Continuing the theme of great comic book transportation, who wouldn’t want to travel in style and stealth like the X-Men do in their Blackbird jet?

The first time the X-Men are seen with a flying transport, it was Professor X’s dinky helicoptor and private jet. Both of which got the job done, but were noticeably boring and overly conventional. With the arrival of the new team in 1975 came the new version of the Blackbird, which was based directly off of the specs used by the US military for the very real SR-71 Blackbird.

The X-Men retained this look for quite some time until the 1990’s which brought about the design popularized by the Fox cartoon of that era. I’d have to say that of all the incarnations of the Blackbird, this one is my favorite. It’s simple, sleak, and looks vaguely futuristic, even by 1990’s standards.

Also, one of the most unique features built into the Blackbird is the ruby-quartz windshield installed to allow Cyclops to fire his optic blasts through the plane, which sounds awesome, and ridiculous to me at the same time.

-Jim

---

Both comments and pings are currently closed.