In recent years, Jonathan Hickman has most certainly become one of the premier writers over at Marvel Comics. At this rate, he’s primed to be mentioned in the same breath as Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar as scribes who’ve charted bold new territory at the House of Ideas.
As you may have heard, Hickman’s next big project has to do with the X-Men. Basically, he’s going to pen two weekly series – House of X and Powers of X – before rolling out a new line of books focusing on the mutants. For those paying attention, this is indeed similar to how Secret Wars launched out of Avengers and Secret Avengers a few years back.
According to Hickman himself, he’s not looking to retread what’s come before, and has a “multiyear plan” for these beloved characters. Here’s what he boldly told Entertainment Weekly:
“You don’t want to do archaeology or nostalgia tropes. My job is to do new stuff with it, and launch us into a newer age of X-Men.
“This is something I’ve been writing and rewriting in my head since I was a kid. I’ve been in the kitchen for a long time with it. I get the ingredients, I get what makes a good meal.”
In my view, that’s the kind of passion and planning that could pay dividends for Marvel Comics. I also very much appreciate how he feels no need to take cues from whatever Marvel Studios are doing, because you have to admit they’ve wagged the dog as it were in many instances.
Here’s what he had to say regarding that:
“I think one of the big mistakes that some people make at Marvel Comics is that we are reactive to what they’re doing in the Marvel films. We should not be taking our creative cues from the direction they’re taking things in the movies. That kind of defeats the point. They have a billion dollars to play with, and we don’t. You can’t compete in that matter, and you shouldn’t. My argument has been [that] I should always be way out in front of that stuff. All of that stuff is being drawn from source material.
“It goes back to, are you being destructive or are you being additive? If you’re being additive and you’re on the big books, it’s inevitable that some of that stuff is going to get used. When Marvel films gets around to the X-Men and we’ve done interesting stuff and they want to use it, that’s awesome. If they don’t, then they don’t. One makes your job expendable, the other one makes you priceless. I like having value to my work.”
To find out what the future holds for the X-Men, be sure to pick up House of X #1 at your local comic shop on July 24th. Then, head back there on July 31st for Powers of X #1.