Why X-Men: Grand Design is a Great Idea

The X-Men, almost more than any other superheroes, are inextricably tied to a creator that made them a sensation. The Chris Claremont-led era is so huge, so famous, and so good, every single X-Men title or run since has responded to it in some way. Even characters and books that are somewhat divorced from the main X-Men continuity -- like Magneto’s recent solo series, or The All-New Wolverine -- draw on what the Claremont era did.

While impressive, it's also inherently limiting, because to anyone trying to jump into the X-Men through consulting various guides, be they online here at CBR, elsewhere on the Internet, or in print, they’ll inevitably be pointed back to the Claremont-led era. And not every new reader likes or wants to dive into forty-plus year-old comics right away.

Which is why Marvel’s announcement at Comic-Con International that Hip Hop Family Tree cartoonist Ed Piskor is writing and drawing the upcoming miniseries X-Men: Grand Design is the smartest thing the publisher has done for the franchise in at least a decade.

If you take a look at Piskor’s work -- Hip Hop especially (which is available from Fantagraphics, and some older steps are available on Boing Boing) -- as well as his Twitter, you know that Bronze Age X-Men comics are embedded in his creative DNA. That's not unusual for creators his age; essentially every writer and artist working in comics today has encountered them at some point.

So the news that Piskor and Marvel have come together to tell a six-issue story, with each chapter covering a full decade of X-Men continuity, is welcome for three major reasons. Let's tackle them in order, shall we?

The X-Men, Even In The Internet Age, Have The Biggest Barrier To Entry In Superhero Comics. Grand Design Will Change That.

I say this as someone who loved X-Men: The Animated Series as a child, has read his fair share of Wolverine comics, and lives for new episodes of Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men: The X-Men are the toughest characters in superhero comics to get into. Besides the fact that every post-Claremont run is touching on that era in some manner, there are constant events and roster turnovers. It seems like every new creative team introduces a new team of mutants or villains to call their own.

The sheer amount of mutants running around the Marvel Universe is so confusing that the publisher, in the form of a heartbroken and angry Scarlet Witch at the end of 2005's House of M event, literally de-powered nearly all but 198 mutants and kept it that way for a good long while. To make things even more confusing, the current era of the X-Men line began with the original five -- Beast, Cyclops, Angel, Marvel Girl and Iceman -- time traveling to the present day, where they're currently running around.

Even with Wikipedia, X-Plain The X-Men and other resources on hand, this stuff is so, so hard to keep track of. (And I say that as someone who wrote about the entire 30+ year history of Transformers comics.) But now, anyone looking to get a sense of X-history without digging through Marvel Unlimited will be able to simply go straight to Grand Design.

When the collected edition of this miniseries -- which starts in December -- eventually comes out, bookstores and comic shops would do well to stock it and talk it up as "a crash course on the X-Men." That pitch sells itself.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='It%27s%20Even%20Better%20Than%20a%20Handbook%20to%20the%20X-Men%20Universe']

Grand Design Improves On Past "Guide To" Comics By Employing A Single Voice And Focusing On One Time

The core hook of Grand Design -- that it condenses this huge, sweeping history to something approachable -- is not a new concept for Marvel. In 1982, the House of Ideas published the first edition of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, overseen by editor Mark Gruenwald and which has seen a variety of updates and reworkings since. In 1985, famed author and researcher Peter Sanderson wrote Marvel Saga, which distilled the first 25 years of Marvel events into a singular story. And let's not forget the numerous guidebooks and other ephemera you can find from Scholastic, DK and other publishers, available at any bookstore or library.

But as useful and fun as books like TOHOTMU or Marvel Saga are, there's not much personality to them. Granted, that's not the point really, but if you're not specifically up for reading an encyclopedia, that sort of stuff can come across as dry. Grand Design, being full of Piskor's uniquely charged drawing and his sense of economy as a writer, will not be.

Plus, unlike ill-fated past "catch-up reboots" like John Byrne's infamous Spider-Man: Chapter One, this series, at least judging from the brief previews released at this point, will be told from a "timeless" vantage point. That is to say, it won't be weighed down with slang that will make it sound dated not even 10 years from now. As fun as it is for some of us to read how Stan Lee thought teenagers talked in the 1960s, that sort of thing just won't fly with most modern audiences.

Grand Design Is A Stepping Stone for Marvel's Future.

If this mini becomes the sales success it deserves to be, who knows what could happen next? Tyson Hesse doing a Complete History of Spider-Man? Emily Carroll on The Life and Times of Doctor Strange? John Allison's long-awaited opus about Death's Head II?

But beyond that, this shows a clear path to Marvel's future lies in what it did in the past, as we've seen in recent years with series like Strange Tales, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl or the recently-concluded Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat! Hire one or more distinct creators with a specific tone across their body of work and let them run wild. By not holding a team down to crossovers or events, Marvel can not only cultivate a bunch of unique series that will stand on their own, but also make an absolute killing digitally and in the increasingly-important bookstore market because every kind of store recommendation or sale will posit them as a gateway book.

The sky's the limit; all Marvel has to do is reach out.