Earth X [Special Edition] #[nn]

History

In 1997, Wizard: The Comics Magazine asked Alex Ross — fresh off his painted work on Marvels and Kingdom Come — to sketch a plausible dark future for the Marvel Universe; the result was polybagged as a free supplement with Wizard #77, written by Jim Krueger and featuring finished pencil character designs and painted cover art by Ross. The giveaway functioned, as one collector-history source describes it, as a proposal Ross used to demonstrate the marketability of the concept: each character entry paired a fully rendered Ross sketch with an in-depth prose profile by Krueger, establishing the narrative logic of the Earth-9997 world. The Wizard issue that housed the supplement sold out, and in 1999 Marvel republished much of the same material — expanded with 25 additional character sketches — as the standalone Earth X Sketchbook, which also sold out; both sell-outs gave Marvel the confidence to greenlight the full series, scripted by Krueger with art by John Paul Leon.

Trivia · 7 facts

• Created by writer Jim Krueger and artist/conceptual designer Alex Ross, with Todd Klein on lettering, Mike Marts as editor, and Bob Harras as editor-in-chief.
• Constitutes the first published appearance of the Earth-9997 (Earth X) universe and the first visual/textual introduction of its alternate-future character designs, including a female Thor, a Hulk physically separated from a child-sized Bruce Banner, a retired Spider-Man, the Skull as a gestalt telepath, and a gender-bent Loki-cursed Thor.
• The host Wizard issue sold out; reader demand was so strong that Marvel republished the material in 1999 as the Earth X Sketchbook, which also sold out, directly prompting Marvel to commission the full Earth X limited series (issues #0–12, 1999–2000).
• The special is explicitly framed on its inside front cover as Marvel's answer to Kingdom Come, the Alex Ross/Mark Waid DC alternate-future series Ross had completed the prior year.
• Carol Danvers appears in this special as 'Captain Marvel' — predating her adoption of that name in the mainstream Marvel Universe by many years, making this an early published instance of the concept.
• The 1999 Earth X Sketchbook reprinted and expanded the content of this special with 25 additional character sketches; the Wizard special is therefore the earlier, edited precursor to that standalone publication.
• The Earth X franchise spawned by this special eventually grew to more than 50 issues across three trilogy series (Earth X, Universe X, Paradise X) and a prequel (Marvels X, 2020); the special's character designs and story premises — including the Celestial embryo concept — were later cited as a direct inspiration for the 2021 Marvel Studios film Eternals.

Cast · 40 characters

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