10 Franchises Marvel Comics Should Provide With a "Grand Design"

Ed Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design debuts this week, and it is one of the most ambitious projects from Marvel Comics this decade. Piskor, best known for his work for his historical analysis of hip-hop in Hip Hop Family Tree, is tackling the massive canon of the X-Men in a series of oversized issues. The goal of the series is to summarize a formative length of the comics series, primarily defined by writer Chris Claremont's guidance of the property, and put hundreds of issues of material into only six new additions. It's a concept that is part Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, part history of Marvel Comics, and part artistic experiment. Above all else, it's a new take on the publisher's strengths.

This led us to ask what other properties at Marvel Comics might benefit from a "Grand Design" in which an artist whose experience lies primarily outside of superhero comics attempts to capture the essence of what they love within a single idea. If Piskor's comic is a hit, then Marvel might consider reaching out to more auteurs and requesting their own takes on decades old superhero concepts. We've selected ten Marvel Comics teams or characters ripe for a grand re-design along with artists that would make for a great fit.

So click ahead to find out what dream projects we've imagined.