X of Swords Destruction Pg 21 - Pepe Larraz

Another gorgeous monoprint from X of Swords. This one comes from the climax of the story 'X of Swords Destruction'. As I believe I said on the last X of Swords pages I posted, I think these X of Swords books were probably the high water mark for Pepe Larraz's time on X-Men, though I loved everything he did from House of X to the end of his time on Krakoa. It maybe was a little long at a 22 part crossover event, but there were far more hits than misses and it was some of the most fun I'd had reading X-Men in years.

For this page we're seeing an epic moment in the climactic battle. The forces of Amenth have used the Summoners powers to their maximum and brought forth a host of Lovecraftian behemoths. The X-Men have had no choice but to play their contingency card of bringing in the Vescora to counter the Summoners and their giant monsters. The Vescora were sort of swarming virus/borg-like dimensional beings who had a cyber-insectoid viral thing going on.

I picked this up from Pepe at NYCC 2024 and he said that he was proud of this page and said that digital work on major battle scenes brings some temptation to use copying or other digital shortcuts, but he didn't succumb and wanted to hand render each small Vescora on the page. I know some of you balk at monorpints and 90% of the time I do too, but I'm always happy to make an exception for Pepe's X-Men work and hope I'll have the opportunity to add more to my collection.