X-Men: Grand Design 7 – Wake up, Mom

Welcome Ed Piskor back to Boing Boing (previously), where he'll be offering an annotated page-by-page look at the first part of X-Men: Grand Design, his epic retelling of how Marvel comics' pantheon of heroes came to be. Here's page 7 — Eds.

Director’s commentary…

I wanted to cover lots of ground on this page, for better or worse, in an effort to get to the good stuff ASAP. I estimate several years of Charles’s early academic life transpire in the first three panels. The incessant dialogue in the background was probably something I cribbed from an old issue of Daredevil by Frank Miller when DD’s sense of hearing gets reactivated and becomes even more sensitive than before. For my use here I imagined that Chuck’s mutant senses kicked-in with the fury of the hormonal surges we all felt when going through puberty.

Panel 4: I actually stole this line from a guy I know who said it so casually when fondly recalling his shady past. He’s dead now.

Panel 7: Mimicking the old style of comics coloring places limits on my palette. I often like to work with as few colors as possible. I’m not always clever enough to keep the palette to just a couple colors, but it sure works fine in this panel.

Panel 8: The way my art on X-Men has grown lately I would never use black lines around fire anymore, but something about this blaze at the X-Mansion really conveys a sense of licking-movement to me. Especially when I see it on a screen.

The first X-Men Grand Design collection is now available for purchase on Amazon! Stay tuned for another strip this time next week.

You can pre-order X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis on Amazon today.