X-Men: Grand DesignX-Tinction by Ed Piskor

X-Men: Grand DesignX-Tinction Reviews

• 
  Chad

  Piskor takes some liberties with the X-Men's history. This mainly covers from Fall of the Mutants to The X-Tinction Agenda with a weird amalgam of Days of Future Past and Bishop's origin tacked onto the end to fill it out. It was kind of like listening to the X-Men's past after it's been explained through a game of "telephone". Still, it's a fun romp through one of my favorite X-Men eras.
• 
  Robert

  Fun continuation of the series covering the insanity of Inferno, the Outback days, Genosha and even reproducing the legendary, Jim Lee-pencilled
  Uncanny X-Men #268 on the same sepia-toned paper background just for the fun of it, I guess?
• 
  Aldo Haegemans

  3,5/5
• 
  Timothy Boyd

  Well the worst thing about this series was it didn't keep going. Very nice work by the writer consolidating the very complicated an complex timeline and lot lines into a single coherent story. Nice read and well done. Very recommended
• 
  Billie Tyrell

  Enjoyed this one more than the first. Mainly because it's the more recognisable X Men from the cartoons and films than it is the 60s X Men. Also I was more into the rythm of it at this point... I actually think this is a pretty solid achievement and after reading it I had a look at some of the old X Men issues randomly on
  https://readcomiconline.li/ and started to appreciate them massively, how it works as a soap opera that spanned two decades under Chris Claremont... I mean, that's amazing. Apparently he would have kept doing it as well. It's hard to think of anyone who's been committed to a commercial comic on that level, usually creators will comic to a book for five years maximum, and this Wikipedia style compendium that is Grand Design really works to sell that run of comics... but for people like me who might not have the patience or willpower to read 500 X Men comics this gives me a good idea of what I'm missing out on... so in future if I ever meet an X Men nerd who rambles on about them, then I can at least feign a massive knowledge on the whole thing.
• 
  Matěj Komiksumec

  Jako celek je Grand Design prostě super, ale X-Tinction trpí tím čím trpělo už předchozí volume, strašně moc děje. První půlka týhle knížky je skvělá, tu jsem pokořil jak nic, druhá polovina je zase strašný bordel. Hrozně postav které dostanou hodně jednoduchý popis, hrozně událostí nacpaných do sebe. Ale je to pochopitelné, tahle kniha reflektuje dobu kdy vycházelo hrozně X řad a hodně událostí s nimi spjatými.
  Každopádně Vol. 1 je nepřekonatelný top, Vol. 2 je super ale je to hrozný bordel a Vol. 3 je někde na půli cesty, skvělý recap X-Menů.
• 
  Greg Kerestan

  The finale to the "Grand Design" trilogy is still entertaining, a great jaunt through about a decade of Marvel plotlines, but it suffers from the same problem as Volume 2: too streamlined to "just summing up Uncanny X-Men," but still with so much going on. This was, after all, the era of Too Many X-Titles. To get through this period and only hint at Age of Apocalypse without ever even bringing up their existential Egyptian foe feels like an oversight.
• 
  Wes Benchoff

  I was hoping we'd get more of Cable and Xman's origins, but this ended a bit before that stuff gets completely nuts. Still, if all I'm complaining about is that I want more, it must have been damn good. As usual with this series, it includes a gorgeous recolored classic issue as well, this one being one of my personal favorite single issues ever.
• 
  Peter Derk

  This is when some X-Men shit got more serious and less wacky. I mean, they were time traveling and shit, and they were fighting an evil robot named...Nimrod.
  
  Okay, it was still pretty wacky.
  
  I think what was great about these old comics is that the situations were wacky, but the characters totally took them seriously. Which makes them EVEN MORE WACKY in the best possible way.
  
  I mean, Dazzler.
• 
  Justin

  An absolute delight. I don’t particularly love some of the stories retold in this volume but Piskor makes them all better. Even the Cable ones.
  
