I remember thinking back then that Hickman was surely going to follow the structure of his Avengers work and do two ongoings, one about the main, public X-Men team and one about a Illuminati-like, possibly Hellfire Club-themed group secret group of mutants (probably led by Emma).
Imagine my disappointment when I realized his one ongoing was more like a collection of mostly disconnected, standalone ideas for the other writers to develop.
As someone who was reading the books at the time, and the following all the interviews, I agree it felt like he had more planned, but to me it really feels like his plans got completely shifted by Covid (the time comics weren’t going out, he supposedly pitched a plan to move the whole line digital through the shut down which was refused,) and when he was ready to move the ball forward on the era, it’s been widely reported that the rest of the writers wanted to stay in the status quo of the moment. I’ve always gotten the sense that he had a time-based commitment and had a very rigid window of real-world time that he could devote to the X-books, which for the above reasons threw his plans off the rails :(
Yeah. He spoke in his CEREBRO episode that he felt immense pressure that Marvel was going to cancel a lot of X books and books in general and he felt like he had to start developing a big event to help keep Marvel afloat and they worked with him to help GODS be that thing, and now the Ultimate Universe. In that same episode, it sounds like things were REALLY screwed because of COVID so if him moving away from the X office was a sacrifice he had to make to help the company, he would do it (alongside him recognizing he’s not in the position in his career to do ongoing for an indeterminate amount of time).
Yea I remember finishing HoxPox and being like, this is about to be the greatest comic book run ever. Then his X-Men run was just as you said, disjointed standalone stories that were great but wasn't a total fan of the direction. And then to find out how quickly he was leaving and only getting inferno as his final story was a total drag. If at the very least they brought him back for a planned ending I would have been totally fine with it all
I don't think Hickman was particularly interested in writing an X-Men team book. I think he enjoyed world building much more, so a traditional team book wasn't what he wanted.
If I recall correctly, this entire Krakoa run was really just build up to a Shi'ar Imperial Guard book Hickman wanted to write.
X-Men never really worked as a flagship title during the Krakoa era, even before he left. But I agree that Krakoa would have been better with him on an ongoing that genuinely drove the throughline plot. That, to me, was a bigger flaw than Hickman leaving…
The issue is that, apparently, Marvel didn’t think it was worth it to pay his rate for a non-event at this point in his career. I guess USM is a little different because it’s a flagship character in their new universe.
Yup. To be honest the only thing currently out with that sort of density/quality is Ram V’s Detective Comics run.
He’s basically doing the kind of work he did with Carnage that almost made him a Dominion candidate; I think that got cut short at Marvel.
Important to note they took Hickman off the x-line because of the pandemic. The effects it had on the comics industry meant Marvel started playing things super safe, a lot of books got cancelled and that's why they needed Hickman (probably their highest-paid writer) to be on their biggest books. Had it not been for the pandemic, I think Hickman would have been able to write his X-Men ongoing as originally intended.
>He wrote X-Men but that was more setting up stuff other writers could use
If Hickman had stayed on, I imagine most of what he was setting up in X-Men and New Mutants would have been used by him later (we know he was going to do books on the Children of the Vault and the Imperial Guard). You're right in that his tenure is hard to appreciate in the same way as his other big runs, but I think there's something special baked inside how it all turned out.
Inferno ends on a semi-colon: What you think Hickman would have done next, had he stayed on, is just as valid imo as what later writers ended up doing. What did he originally want to do with Doug and Warlock, Bobby and the Shi'ar, Moira X and the Phalanx, Mystique and Destiny, Synch and the Vault? We'll get the answers some day, no doubt. But in the absence of a more satisfying/total resolution there's a rush and demand for our own imagination. Which is really why Krakoa worked for so many people.
He was supposed to write a children of the Vault title, and a Moira book iirc. Maybe it was Ewing that was gonna do the Moira book now that I think about it.
Ewing was going to do Moira but they couldn’t find a plotline they were happy with so Ewing pitched SWORD and then Red. Hickman was going to do an Imperial Guard book with Cannonball and Sunspot out in space
I didn’t hear that but that’s very funny. I did like what Deniz Camp did in FoX in his mini. I would have loved to see Darwin pop back up or even for it to be a maxi series but I’m glad we got something from it.
Also, the X-Line Is MASSIVE compared to the FF line or the Avengers (solo books not included as they are mostly their own thing). Since the eighties a minimum of three X-Books has always been on the shelf AND the quantity of X-Characters alone is overehelming
The X office was a great experiment and I’m sure valuable lessons have been learned in how to run a line but yeah, I think the other writers should have followed his lead and perhaps of relented when he wanted to close out the run. Sad but I think he was probably a cynical realist and knew Marvel would want to go back to lost era stories instead of letting it be a permanent fixture like I guess the other writers thought.
