X-Men Legacy

Comics covers are strange beasts. While comics themselves are sequential art --- pictures arranged in just the right order to tell a story or convey an emotion --- covers freeze that process into a single static image. But Mike Del Mundo's work at Marvel shows that they can be much more than pretty pictures. You don't need me to tell you that Del Mundo's covers are gorgeous. He's an incredible draftsman with an even stronger sense of design. Covers let him push the latter talent to the fore, dancing through various styles, from stark two-color minimalism to detailed paintings, via pastiches of Escher and Art Deco posters, all depending on what suits this issue best.

“The best moments in reading,” Alan Bennett writes in The History Boys, “are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.” These “hands” can be found in any form of literature, from novels to poetry to journalism to, yes, comic books. One such hand reaches forth from the pages of X-Men Legacy, published by Marvel and written by Simon Spurrier. Instead of being an action-packed affair, this book was a character study; a very literal glimpse into the mind of a young man searching for his place in both the mutant world and the world at large.

We already know that the original X-Men are going to be playing a major part in Marvel NOW! when Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen bring Charles Xavier's first five students to the present day in All-New X-Men, but Si Spurrier and Tan Eng Huat will be exploring another of the many ways in which Xavier had impacted mutantkind in the relaunched X-Men Legacy...

What's that you say? The four teasers for Marvel's relaunched Marvel NOW! titles so far this week haven't been enough for you? How about four more to round out the weekend? This time around, Marvel's creators are all thinking Legacy, Soldier, Extended and Family...