Ed Piskor’s Lavish Indie Stylings Bring Us X-Men: Grand Design Focusing On Mutant History
by Hannah Means Shannon
Even within mainstream comics, Ed Piskor’s work is becoming increasingly known. As the creator of Hip Hop Family Tree series of graphic novels published by Fantagraphics, he’s remixed the history of a music genre in lavish indie style, and now Marvel have announced that he’ll be creating a six issue series, each issue clocking in at 40 page, that tells the history of the X-Men.
X-Men: Grand Design with compress and “distill” over 8,000 pages of X-Men comic storytelling, drawn from the first 280 issues of the X-Men comics, into a series as a “definitive remix”. These books will appear over a three year period, as three separate miniseries called: X-Men: Grand Design, X-Men: Grand Design-Second Genesis, and X-Men: Grand Design-X-Tinction.
Piskor says:
X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN is a tribute to everything comic book fans love about the X-Men from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original run and Chris Claremont’s, epic 16-year stint as the series’ writer. It’s a compelling and complete story with a beginning, middle and an end, featuring everything from Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, Cerebro and the Danger Room to the Mutant Massacre, the Reavers, Gambit, and Genosha.
On December 9th, 2017, Marvel will publish the debut issue of X-Men: Grand Design as the first of two.
On April 17, 2018, Marvel will collect both issues of X-Men: Grand Design into an oversized paperback collection in the same size and format as Hip Hop Family Tree. That book will also include the first issue of X-Men by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby recolored by Piskor, as well a host of recolored classic pinups.
Each X-Men: Grand Design trade paperback coming up, in fact, will feature a classic X-Men comic book, recolored by Piskor.
