Inspired by classic Sixties movie titles and prompted by John Struan of Super Punch fame, I've built a 1960s style title sequence for the upcoming X-Men: First Class film.

Set during the midst of the Cuba Missile Crisis, X-Men: First Class tells the story of the first team coming together, before they would become the heroes and villains we know from the original X-Men Trilogy.

This sequence was designed to give a very brief primer on the time period, the setting, as well as show the relationships of the characters in this film, as they are very different from the previous movies and audiences shouldn't be confused as to why Professor X and Magneto, enemies in the original trilogy, are the best of friends in this prequel.

Super Punch held a contest redesigning the posters for the film, which played it safe by sticking very close to the correlation to the original trilogy, and winding up rather mundane compared to the slick trailer rife with espionage, red fear, and 60s hair. Several people were quick to make posters in the Mod, Saul Bass, and James Bond style that I had in mind, so it was decided that I'd make a title sequence instead.

And yes, that music is a very melancholic rendition of the 90s cartoon theme song.

Please visit SecretUndergroundHeadquarters.com and SuperPunch.blogspot.com for more awesomeness.

Special thanks to Jessica Heaton, the World's Greatest Robot Girl.

In 1976, Cosmonaut Nikolai Peckmann was sent alone to an orbiting space station for what would be called Mission Six- to study the radiation levels and strange circumstances that killed all four crewmen of the last research mission.
By the third day, Peckmann's broken transmissions were coming back to ground control filled with increasing paranoia and delusion. He claimed that the spirits of the dead cosmonauts were coming to claim him, and that he had to keep moving to evade them. He shouted that if he could capture consume these spirits himself while he still had strength, he could move to the next level of consciousness...Truly the rantings of an insane man.
Indeed, video recovered later would show Peckmann running around the confined but maze-like station, downing emergency sedatives like a madman....pausing in a corner momentarily, only to throw back vitamin pills and give chase to his invisible demons.
He had exhausted the entire cargo of vitamins, pills, and fresh fruit well ahead of schedule. There was no way another crew could be assembled to rescue him before he starved. After one rather violently garbled transmission, the static cleared and the last live image on record is that of Peckmann's empty, wilted spacesuit on the cabin floor.
It was determined that another mission to recover any remains or gather any more research would be a waste of the people's money, and the station was allowed to drift out of orbit and into space- a failure never to be mentioned again. It was ordered and assumed that all video and paper evidence had been destroyed.


..then, at the dawn of the eighties, a fledgling arcade game company called NAMCO would stumble across the transcripts of these events, and the rest -as they say- is history.