X-Men continuity is the most densely packed gordian knot since the invention of the term. There’s nothing quite like it. A hundred characters, each with detailed backstories and relationships. Over fifty years of history, most of it only added to, rarely erased. With hundreds of creators passing the franchise reins over that immense lifespan, continuity has become an untanglable mess.
Enter X-Men Grand Design. Enter more specifically, Ed Piskor (Hip Hop Family Tree). The comic auteur has taken the history of his beloved mutants and boiled it down into a sequential story that only makes the X-rearview mirror all the more rich, interested, and cohesive. At times remixing, at others remaking, but always condensing and simplifying, the life and times of the Strangest Heroes of Them All has never looked better or more impactful.
Starting from square one at the arrivals of the likes of Apocalypse, Namor, and Selene, Piskor charted a course through the Silver Age, the All-New All-Different era, and reached the climactic Dark Phoenix Saga before taking a brief break to recuperate and gear up for his final pair of issues. And Piskor’s masterful handle over his art and pacing have never been better.
X-Men: Grand Design – X-Tinction will take us through Fall of the Mutants, X-Tinction Agenda, and everything in between. The first of two tremendous issues is out this week and every X-fan (or just the X-curious) owes it to themselves to check it out.
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