Extended Efforts Lead To Ed Piskor’s X-Men

Never let someone tell you to put a cap on your dreams. The power of passion, particularly artistic passion, is not a flame that should be put out just because it means you’d have to burn the candle at both ends. If anyone can serve as an example of how you should keep both wicks burning, Ed Piskor is the textbook example of how persistence, fueled by passion, is what makes dreams come true. 

A New York Times bestseller and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist, Ed finally got the dream gig that put him on top of Mount Everest. Soon to be unleashed upon Marvel fans everywhere will be his X-Men:  Grand Design series, which is a trilogy of two-issue limited series that will retell the first 280 issues of the X-Men in Piskor’s unique style.

“I would say that everybody in my peer group — kids born in the 80s — we grew up with X-Men comics, and those of us who were most lucky got to read Classic X-Men and Uncanny X-Men at the same time,” Piskor noted. It was a rare time for comic fans (and X-Men die-hards) when a double-shot of X-Men adventures arrived in comic shops to let fans digest both the X-Men’s past and present in a given month.

“I internalized these comics my entire life,” he quipped.

With such an education, Piskor took his fascination with the mutants to the next level by drawing them. For years. A lot of years. Illustrations that depicted his versions of the heroes.

Today, his notebook illustrations are a reminder of how if you want to do something bad enough, you keep pushing the envelope. One day, that door of opportunity will open for you.

Check out the above PREVIEWSworld video interview to hear how Ed ran through that door when he got his shot to write and illustrate his versions of the X-Men. It’s a job that remixes the first 280 original issues of X-Men continuity!

X-Men:  Grand Design #1 (OCT170956) is in comic shops December 20!