OP
OP
So no Moira book and he probably won't be back for years. Fuck.
This seems pretty good to me? While I have no doubt Hickman's 3 act story would have been incredible, I think Krakoa is too good a status quo to burn that quickly. He's right when he compares it to Giant Size X-Men, this should be the mutants new status quo for decades to come.
in a just world, it would finally be his black panther run. marvel doesn't want BP to be great though. I'm looking forward to it, whatever it is.
Its a good trade imo. This is a good status quo there's no good reason to abandon. That's been the case from the start, so it's great to hear the whole office agrees on that point.
I think Inferno is gonna be killer and I'm definitely looking forward to whatever he does for Marvel next. What could that even be?
Huh. Well I'm glad we finally have an answer even though this seems like a partial answer. I guess time will tell if we get Hickman's "full X-Men 3 act story" that he originally planned, but for right now, crazy that he has another "Big Thing" lined up. Super interesting. That part of the answer was NOT what I was expecting.
My hope is Hickman comes back to do some more X stuff and they eventually do decide to move to the next phase.
The only surprise here is his plans for his next Marvel book. We've been bracing for everything else for months.
Trial of Magneto is mostly on twitter now, so be careful
I dont know why the hell Jim Zub, Al Ewing, and Gerry Duggan would all of a sudden become bad writers just because Hickman is writing another book.
Hickman wrote Powers of X/House of X and the X-men ongoing. Other people wrote the other books, Hellions, SWORD, X-Factor were all excellent books because they all had good writers.
Leah Williams is finally doing something that should have been written a decade ago with confronting how mutants see Wanda Maximoff instead of just having writers just ignore it so she can go on adventures with the Avengers. "LoL Wanda is bipolar so all those mutants whose life she ruined should totally forgive her" doesnt really cut it.
Al Ewing has ideas about mutants in space that has ideas that are going to last for longer than a year, Hellions have such great chemistry that I could read that book for years, so yeah I am not in a rush to have Hickman write an ending to this era of X-men.
I dont know why the hell Jim Zub, Al Ewing, and Gerry Duggan would all of a sudden become bad writers just because Hickman is writing another book.
Hickman wrote Powers of X/House of X and the X-men ongoing. Other people wrote the other books, Hellions, SWORD, X-Factor were all excellent books because they all had good writers.
Leah Williams is finally doing something that should have been written a decade ago with confronting how mutants see Wanda Maximoff instead of just having writers just ignore it so she can go on adventures with the Avengers. "LoL Wanda is bipolar so all those mutants whose life she ruined should totally forgive her" doesnt really cut it.
Al Ewing has ideas about mutants in space that has ideas that are going to last for longer than a year, Hellions have such great chemistry that I could read that book for years, so yeah I am not in a rush to have Hickman write an ending to this era of X-men.
Shame, a lot of us called it but were hoping we were wrong, like others have said tho the other books have been great too tho so I'm still excited, Hickman set this up so well we should still have plenty of years of good stories left.
So does that mean Inferno is not act 2 then? Man, I just want a Avengers/New Avengers-like bi-weekly 3 act story written by Hickman that has frequent big moments and plot progression. I know the temptation is to linger in this part of the story for 5 years with 9 X-Books or whatever but Hickman can just set up a new status quo after the climax; like Secret Wars. No wonder running the X-Desk became too exhausting for him. He's too nice and accommodating to run a team of writers instead of being the dictator we need him to be and tell the damn story the way he envisions it.
He would have had to commit to 7 years of meandering storytelling to conclude the tale he wanted to tell and running the X-Desk isn't cush enough ($$$) to take that kind of creative hit. I understand him leaving, saw it coming, and don't blame him. This is bad though. I'll still love Hellions, SWORD, and Way of X for a while but I'm not optimistic on the run anymore.
He would have had to commit to 7 years of meandering storytelling to conclude the tale he wanted to tell and running the X-Desk isn't cush enough ($$$) to take that kind of creative hit. I understand him leaving, saw it coming, and don't blame him. This is bad though. I'll still love Hellions, SWORD, and Way of X for a while but I'm not optimistic on the run anymore.
I'm sure that's the plan, but with Hickman no longer driving the boat, there's no guarantee it will get to a point he would be interested in returning, especially if it gets run into the ground like so many other Marvel things without strong vision and focus.
isn't the issue out? by spoilers I meant "tell me what happens because I won't read it until it hits MU in 4 months"
ah I thought comics came out on tuesdays in NA my bad
I don't think that's a fair critique. Hickman is very experienced in playing in someone else's sandbox, and he expected this. He doesn't own X-men, Marvel does. You can't be a dictator on a whole line of books on an IP you don't own.
It might not be fair, maybe it depends. I can imagine Marvel being excited that X-Men has blown up again and wants to milk the Krakoa era for a decade but I don't know that for sure. He didn't state that it was a directive from on high but he did sound very collaborative and accommodating to the other writers in the goodbye interview to a fault. "Ohhhh but I need to show everyone how the Shadow King may or may not be a bad influence on the little tykes." No Vita we don't! Set your hard outline with minor leeway for other writers but tell them to write around the story progression. After the climax there'll be a new sandbox for you to write meandering stories in.
