s ready to manifest his Goblin Queen’s will!
R.L. White — Karma/Shadow King
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RLWhitesArt on X and Bluesky
For this round, I chose to explore Karma (Xuân Cao Mạnh) under the influence of the Shadow King. This concept is a long-planned adaptation, and this round provided the perfect opportunity to realize it.
My design focuses on reimagining the Madripoor crime lord aesthetic in my style with a nod to Southeast Asian fashion with key design elements:
• Karma is depicted in a plus-size cheongsam/changsarn dress in a vibrant green with gold accents. This choice establishes her status and cultural background.
• Her look is given a sinister edge, inspired by the unnerving presence of characters like Yubaba from Spirited Away. This is conveyed through her creepy facial expression and unnaturally long, sharp fingernails. Her hairstyle features a traditional bun with a bold magenta ombre that subtly hints at the corruption.
The submission is presented in three stages to showcase the evolution of the possession:
• Off-powered state: A baseline look of Karma in her crime lord attire.
• Possession wave: She is shown actively using her geometric possession wave, illustrating the initial activation of her power while being mentally controlled.
• The Shadow King manifested: The final, most dramatic variant is a “show, don’t tell” depiction. Here, the Shadow King entity is visually manifested, towering over Karma and physically manipulating his host. The pose illustrates the concept of her being “possessed like a puppet,” highlighting the complete dominance of the psychic entity.
This approach offers a powerful visual narrative of the Shadow King’s parasitic control over one of the New Mutants.
Rake — Eye-Boy
@pastelrake on all platforms
Eye-Boy’s visible mutation naturally lends itself to body horror, and combined with the increasingly supernatural application of his “sight” in recent years, I felt it made sense to lean into an unsettling visual. The character is also strongly defined as being a soft, emotionally intelligent good-boy, and his Hellfire Gala outfit suggested queerness, so I combined all of these elements to create an astute, malevolent femme with an unflinching gaze. Lots of them.
Joshua Bruckner
Joshua Bruckner is a lifelong artist, X-Men fan and scientist, in that order. He lives in Massachusetts and spends his free time reading comics, redesigning X-Men, drawing comics and arguing about X-Men. Follow him at @joshington_bear on most social media.
