Titan makes the Guard's numerical advantage feel physical. He towers over the others in the opening spread, turning a crowded lineup into something the X-Men have to look up at.

Titan makes the Guard's numerical advantage feel physical. He towers over the others in the opening spread, turning a crowded lineup into something the X-Men have to look up at. His blue-and-yellow costume and huge hands keep him readable even among all the overlapping bodies. The effect is immediate. Before the battle begins, there is already a problem too large to fit comfortably into an ordinary person-sized fight. The cover uses that scale too, placing the giant behind the X-Men as the surrounding figures press in on them. It is a clean way to advertise how far outside familiar territory the team has gone. Titan's size does much of his introductory work. The story doesn't need to interrupt itself with measurements, lifting limits or a homeworld to explain why an enormous opponent changes the space around him. The composition provides the first demonstration. That is one of the pleasures of Cockrum's Guard designs. The group can tell a reader several things at a glance, and Titan tells one of them very loudly. The empire has brought enough power to fill the sky above the X-Men as well as the ground in front of them.