Yeah, maybe I am being a little harsh.
The idea that the X-Men books are meandering is absurd. There's really interesting stories going on that are straight up better than what was going on in Hickman's X-Men book. These stories are able to happen because of this new status quo Hickman set, and if those writers want to play with this setting more, I'm glad they're getting a chance too. Just because a story isn't changing the landscape of the universe doesn't meant that it's pointless.
For real! The people writing the X books have far too much material to work with for it to just end. Sure, I don't want to read about timeline loops and the man/machine/mutant war in 15 years, but there's more than enough here to keep going for a few more years.
I'm not bummed out about the news, I do not want the Krakoa era to end yet, I've been dreading them blowing it all to hell and going back to anything like the old status quo.
There's too many potential stories left to tell with it. Just let me relax and truly settle in before putting all the toys back in the box. Like I said in the other thread, I haven't been this all in a comic line since Secret Wars/Battleworld.
There's too many potential stories left to tell with it. Just let me relax and truly settle in before putting all the toys back in the box. Like I said in the other thread, I haven't been this all in a comic line since Secret Wars/Battleworld.
Good luck trying to find talented writers willing to have some guy tell them what to write. Would Al Ewing agree to write S.W.O.R.D if his job was to basically just write the words for Hickman's plot? If I was Al Ewing I wouldnt because I already have the Immortal Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy, and other comics I could be giving my full concentration to.
The X-men line hasnt been run like your suggesting since like 1986 when X-Factor launched, yeah Louise Simonson had worked with Chris Claremont for years but Louise Simonson was still in charge of what happened in New Mutants and X-Factor, Louise Simonson was behind the creation of Apocalypse, she was the one who created that entire storyline with her husband.
The Mutant Massacre wouldnt come off as epic as it did if Chris Claremont had shot down the idea of bringing in both Louise and Walt Simonson to bring in X-Factor, New Mutants, the Power Pack and Thor.
Look at how many writers were working behind the scenes in this one image
You have Al Ewing writing a story with concepts from Hickman and Leah Williams, and it all comes off as so cool. Someone has killed Wanda Maximoff, and so the X-men are trying to hide this from the Kree Skrull Alliance since the people who run it all have a ton of respect for Wanda so Abigail Brand the main character comes off as completely shady for wanting an alliance with the Kree Skrull Alliance while preventing them from knowing that Wanda died at a party held by the mutants.
Good luck trying to find talented writers willing to have some guy tell them what to write. Would Al Ewing agree to write S.W.O.R.D if his job was to basically just write the words for Hickman's plot? If I was Al Ewing I wouldnt because I already have the Immortal Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy, and other comics I could be giving my full concentration to.
The X-men line hasnt been run like your suggesting since like 1986 when X-Factor launched, yeah Louise Simonson had worked with Chris Claremont for years but Louise Simonson was still in charge of what happened in New Mutants and X-Factor, Louise Simonson was behind the creation of Apocalypse, she was the one who created that entire storyline with her husband.
The Mutant Massacre wouldnt come off as epic as it did if Chris Claremont had shot down the idea of bringing in both Louise and Walt Simonson to bring in X-Factor, New Mutants, the Power Pack and Thor.
Look at how many writers were working behind the scenes in this one image
You have Al Ewing writing a story with concepts from Hickman and Leah Williams, and it all comes off as so cool. Someone has killed Wanda Maximoff, and so the X-men are trying to hide this from the Kree Skrull Alliance since the people who run it all have a ton of respect for Wanda so Abigail Brand the main character comes off as completely shady for wanting an alliance with the Kree Skrull Alliance while preventing them from knowing that Wanda died at a party held by the mutants.
I'm mostly disappointed he is leaving but your points are well taken. I will continue with sword and X-men proper.
This is what Inferno is going to do and if you guys stop thinking about these books as a "Karakoa is/is not a thing" binary choice, you'll get it. The entire point of Inferno is updating the status quo.
Interestingly enough Hickman seems to consider this as still part of Act One. We'll see what happens after Inferno, but it does sound like Act Two was going to be pretty different in terms of dynamics and the writers on the books didn't quite want to go there yet?
They like where they're at with mutants mostly on top, right. The mood around the island is about to change though, since it's clear the very least Inferno is going to do is give characters some of the context the reader has had since House of X. So that's what the writers play with, that's the shift. I mean, how individual characters process that and go about their lives is probably the foundation for the next two years of books.
If people continue to engage this stuff as a question of when the island burns down literally and they all go back to NY as though that's on a set timer, they're not going to have a good time reading these books. They have no interest in doing that, they're saying so. And of course they don't, it's boring and bad lol
Leah Williams was on this week's Battle of the Atom podcast. Overall, she's sad about how X-Factor turned out, but doesn't seem especially bitter about it; she's excited about Trial of Magneto, she's still happy to work in the X-office and she takes it as a learning experience.
