X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN VOLUME 1

Cartoonist: Ed Piskor | Editor: Chris Robinson
X-Men Group Editor: Jordan D. White | Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
And a bunch of other stupid credits I don't want to type out, because Marvel likes to credit every executive who took so much as a single sideways glance at every comic they publish.

I picked up X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN solely for its premise. It's been quite a while since I bought a comic with artwork that doesn't appeal to me solely for the story, but this series' conceit was too fascinating to pass up: a condensed retelling of the X-Men's long and convoluted history, written as if everything had been planned out in advance. So I bought the first two volumes in various Comixology sales last year.

Now, I wasn't expecting auteur Ed Piskor to truly cram every bit of X-lore into his retelling; to do so would be an undertaking of insane proportions. So I figured there would be some streamlining here and there. What I didn't expect, however, was for the story to be some sort of parallel universe X-history, explicitly removing and/or changing bits of backstory in the service of Piskor's narrative. But sadly, that's what we have here.

The first issue (comprising the first half of volume 1), covers Charles Xavier's childhood and early years, and follows him as he meets a number of mutants and recruits his original team of X-Men. We see Xavier's interactions with his stepbrother, Cain Marko, and Marko's presumed death in the temple of Cyttorak during the Korean War. We see Xavier's travels in Cairo, during which he comes across young Ororo Monroe, as well as his time in Isreal with Gabrielle Haller and a young man called Magnus (whose own history as Holocaust survivor is told alongside Xavier's).

Unfortunately, this is where Piskor's changes begin to pop up. We're told that Xavier lost the use of his legs when the Cyttorak temple collapsed, rather than in battle with the alien warlord, Lucifer. In theory, removing Lucifer from Professor X's backstory is fine; however the result finds Xavier in a wheelchair during his time in Isreal, which was not the case originally. It's a little thing, but little continuity glitches are often the most likely to irritate me because there's no real reason to get them wrong.

On the other hand, Piskor throws in a few glimpses of Mister Sinister early on as part of Cyclops's backstory, which is much appreciated from this dyed-in-the-wool Sinister fanboy. Plus he's working on something big with the Phoenix Force, tying it in early as it notices Jean Grey on Earth the very first time she manifests her telepathic powers.

The formation of the X-Men is accomplished via adaptations of the Roy Thomas-scripted backup stories from the sixties (which introduced such popular characters as Jack O'Diamonds and the Conquistador), but again Piskor messes with established continuity. Rather than have Jean Grey join the team after it was fully formed, Marvel Girl instead shows up in full costume to aid the X-Men when they rescue young Hank McCoy from the Conquistador. I'm not sure what this adds to the story, other than a blatant slap in the face to the first scene of UNCANNY X-MEN #1.

There's also a bizarre choice in Angel's backstory to suggest that his old college chum, Cameron Hodge, had joined the anti-mutant Right organization as a teenager, that the organization somehow contained all the major anti-mutant characters from early X-Men history (specifically, Bolivar and Larry Trask, Stephen Lang, Donald Pierce and Robert Kelly). Besides the fact that it's patently absurd to tie all these characters together, the Right was, per actual X-history, founded by Hodge when he was an adult!

You may be getting the impression at this point that I don't like GRAND DESIGN. That's not necessarily true. I appreciate it on a technical level, for what it's attempting to do. I just don't understand the point of changing concrete facts when a simple repackaging of the existing continuity would have been a lot cooler.

The second issue brings the original X-Men up to the point where their series was cancelled (actually it kept going, but as a reprint title), and this issue, while continuing some of Piskor's questionable ideas from book one (the Right are behind Genosha?? That's almost as bad as having Sugar Man involved!), also features a development I like: Piskor ties together some of the disparate threads from the early adventures of the X-Men into one single plotline. Specifically, he takes the character of the Mutant Master, an extraterrestrial who founded the villainous Factor Three, and ties him in with a bunch of other aliens from X-Lore. It's revealed that Lucifer (who does appear here, not totally excised from the story) is an agent of Mutant Master, and that Mutant Master himself is a vanguard for the Z'Nox, a race whose invasion Xavier stopped just before the reprint era began.

Piskor also ties all these alien incursions back to the Phoenix Force, which, again, is a ret-con I like. It seems everyone in the galaxy wants to figure out who the Phoenix's next host will be. It turns out the Z'Nox sent Mutant Master to Earth to find the host. Piskor also adapts the storyline in which the cosmic-powered Stranger kidnapped Magneto and Toad into the Phoenix mythology as well, stating that Stranger, as well, wants to learn who the host will be and is grabbing powerful beings from Earth in case it's any of them. These sorts of ret-cons and modifications, I like.

But on the flip side of that, the second issue also features one major development that bugs me: Piskor has Xavier tell all the X-Men about his plan to replace himself with the Changeling so he can prepare for the Z'Nox invasion. In the original continuity, of course, none of the X-Men know and Marvel's intention was that Professor X actually died at one point. But that was ret-conned later on; Xavier came back and it was revealed that Changeling had died in his place -- and that Jean knew the truth. Here, presumably to make Professor Xavier Less of a Jerk, Piskor has him bring the whole group in on the plan -- but knowing the truth, for some reason this modification particularly bothers me, even though it changes nothing about the actual plot.

That said, Piskor does one thing with Xavier's "death" that I like -- he has Magneto show up in disguise at the Professor's funeral and shed a tear for his former friend! It's a very nice touch, and the sort of thing I was expecting this series to do all the way through: enhance continuity without overtly changing it. (Piskor also has Magneto crash in the Savage Land aboard a futuristic spaceship after his escape from the Stranger, thus laying groundwork for his arctic base during the era of the "All-New, All Different" X-Men.)

And now the artwork: I know everything isn't for everyone, and I hate to be too mean when talking about art styles. I'm sure there are plenty of people who really like Piskor's work. But to me, it looks like what I can only describe as this weird ugly indie style from the eighties. There's some famous artist who Piskor really reminds me of, but whose name I just can't recall. I can, however, say that his work is reminiscent of Tom Scioli, another current writer/artist whose work is so bad (again, from my perspective) that I have refused to read what would otherwise have been a no-brainer for me -- his ongoing (though eventually canceled) G.I. JOE/TRANSFORMERS series at IDW.

But in any case, this work -- to my eye -- is just not good. Especially when taking into account the subject matter. I can't help thinking I would've liked this book a great deal more if Piskor had written it for another artist to draw; someone more mainstream. Ideally, GRAND DESIGN would've been illustrated by someone like Scott Koblish, who did the X-MEN '92 Infinite Comics in a wonderful classic style a couple years back, or Nelson DeCastro, who, inked by Koblish, turned in an amazing pastiche of the seventies Cockrum-era X-Men in UNCANNY X-MEN: FIRST CLASS a decade ago.

But, like I said, I'm not knocking those who like Piskor's style. It's just not for me, and it greatly detracts from my enjoyment of what would otherwise be a pretty good (but not great) comic!