  My favourite part is the now pretty stupid looking review of a prior volume; some crank complained that he’d skipped Days of Future Padt but, surprise, he was telling the story chronologically. Chef’s kiss.
• 
  Mendousse

  Projet totalement fou. Un truc de dingue : résumer 50 ans d'un comics en quelques centaines de pages... Avec son style indé old school, Ed Piskor a signé un classique.
• 
  Ruz El

  Piskor wraps up his look at X-Men history and manages the impossible: He makes what ever chunk this book covers make sense. As I stated in the last review, I never got into the X-Men books since they seemed so impenetrable and this one proves my theory. That said, Piskor makes it compelling and I can actually follow it despite how convoluted the story is at this point. The art continues to be gorgeous with the use of colour on the off-white pages really popping and adding to the dramatics. Each collection includes a reprint of a classic comic recoloured by Piskor. I have no idea why the issue in this one was picked but it's a lot of fun.
  
  As a standalone book, 4.5/5. As a whole series, a 5 out of 5 grand slam.
• 
  Michael Emond

  It is weird reading the other reviews here - "Great art!" "Loved the summary". I mean, I'm okay with people enjoying the series I just can't see where they are coming from. The art, to me, is horrid. I know it is stylistic, but it scans like a guy who dropped out of art school before he finished his first year. And the style is not pleasing to me in any way, especially not for a super hero book.
  
  And for this volume we get to the point in the X-Men books where I dropped the titles because I found no joy in the stories. They were dark and depressing and confusing and there were too many X-Men titles and too many convoluted story-lines and "big events". Ed's summary here is as rushed as before x 2. And if I hated the summaries before this was even worse because I didn't have knowledge of the original stories to fill in all the blanks he was leaving. I think what I learned from his summaries was that I was very wise to stop reading the title when I did. Those "main events" were dreadful. And he even left the key one (age of apocalypse) out.
  
  So, not knowing the stories we get a confusing recap of very confusing stories (when they were told stretched out over dozens of issues not dozens of panels).
  I really dislike this series. I guess some people liked it but if I wanted to revisit the stories I would read the originals not Ed's fractured fairy tales.
• 
  Jesús

  The third book in Ed Piskor’s encyclopedic mega-edit of the first 30 years of X-Men comics ends as strongly as the first book began.
  
  A one-man wiki, Piskor has already done tremendous historical work in his Hip-Hop Family Tree (a retro-styled comics history of hip-hop). And with this book, he wraps up his exhaustive new project of suturing together a massive amount of X-Men lore into a single chronology (the endnote references are worth reading almost entirely on their own).
  
  This third book (collecting issues #1 and 2 of “X-Tinction”) includes some of Piskor’s most retro-tastic art and is filled with as many visual allusions to comics past as are the stories themselves. The second half of the book (issue #2) has some of his flashiest detail work and goes well beyond simple visual “summary.”
  
  While not every long-running comic would benefit from the Piskor treatment, I can imagine a few more that are ripe for the picking.
  
  (I read these in single issues)
• 
  Ryan

  Recommended to someone who already knows the material. This final volume has to cover more storylines than the first two. To do this, Piskor has to change a lot of details to condense things down to eighty pages of material. Would have been so much better if he had done the same thing but covered half as much.
• 
  Jack Phoenix

  The third volume of Piskor's simplified and consolidated retelling of the X-Men's convoluted and lengthy history presented in a decidedly "indie" style is, yet again, far more fresh and entertaining than it has any right to be.
• 
  Norman Cook

  Piskor takes the convoluted chronology of X-Men and makes it comprehensible. He takes some liberties with the original comics to get things to fit together, but it makes a fascinating story. He saves the "Days of Future Past" storyline for last (even though it was originally published much earlier), showing how the X-Men universe got to that point and how the time traveling of that sequence subtly changed earlier events back to what was in the original comics. It's all quite mind bending, but that's always been the joy and the curse of X-Men. Too bad Piskor isn't going to tackle this project past the early 1990s--I'd like to see what he would do with "Age of Apocalypse." I'd also like to see something like this done just for Cable's life, as he is mostly relegated to a minor supporting character here.
  
