X-Men: Grand Design - X-Tinction

X-Men: Grand Design #5-6

by Ed Piskor, Chris Claremont, Jim Lee (Artist)

Collects X-Men: Grand Design - X-Tinction #1-2 - plus the classic Uncanny X-Men (1981) #268, masterfully recolored by Ed.

Presented in the same dynamic, oversized format of the best-selling Hip Hop Family Tree. The series that has critics and fans raving returns for its final installment! The fall and rise of the X-Men revisited! Relive the now-classic storylines of the 1980s - including the Mutant Massacre, the Fall of the Mutants, Inferno and the X-Tinction Agenda! And it's out with the old and in with the blue and gold as the X-Men enter the '90s! An explosive era of X-Men history is revisited, expanded and polished for a new generation - including the debuts of such 1990s mainstays as Jubilee, Gambit, Psylocke, Mister Sinister and more! The final chapter of this best-selling prestige series caps off the first three decades of X-Men lore in one neat package - all of it brought to life by the master of graphic fiction himself, Ed Piskor!

Genres: Comics, Marvel, X Men, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Superheroes, Science Fiction

120 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 21, 2019

About the author

Ed Piskor had been cartooning professionally in print form since 2005, starting off drawing American Splendor comics written by Harvey Pekar. The duo continued working together on 2 graphic novels, Macedonia, and The Beats. Ed began self publishing Wizzywig after developing a huge interest in the history of Hacking and Phone Phreaking. 3 volumes, making up 3/4 of the full story, have been published to date.

Recently Ed had designed the characters for the new Adult Swim series, Mongo Wrestling Alliance.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5/5

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sud666 · Rating 5 out of 5]

X-Tinction brings the excellent Grand Design series to an end.

Piskor's labor of love encapsulates three decades of X-Men history into three volumes. This covers the birth of Cable all the way through the X-tinction event. It also includes a recolored version of X-Men #268.

This is a series best appreciated in its entirety and is an amazing series. Highly recommend this to anyone wishing to learn about the X-Men's long history.

[Mendousse · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[First And · Rating 2 out of 5]

This will be the same review for every Grand Design book. I feel like there’s not much to say about each one individually so they’re all included here.

It’s important to address and mention before I actually review these comics that Ed Piskor is a bad guy, but since his passing none of the money goes to him and these are just abridged versions of other people’s stories so make what you will of that. The reason I decided to read this instead of the Chris Claremont run of Uncanny X-Men was because this one was easier to find on Marvel Unlimited but I’m also new to the app so maybe I’m a little dumb. I think my Biggest issue with these comics is how Piskor does these abridged versions of the stories. It would be effective if I was taking a test on this subject and needed to know all the events that occurred in this continuity, but if I wanted to know the characters and their relationships with each other it’s pretty lacking. The first book is pretty decent, the second one is kinda hard to follow and a bit annoying to get through, and the final one has a terribly hard to get through first part, but has the best second part. These might just be how I’d view the stories in the other runs too but I’m personally not too sure. I’m just glad I’m done with the grand design series and I’m able to move on to a different X-men comic now!

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed Piskor's grand summary of the X-men's adventures reaches its final stage. With "X-Tinction," we breeze through a number of classic storylines from Chris Claremont's run: Cyclops leaving the team, the Mutant Massacre, the X-men dying in Dallas and the Australia years.

While the previous "Second Genesis" volume was relatively clean and easy to follow, "X-Tinction" is more muddled. This could reflect the labyrinthine plots Claremont was cooking up during this era, with tons of subplots and teasers, some of which are never followed up on.

Still, even as an enthusiastic reader of the original comics, I found it hard to follow what was going on here. That's especially true for the finale, which seems to wrap things up a couple pages too early. (I honestly thought I might be missing an issue.)

While I would say that only the "Second Genesis" volume really worked for me, Piskor is talented in his art and writing throughout the X-Men Grand Design series. He does a good job conveying the messy energy of the X-men at their best.

[Norman Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Shannon McShortall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic third instalment in Ed Piskor’s very fun Grand Design series. As with the first instalment (and abundantly clear by the end, with a snippet of the type of writing that Chris Claremont was creating at the time), the work definitely doesn’t carry the same weight the originals do, but it is still a fun look at that period of time in which the X-Men started to get more complicated. The social commentary aspect, as we get to the tipping point of anti-mutant hysteria, leads to some truly dark and poignant moments. While it blazes by key moments, this is fine because it encourages you to pick up in those places and not feel like you’re missing anything. A solid read

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

It goes off the rails toward the end, but Piskor gets credit for trying to wrap up Claremont's epic, sprawling storylines and give this series something that feels like an actual ending.

A worthy try overall, even if all the dramatic soap opera relationships are completely left out of it. (We never even find out what Logan's "private conversation" with Jean was supposed to be, and it seemed like it was meant to set up SOMETHING.)

[Ma'Belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Piskor has really started to figure out by this point how to pack in more storytelling and has moved away from frame-to-frame linear history. This volume wasn't a bore to read at all in the way the first volume was for me at times. The expressiveness in his art style is a magnificent thing to behold and study. I was sad when I realized it was over and the following pages were reprintings of classic issues of X-Men (even though they were very enjoyable as well).

[Tue Le · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ed Piskor has done a decent job here. As before, he condenses the plots of a multitude of major X-Men story lines into one giant volume with his characteristically idiosyncratic art style. Readers who feel disappointed that Days of Future Past is not mentioned in the introduction of this book should rest assured that Piskor does go over it, just like, say, The Dark Phoenix Saga in the previous volume. These are some of the most famous X-Men stories of all times.

[Shane Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this wasn't an interesting era of X-Men comics to summarize and streamline. Jean and Madeleine fighting over Nate? Magneto's trial? Eh . . . .

Madeleine was really wronged by everyone.

The outback stuff was more fun than shown here, I think.

I don't know. My X-Men starts with Jim Lee so it might just be a personal preference.