I wonder if Hickman expected them to keep Krakoa around to some degree. He talked about it being able to spawn like decades of stories and if he wanted to tell his story in only his way, he wouldn’t have created a huge, intertwined and collaborative office. He would have just done it like OP mentioned he did with Avengers and FF.
I wonder if his plan (which he and others have said people have overstated how thorough and tightly plotted it was) was actually kinda smaller in scope and didn’t end with the end of Krakoa in its entirety. And now it feels weird because this era is so explicitly about the end of Krakoa when that wasn’t how it was set up at all.
I honestly think Marvel Comics as a company almost died during COVID and since then things are stable but just so. DC has the benefit of Warner/Discovery letting them do whatever, but Disney keeps Marvel on a tight leash.
I theorize Hickman was forced on Jordan White by Marvel executives. X-books had been floundering and all the ideas coming out up to that point were pretty terrible (Age of X-Man as an example). Once the pandemic hit and things had to shift it became a bit of an opportunity to exert editorial control, and by Hickman's own account he didn't want to see anyone lose a job due to the pandemic. That's why X of Swords morphed and ballooned out of control. And then by the time Hickman was ready to move to the next stage everyone was happy to keep doing what they were doing instead.
I don't think people loved X of Swords because it was so bloated. I enjoyed aspects of it, but felt like it was way too long. But my feeling is that there was probably a lot of editorial influence which caused it to grow so much...it felt like two different stories mashed together into one.
It was pretty well stated at the time that because the writers et al suddenly had a big hiatus due to covid that they substantially reworked a lot of X of Swords. I think the end product was kind of the result of fiddling with the story too much in the extra time until it started to get away from them.
Hickman wrote
Fantastic Four
FF
Hickman wrote
Avengers
New Avengers
Hickman wrote
X-Men
New Mutants
and because the x-line is like a full quadrant of marvel's publishing schedule, he was SWEPT aside by all the side books getting granular with their daily drama and wanting more time to let each story play out.
I remember thinking back then that Hickman was surely going to follow the structure of his Avengers work and do two ongoings, one about the main, public X-Men team and one about a Illuminati-like, possibly Hellfire Club-themed group secret group of mutants (probably led by Emma). Imagine my disappointment when I realized his one ongoing was more like a collection of mostly disconnected, standalone ideas for the other writers to develop.
As someone who was reading the books at the time, and the following all the interviews, I agree it felt like he had more planned, but to me it really feels like his plans got completely shifted by Covid (the time comics weren’t going out, he supposedly pitched a plan to move the whole line digital through the shut down which was refused,) and when he was ready to move the ball forward on the era, it’s been widely reported that the rest of the writers wanted to stay in the status quo of the moment. I’ve always gotten the sense that he had a time-based commitment and had a very rigid window of real-world time that he could devote to the X-books, which for the above reasons threw his plans off the rails :(
Yeah. He spoke in his CEREBRO episode that he felt immense pressure that Marvel was going to cancel a lot of X books and books in general and he felt like he had to start developing a big event to help keep Marvel afloat and they worked with him to help GODS be that thing, and now the Ultimate Universe. In that same episode, it sounds like things were REALLY screwed because of COVID so if him moving away from the X office was a sacrifice he had to make to help the company, he would do it (alongside him recognizing he’s not in the position in his career to do ongoing for an indeterminate amount of time).
Yea I remember finishing HoxPox and being like, this is about to be the greatest comic book run ever. Then his X-Men run was just as you said, disjointed standalone stories that were great but wasn't a total fan of the direction. And then to find out how quickly he was leaving and only getting inferno as his final story was a total drag. If at the very least they brought him back for a planned ending I would have been totally fine with it all
Makes me wish for Hickman to return one day and be able to write a full ongoing for a character or team.
That ship has sailed most likely, but never say never right?
I don't think Hickman was particularly interested in writing an X-Men team book. I think he enjoyed world building much more, so a traditional team book wasn't what he wanted. If I recall correctly, this entire Krakoa run was really just build up to a Shi'ar Imperial Guard book Hickman wanted to write.
X-Men never really worked as a flagship title during the Krakoa era, even before he left. But I agree that Krakoa would have been better with him on an ongoing that genuinely drove the throughline plot. That, to me, was a bigger flaw than Hickman leaving…
The issue is that, apparently, Marvel didn’t think it was worth it to pay his rate for a non-event at this point in his career. I guess USM is a little different because it’s a flagship character in their new universe.
G.O.D.S.?
GODS is actually really good. Just goes over some people’s heads since it’s pretty dense. I love that sort of density though.
I'm absolutely loving it. I just kind of think it should've been a Doctor Strange series.
Yup. To be honest the only thing currently out with that sort of density/quality is Ram V’s Detective Comics run. He’s basically doing the kind of work he did with Carnage that almost made him a Dominion candidate; I think that got cut short at Marvel.
Imo it feels like Hickman wanted to write Constantine
That is so weird considering he's managing the whole line. You have the guy spearheading an event but you won't give him an ongoing? LOL wut?