  I read this as individual comic book issues.
• 
  LibrarianMel

  There are parts where the art in this is AMAZING, and the way they smushed years of soap opera adventure into a few pages is great (although...there are parts that are too smushed), but I wish that instead of adding in a random Jim Lee Wolverine/Black Widow/Captain America team up, they would have used those pages to allow for less smushing of the actual story that, yannow, people intended to purchase. The same critique, though, is true for all three of these books. The paper is super-cool, kind of sepia, and the coloring is dotted like old-school newspapers...except for parts there the use of bright white or neon purple/ pink (non-dotted) coloring REALLY makes the action jump off the page.
• 
  t.s. esque

  Hmm. My only real complaint is that Angel becomes Archangel without any explanation (that I picked up on). Was hoping for/ expecting something of an X-tinction Agenda / Age of Apocalypse mashup with this but Apocalypse is nowhere to be seen. He was really the ultimate X-Men baddie in my mind, growing up, however myopic that might've been.
  
  Also the inclusion of Uncanny X-Men #268 seemed a bit random to me. We got the debut issue in volume 1 & the first giant-sized issue in volume 2; and those complimented those parts of Grand Design wonderfully. Not sure why they dropped the ball with a Captain America cameo issue for the third volume.
• 
  Sean

  The last Grand Design book by Ed Piskor (unless he decides on more) is a winner. He shows his love of this team page after page. His quirky art style won't be for everyone but I enjoyed it. I liked this volume more as there were better transitions. He could have added some ancillary books as Scott and Maddy's baby is on one page and then a full grown Cable two pages later without explanation. I would love if he would do more (X-Cutioner's Song, Phalanx Covenant, Fatal Attractions, etc). Hopefully this book gets in as many hands as possible because its a treat.
• 
  Ryan Fohl

  At this point in X-men history it’s impossible to condense the story lines in any satisfactory way, especially when they were originally large cross over events. The art work is still great, especially the facial expressions. This is still more enjoyable than reading a wiki. I really liked the reprint with the wolverine flash backs to 1941.
  
  What I learned: Black widow is older than I thought. If I’m allergic to comic book ink that has to be the nerdiest thing possible.
• 
  Shane Perry

  Ed Piskor’s X-men masterpiece comes to an end. While Grand Design doesn’t cover the ENTIRE history of the X-men, it will give you a very good idea of the insanity the mutants went through in their first 30 years of publication. This volume is a little weaker than the first two, but it’s hard not to love Piskor’s art in this oversized format.
• 
  Peter Gehred

  Interesting look at X-Men history, but I agree the fairly simplistic illustrations and utter compression of the material make it not as quite as compelling. Part of the plot here did provide the basis of the best X-Men movie, Days of Future Past. The film makers wisely chose to have Wolverine go into the past rather than Kitty Pryde.
• 
  Andrew Shaffer

  X-Men comics have always been nigh incomprehensible. Like a James Bond movie, being convoluted is kind of the point, though. But condensing thirty years into this three volume series is asking a lot of the reader. So many dangling plot threads—the fault of the original writers, but still. Impressive art and design as usual for an Ed Piskor book.
• 
  John

  It doesn't really function as storytelling, condensing whole issues into pages, but it is a finely crafted nostalgia piece, from the yellowed pulp paper to the artwork. Condensed down the narrative cliff's notes summary of Claremont's obsessions seems crazy and prescient in equal measures.
• 
  Ryan Morris

  Still cool, but this one felt a bit rushed. To the point where the actual story content sometimes does not make any sense. And I read all the 90's originals of these!
  Thought I'd get more of a nostalgic feeling from this volume.
• 
  Douglas

  Really good series, if a little light in places. But the art was GREAT: Pekar's influence on Piskor worked really well, even if it is very different than what one might expect of X-Men. As a whole it reminded me of a huge D&D campaign. Lots of fun.