X-Men: Havok in 3D

It’s time for another 3D superhero here on Hypertransitory.com. I was playing around in my 3D programs the other day, and I thought I’d take a crack at none other than Alex Summers, the X-Man called Havok.

If you’ve never heard of Havok, well…

…you could be forgiven for that. Alex Summers is the younger brother of X-Men front-man Cyclops. So he’s somewhat close to the top, but he’s never really been a marquee name for the team.

Although he’s been around for quite a long time. He debuted way back in the days when the original five X-Men were still doing their thing. He never really quite joined the team, though. He was one of those “Gee, I’d really rather be left alone” types who was always around when they needed backup, but wasn’t trying to be with the team for the long-haul.

So what does he do? Essentially he absorbs cosmic radiation, stores it up and then throws off large amounts of heat, which blows shit up. Where his brother has that single concussive beam coming from his eyes, Havok’s power just emanates out of his whole body in waves in 360 degrees. He can aim it if he concentrates, but if he doesn’t everything around him is getting broke up -hence his codename.

Usually it looks like his beam is concussive, like Scott’s, but according to the Marvel stats his energy is just so hot that when it hits something, the temperature jumps up so drastically that it explodes.

Also like his brother, Alex doesn’t quite have control of his powers. Except in Scott’s case he has physical damage to the portion of his brain that would normally control his powers. Alex doesn’t have that excuse, and yet he’s somehow managed to never fully control his abilities.

I have to be honest…

…I never really liked Havok.

I consider him to be kind of a bastard. A bastard who keeps stealing all of Iceman’s girlfriends. No really, he did it twice, and if that wasn’t bad enough, when the first girl went back to Iceman, Alex stole her again. Damn, damn, damn.

You could just chalk this up to just letting a player play, but I didn’t like the way it went down.

So if I don’t like him…?

…then why would I waste time working him up in 3D? The answer is that I just love his costume. I always have.

Well, the original costume anyway. That one was created by a stellar artist named Neal Adams. The great thing about the original costume is that it was solid black. I mean black without any highlights at all, like it was just sucking up all the light.

That’s a difficult thing to work with as an artist because you really don’t model or shape the character. There’s just no detail in there so it can be a challenge -although I’ve heard some say the costume is boring. That’s why later artists have kind of mucked up the costume by adding on belts, jackets and “Tron”-like circuitry.

The silver headpiece kind of went out of style, too. They worked it into his latest costume in kind of an unappealing way, but at least they gave it a nod.

A hero is defined by his villains

Havok’s arch-nemesis was a Mutant called “The Living Monolith”. Except they never really went toe to toe as far as I can remember. The Monolith had the ability to grow to enormous size and then scream about how powerful he was, or something. I don’t really think he did much else.

Havok managed to stop the Monolith simply by existing. Somehow Alex’s Mutant power jammed the power of the Monolith, so he was kind of pissed off about that. He would usually find some way to stuff Havok into a device or machine, something that would block Alex from absorbing any power, then his own power would kick in and he’d grow and shout as usual. It was a whole ordeal.

Other Havok stuff that you can live without

Alex has been all over the Marvel map. I usually check out some of it, but I haven’t been interested in most of it.

At one point he ended up in the body of an evil version of himself over in a different universe. The comic was called Mutant X, and it was one of those 90’s comics that really is best forgotten. I also remember there was a pretty horrible TV show called Mutant X although it had nothing whatsoever to do with Alex. Still, I blame him for how much it sucked. Yes, I’m blaming a fictional character.

Moving on, Alex was also in the government sponsored X-Factor version. I picked up quite a few of these. More than I should have. It left a really bad aftertaste. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have tried to eat those comics.

Either way, that era put me off all X-Factor comics from now until eternity.

Crazy-ass brothers

Oh, yeah, this guy’s brothers are certified bat-shit CRAZY.

So I already went over many of the reason why Cyclops is crazy (and a douchebag) in my last post about original X-Man The Beast.

But just to add something else here, this is a 3D image I made up of Cyclops a while back. I showed this on my Facebook page, but I don’t think I ever showed it on this site:

Now, on to Alex’s other brother. This would be his younger brother Gabriel, code-named Vulcan. Vulcan was believed to be dead, but he came back after most of the Mutants had been de-powered in the M-Day event. He was royally pissed off and crazy. Plus more powerful than most X-Men combined.

He beat up the X-men, then took off into space. Havok, Professor X and some others went after him, where they were beat up again by Vulcan, many times over. It was embarrassing.

The Uncanny Avengers

This brings us to the current day. After Cyclops essentially ruined everything for everyone, Captain America realizes that him and the Avengers haven’t done much to help the Mutants over the years. Yeah, Cap, you’re telling me! See my Fantastic Four post for more on the douchebaggery of the FF and the Avengers.

Anyway, Cap decided to form an Avengers Unity Squad led by Havok and comprised of Mutants and good ol’ regular Avengers. Since Cyclops is now the face of Mutant evil, the reasoning is that his brother should be the face of good.

Except, no one really listens to Havok, and he’s not the natural leader the Cyclops is. His team is fractured and ineffectual almost from jump-street. In fact, the best thing going for Alex in this team is that the Wasp seems determined to get in his pants.

The bottom line is that Havok is seen as something of a Mutant Judas, patrolling Mutantkind for the Humans, to make sure they don’t step out of line.

I actually enjoy this comic, although more for the Avengers and X-Men arguing than for Havok. So I’ll be looking at him and that awful new costume for awhile yet, I suppose…

Havok…the animated gif!

I couldn’t resist, so I whipped up this animated Havok gif using Blender:

Behind the scenes

Here’s a couple of screenshots of Havok made up in Daz Studio and Blender:

For being all black, the costume was kind of a PITA to make up. I had to do a lot of crazy tweaking to get the mask and the collar looking right. The metal headpiece I modeled completely in Blender.

The Wrap Up

Well, there’s yet another superhero gracing the pages of this site. If you like this image make sure to jump on my Hypertransitory Mailing List of Fury to get the hi-res version and other stuff.

Also, if there’s any superheroes you’d like to see in 3D just let me know and I’ll take a stab at it in a future post.

Until then, see you guys later!