Marvel Entertainment is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Jim Lee's iconic Uncanny X-Men trading cards with a new hardcover art collection, published by Abrams ComicArts.
The Uncanny X-Men Trading Cards: The Complete Series is slated for release on Tuesday, July 5 and is currently available for pre-order. The "annotated, digest-size collection" contains the artwork of the complete 1992 trading card set, including bonus cards. With a price tag of $24.99 USD, the book is 272 pages long and features a total of 250 color illustrations.
All 105 cards in the original set were illustrated by Lee -- the penciler behind 1991's X-Men #1, the highest selling single-issue comic book of all time -- and colored by Paul Mounts. Additionally, The Uncanny X-Men Trading Cards: The Complete Series features an introduction by Bob Budiansky (Transformers, Sleepwalker) -- who "helped assemble, design, and create these iconic trading cards" -- as well as a foreword by Ed Piskor (X-Men: Grand Design).
"Lee was the first artist to create all of the original artwork for a Marvel card set; his dynamic character portraits, battle scenes, team shots, and innovative nine-card Danger Room puzzle cards helped fuel both the '90s boom of comic-book trading cards and the general public's mania for all things X-Men," Marvel said in its official announcement. "Fans of the chart-topping comics could turn to the cards for further insight into their favorite characters, as Marvel writers and editors included bios, stats, and trivia for each hero and villain."
Marvel explains that the X-Men trading cards "would go on to become one of the most celebrated in Marvel history and the gold standard for non-sports trading-card artwork and design." The new hardcover collection "collects, for the first time, the front and back of each collectible card in the set -- including Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Magneto, and Deadpool -- along with select scans of Lee's original and digitally remastered art."
"What can I say? I'm just a fan at heart," Lee himself wrote in an essay published in The Marvel X-Men Collection in 1993. "That's why it's hard to describe the thrill I experienced when I was chosen to be the artist for the first set of X-Men Trading Cards... Well, it was a long and hard road, but several months (and several hundred phone calls to and from Bob and his hard-working assistant, David Wohl) later, the card set was finished. Colored exquisitely, I must add, by Paul Mounts, who really carried me at times. Although, to be honest, I rued the day I ever said yes to this project many times during the endeavor, in retrospect, I'm glad I did it."
Featuring artwork by Jim Lee and Paul Mounts, an introduction by Bob Budiansky and a foreword by Ed Piskor, The Uncanny X-Men Trading Cards: The Complete Series goes on sale July 5 from Abrams ComicArts.
Source: Marvel