She mentioned some X-Factor behind-the-scenes info and plans from the cutting-room floor:
Another funny point was that she mentioned Hickman gets the credit for lots of things that happens on stories he doesn't write, like X-Factor, and she's sure it'll happen for Trial of Magneto. She says he also feels like shit about it even though it's not his fault, but that's just how it is.
The problem was that with the name X-Men, people expected an ongoing, which it explicitly wasn't.
She mentioned some X-Factor behind-the-scenes info and plans from the cutting-room floor:
- Trial of Magneto was originally written as an X-Factor arc; she says they cancelled X-Factor (and reprioritised her towards the end) so she could work on it full-time.
- She had the third arc of X-Factor planned out, and then Trial of Magneto was due to start later, around #15.
- X-Factor was cancelled around #9, which explains the shift in pacing. Leah and David Baldeón sat down with their lists of what was most important and needed to be addressed (which were largely the same), and they worked it out from there, although not everything was possible in the end.
- X-Factor #10 has pages and dialogue she didn't write, which were added later. She found out about that at the same time we did. This was a kind of realisation about the nature of a big machine.
- She had Shatterstar become the new Krakoan God of Battle (and Siryn the God of Rebirth and Healing, which meant she could talk to the dead) by absorbing the Morrigan's energies, but that didn't make it in.
- The shot of Prodigy's naked corpse made her really uncomfortable (she didn't script it). Because of the public outcry it was changed for digital and future pressings.
- Other future plans included Polaris breaking out of a prison by herself, and Prodigy passing the California bar and ruining the abuser's life.
- She had to do three drafts of her goodbye letter because she was giving away too much of her previous plans and Marvel wanted the cancellation to look less like a last-minute pivot.
Another funny point was that she mentioned Hickman gets the credit for lots of things that happens on stories he doesn't write, like X-Factor, and she's sure it'll happen for Trial of Magneto. She says he also feels like shit about it even though it's not his fault, but that's just how it is.
It was always meant to be that - the initial announcement didn't sell it as a run, it sold it as a series of vignettes, which is what it ended up being.
The problem was that with the name X-Men, people expected an ongoing, which it explicitly wasn't.
Hickman's my favorite writer. So as long as Inferno is a good 'conclusion' to his particular X-Men story (Not necessarily the end to the Krakoan status quo) that fits alongside the rest of his Marvel universe I'm okay with it. I know not every question will be answered (the rest of the line kinda depends on that) but I would love some bookends to HoX/PoX.
For what it's worth, besides the Hickman news, there's a great group interview at EW, the kind that makes me think we'll be okay.
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ew.com
Long live the 'House of X': Jonathan Hickman, X-Men collaborators discuss the Krakoa era
Ahead of Hickman's coming departure, look back at the highlights from the past two years — and get some hints of the future
Trial of Magneto was good.
Wanda's meeting with Magneto at the gala:
Reyes' estimated time of death for Wanda- 2:56AM. Guess we know how "Wanda" got through that gate.
Wanda's meeting with Magneto at the gala:
Reyes' estimated time of death for Wanda- 2:56AM. Guess we know how "Wanda" got through that gate.
Trial of Magneto was very good.
A bit perplexing to see Erik getting this violent again.
The art was good.
Also, the original Brotherhood having a toast was great.
A bit perplexing to see Erik getting this violent again.
The art was good.
Also, the original Brotherhood having a toast was great.
Yeah, I really hope she gets a spiritual successor to X-Factor or something like that on the other side of Inferno.
After reading those interviews, I'm fine with this. My impression is that Hickman was originally going for a relatively straightforward "Rise and Fall of Krakoa" approach and it turned out people (especially on the writing/editorial side) didn't want the "Rise" to end nor move on towards the inevitable fall anytime soon, which is a big part of why we didn't get the initially hyped Moira book, since her power is meant to be an endgame gimmick.
And now Hickman is going to leave after Inferno, which will likely develop or wrap up some of his initial ideas without resolving everything, but I could see him coming back after a few years when there is more of an editorial/creative desire to reach a full conclusion. In the meanwhile, we're still going to continue to play around in the Krakoa-based sandbox for some extra time and I'm not opposed to that.
So I guess you could say the Hickman-inspired era is going to continue, strictly speaking, even though his individual participation is at least temporarily stopping here.
And now Hickman is going to leave after Inferno, which will likely develop or wrap up some of his initial ideas without resolving everything, but I could see him coming back after a few years when there is more of an editorial/creative desire to reach a full conclusion. In the meanwhile, we're still going to continue to play around in the Krakoa-based sandbox for some extra time and I'm not opposed to that.
So I guess you could say the Hickman-inspired era is going to continue, strictly speaking, even though his individual participation is at least temporarily stopping here.
Good.
Marvel is doing what they should've done with his outstanding Avengers run, especially his version of Hyperion...which is actually running with it.
I'm not mad at all.
Marvel is doing what they should've done with his outstanding Avengers run, especially his version of Hyperion...which is actually running with it.
I'm not mad at all.
Damn Trial of mags and Way of X were outstanding, Marauders and X-corp were good too but it's hard to follow up those other two