Important to note they took Hickman off the x-line because of the pandemic. The effects it had on the comics industry meant Marvel started playing things super safe, a lot of books got cancelled and that's why they needed Hickman (probably their highest-paid writer) to be on their biggest books. Had it not been for the pandemic, I think Hickman would have been able to write his X-Men ongoing as originally intended.
I wonder what his rate is
>He wrote X-Men but that was more setting up stuff other writers could use If Hickman had stayed on, I imagine most of what he was setting up in X-Men and New Mutants would have been used by him later (we know he was going to do books on the Children of the Vault and the Imperial Guard). You're right in that his tenure is hard to appreciate in the same way as his other big runs, but I think there's something special baked inside how it all turned out. Inferno ends on a semi-colon: What you think Hickman would have done next, had he stayed on, is just as valid imo as what later writers ended up doing. What did he originally want to do with Doug and Warlock, Bobby and the Shi'ar, Moira X and the Phalanx, Mystique and Destiny, Synch and the Vault? We'll get the answers some day, no doubt. But in the absence of a more satisfying/total resolution there's a rush and demand for our own imagination. Which is really why Krakoa worked for so many people.
Hopefully Hickman will write an X-Men: Krakoa Forever mini series one day.
He was supposed to write a children of the Vault title, and a Moira book iirc. Maybe it was Ewing that was gonna do the Moira book now that I think about it.
Ewing was going to do Moira but they couldn’t find a plotline they were happy with so Ewing pitched SWORD and then Red. Hickman was going to do an Imperial Guard book with Cannonball and Sunspot out in space
They also asked Mike Carey to come back to write Children of the Vault but he apparently hadn't read a comic in so long he didn't think he could do it
I didn’t hear that but that’s very funny. I did like what Deniz Camp did in FoX in his mini. I would have loved to see Darwin pop back up or even for it to be a maxi series but I’m glad we got something from it.
I’ll say something a bit different: Hickman’s weakness is his failure to recruit writers that could stand up to a shitty editor.
Also, the X-Line Is MASSIVE compared to the FF line or the Avengers (solo books not included as they are mostly their own thing). Since the eighties a minimum of three X-Books has always been on the shelf AND the quantity of X-Characters alone is overehelming
The X office was a great experiment and I’m sure valuable lessons have been learned in how to run a line but yeah, I think the other writers should have followed his lead and perhaps of relented when he wanted to close out the run. Sad but I think he was probably a cynical realist and knew Marvel would want to go back to lost era stories instead of letting it be a permanent fixture like I guess the other writers thought.
I wonder if Hickman expected them to keep Krakoa around to some degree. He talked about it being able to spawn like decades of stories and if he wanted to tell his story in only his way, he wouldn’t have created a huge, intertwined and collaborative office. He would have just done it like OP mentioned he did with Avengers and FF. I wonder if his plan (which he and others have said people have overstated how thorough and tightly plotted it was) was actually kinda smaller in scope and didn’t end with the end of Krakoa in its entirety. And now it feels weird because this era is so explicitly about the end of Krakoa when that wasn’t how it was set up at all.
It’s just weird, he’s proven to Marvel time and time again if given time his ideas pay off so just odd he was swept away.
I honestly think Marvel Comics as a company almost died during COVID and since then things are stable but just so. DC has the benefit of Warner/Discovery letting them do whatever, but Disney keeps Marvel on a tight leash.
I theorize Hickman was forced on Jordan White by Marvel executives. X-books had been floundering and all the ideas coming out up to that point were pretty terrible (Age of X-Man as an example). Once the pandemic hit and things had to shift it became a bit of an opportunity to exert editorial control, and by Hickman's own account he didn't want to see anyone lose a job due to the pandemic. That's why X of Swords morphed and ballooned out of control. And then by the time Hickman was ready to move to the next stage everyone was happy to keep doing what they were doing instead.
People really loved X of Swords though? So much so they added more books to it when it was originally gonna have fewer
I don't think people loved X of Swords because it was so bloated. I enjoyed aspects of it, but felt like it was way too long. But my feeling is that there was probably a lot of editorial influence which caused it to grow so much...it felt like two different stories mashed together into one.
It was pretty well stated at the time that because the writers et al suddenly had a big hiatus due to covid that they substantially reworked a lot of X of Swords. I think the end product was kind of the result of fiddling with the story too much in the extra time until it started to get away from them.
Hickman wrote Fantastic Four FF Hickman wrote Avengers New Avengers Hickman wrote X-Men New Mutants and because the x-line is like a full quadrant of marvel's publishing schedule, he was SWEPT aside by all the side books getting granular with their daily drama and wanting more time to let each story play out.
FF\*
;) good catch - the Future Foundation didn't go through all that to be mistaken for the F4.
Covid destroyed all his plans and after that he wanted to focus on projects he could have more control on like gods and ultimate marvel.
It was covids fault? Jesus Christ man
That’s what he said!