Ed Piskor’s X-Men: Grand Design, a retelling of the first 280 issues of X-Men as a single saga, has it’s first collected edition out. The trade paperback, which collects the first two issues will be published as an oversized Marvel Treasury Edition.
The next two issues in the cycle, X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis will be published on July 25th and August 29th.
Piskor will also be doing a promotion with Boing Boing, which serialized his Hip Hop Family Tree, where once a week for 12 weeks he’ll be providing commentary on a page of X-Men: Grand Design.
Official PR follows and then a preview:
To mark the release of the X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN trade paperback, Marvel Comics is previewing an excerpt from the highly anticipated book, written, illustrated, colored and lettered by Eisner Award-winning, indie cartoonist Ed Piskor. Best known for documenting the history of hip hop with the best-selling HIP HOP FAMILY TREE graphic novels, Piskor is sampling and distilling more than 8,000 pages of super-heroic storytelling into one seamless masterpiece, creating a definitive remix of the first 280 original issues of X-Men comic books and 30 years of complicated continuity.
The preview features an excerpt of the first five pages from X-MEN #1 from 1963, recolored by Piskor in his distinctive style – originally written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by Paul Reinmen, and lettered by Sam Rosen.
The X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN trade paperback collects the recolored X-MEN #1 and the acclaimed first two issues of X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN and will be published as a Marvel Treasury Edition, in the same dynamic, oversized format of the best-selling HIP HOP FAMILY TREE. The trade paperback will also include extra recolored classic pinups. The X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN trade paperback is on sale now in bookstores and on sale in comic shops April 4th.
In addition, the award-winning zine, blog, and directory BOING BOING will publish the first 12 pages of X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN, accompanied by Piskor’s behind-the-scenes commentary on the series. Having previously serialized HIP HOP FAMILY TREE in weekly installments, BOING BOING will post one page of story and commentary by Piskor each week for three months. The first excerpt and accompanying commentary is now live.
“Ed’s the best new cartoonist in forty years and every line and texture he puts to paper proves an unparalleled familiarity with every moment of the discipline’s history,” said BOING BOING’s Managing Editor Rob Beschizza.
“My work on X-Men would never have been possible without Marvel’s collaboration and the popularity I’ve achieved thanks to Boing Boing’s support on their site for over four and a half years,” said Piskor. “It’s a pleasure to bring the Marvel mutants to the Happy Mutants of BB for this limited serialization of X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN. I created each page to function as its own unique and complete strip that, when read in total, would tell a bigger story. Over the course of the next few months I’ll be providing a director’s commentary with every strip, to give you, the reader, some insight into where my mind was when putting the whole tale together. There’s a lot that goes into each episode, and this is the exact crowd who would appreciate the deep-dive look under the hood.”
Marvel Comics is also announcing that X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN will return late this summer with the two issue comic book series X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN, SECOND GENESIS. Issue 1 of X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN, SECOND GENESIS is scheduled for July 25th, followed by Issue 2 on August 29th.
About X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN
Over six tumultuous decades, the X-Men have carved a singular place in comic book lore and popular culture. From their riotous birth in the ’60s, to their legendary reboot in the ’70s, to their attitude adjustment in the ’90s, to their battle against extinction in the ’00s, the X-Men have remained unquestionably relevant to generations of readers, the ultimate underdogs in an increasingly complicated world. Now, New York Times best-selling author Ed Piskor (Hip-Hop Family Tree, Wizzywig) takes you on a pulse-pounding tour of X-Men history unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, an intricate labor of love that stitches together hundreds of classic and obscure stories into one seamless masterpiece of X-Men lore.
This is how all of Marvel’s Silver and Bronze Age reprints should look. These things just aren’t meant to be printed on bright white paper. Piskor gets it.
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