An original art collector posted this online the other day, claiming it was the mechanical for the original intended layout for X-Men #137. If John Byrne wants to weigh on its authenticity or offer any insights into this version of the cover, I know I'd love to hear more about it.

What's really striking about this design to me is that most of us have spent many years thinking that "This Comic Could Be Worth $2,500!" banner was really overpowering and distracting, not realizing that someone could have shrunk the artwork that much more, and put some extra borders and text boxes into the mix. The printed cover is downright restrained compared to this version. 

As far as I know, the original signatures were on the left of the cover, left of the space the bottom corner box would occupy. And the signatures were a rather special case, defining the names by the shadow of the "white" letters. I doubt they wouldn't use the original ones, albeit tilted 90 degrees to the right.

"When I said I had a really great ART DAY this week, it was not only because of the great Marvel Blip art, but also because I got this: The original, mechanical cover to Uncanny X-Men #137 by John Byrne and Terry Austin. This mechanical cover is how the published cover was first supposed to look, but editorial correctly decided to go with bigger art and less copy for the published classic cover that we all know so well. It has been hidden away for 40 years. This awesome mechanical cover is made up of stats and some original art (as in the case with most mechanicals). I am so thrilled to have it in my collection!"

"If it's a fake, it's an extremely good one. That lettering is spot-on perfect for the period and there's nothing in the layout that betrays it as being a fabrication. The one bit that gives me pause is the obvious fact that the artwork has been extended on the left side, where the original art had been reduced to fit. But even those corrections look accurate to the time period. So I tend to lean towards it being real, though it may have simply been an attempt that was discarded early on--an overabundance of copy and artwork that doesn't really fit the space well."

I guess my follow-up question for John would be if artists generally had the opportunity to see the cover copy and any alterations by editors before books went to press, or if you just had to trust that they were going to attempt whatever they thought was best for the artwork and would sell the most comics? 

We can take for granted today that an editor can fire off a quick email (or use fax technology in the '90s) to run cover concepts past the artists before committing them to print, but that wouldn't have been the case in the 1980s.

The cover copy style does remind me of several DC covers of this era, but I'm struggling to place a specific one.

And to shrink the main cover art yet enlarge the corner heads? I dunno.