Since the most recent character posters for X-Men: First Class were so abominably bad, we decided to sponsor a little contest to see which of our design-minded readers could do better. The bar was low, but everyone went far above and beyond the call of duty, and the result was a squad of really great posters. Some went with Saul Bass inspiration, others played off the comic books, one found inspiration in The Social Network, one changed the director (see above), and still others chose to go their own way entirely. Sadly, no one chose to improve on the floating head in crotch concept. That’ll be a new contest entirely, but without further ado, here’s the winner (who will receive a 1999 lithograph recreation of the first “X-Men” cover done by comic artist/legend Alex Ross) and a gallery of some especially great runners up:

Free stuff from the film that AICN calls “The future of horror”