The history of the uncanny X-Men over the past fifty-five years has been, shall we say, complicated. Have you ever tried to explain the comic book history of Marvel’s Merry Mutants to someone who only knows the trimmed down “diet X-Men” lore of the feature films, or even the ’90s X-Men: The Animated Series? Within five minutes, you see their eyes start rolling back into their heads, and you know you’ve lost them somewhere around the third time Jean Grey died, or the fifth team member from an alternate dystopian future joined Xavier’s school.
That’s why it’s been a small miracle that cartoonist Ed Piskor, author of the best-selling Hip Hop Family Tree, managed to take the entire X-Men history over five decades, warts and all, and managed to make one amazing cohesive story out of the narrative, with X-Men: Grand Design. The first two issues of the six-issue X-Men: Grand Design mini-series are being collected as one oversized edition, done in the style of the Marvel Treasury Editions of the late ’70s and early ’80s. As an added bonus to the collected edition, Ed Piskor has recolored Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic X-Men #1 from 1963, which gives a whole new vibrancy to Kirby’s art. You can check out the first five pages of Piskor’s re-colored Kirby art down below in our gallery.
X-Men: Grand Design is one of the coolest comics to come from Marvel in a long time, and the collected edition is the perfect gift for both the casual X-Men fan who wants to know the ins and out of the mutant lore, or a hardcore fan who wants a cool new way of revisiting all those various X-Men story threads they’ve had in their head for years. X-Men: Grand Design – Treasury Edition is set to hit comic shops on April 3. X-Men: Grand Design will return with X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis later this summer.
What do you make of this amazing re-telling of mutant history? Be sure to let us know down below in the comments.
Images: Marvel Comics
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