It started out as just an exercise. Comic art painter extroardinnaire Alex Ross sketched out some ideas of what some of the greatest Marvel super heroes-Spider-Man, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk-would like in a grim possible future where a terrible experiment has left all ordinary humans with super powers. What would become of the heroes who had been set apart by their strange abilities, which now seemed so commonplace? Thus was born Earth X, one of the strangest and best selling Marvel projects in recent years. Ross' visionary ideas were fleshed out by some of the industries top talents, taking shape in a year-long epic that excited and thrilled comic fans everywhere, and spawned a second series to debut later this year.

In an outpost on the Moon, the robot known as X-51 must watch the dark events as they unfold on the Earth, relating them to the alien Watcher-charged with the responsibility of recording all events on Earth-who has now been rendered blind. We will encounter a Captain America whose cheerful idealism has been replaced by a tight-lipped life of vengeance against his foe the Red Skull; a Spider-Man who has given in to the excesses of middle age and is now no different than the average man, except in his memories; and Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, the man responsible for the mutation of all humanity, and who in penance now locks himself in the armor of his defeated arch-nemesis, Dr. Doom.

Dark in mood, yet hopeful in its themes of rebirth and redemption, Earth X is an epic tale told on a global tapestry, with humanity itself at stake.

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