Ross Hutchinson
So it’s here…
That day that many in the X-Fandom have been dreading and a topic that has filed endless debate about the future of Marvel’s merry mutants…Hickman will be leaving the X-Line to focus on the next Big Marvel Thing…
In an exclusive reveal in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Hickman spoke on how his original plans expanded and changed from his initial plan
“Oh, plans have changed entirely,” Hickman told EW. “When I pitched the X-Men story I wanted to do, I pitched a very big, very broad, three-act, three-event narrative, the first of which was House of X. And while this loosely worked as a three-year plan, I told Marvel upfront that I honestly had no idea how long the first part would last because there were a lot of interesting ideas that I had seeded that other creators would want to play with, and so, we left this rather open-ended. I was also pretty clear with all the writers that came into the office what the initial, three-act plan was so no one would be surprised when it was time for the line to pivot.”
But never fear Marvel lovers because Hickman’s not going anywhere:
“Marvel doesn’t really pay me to just write ongoing monthly books, there’s an expectation for me to write bigger books that have a wider reach than that,” Hickman tells EW. “In an effort to facilitate both things, we’ve all spent the last six months or so reorienting the line, me creating Inferno to assist with that, and then bringing in some new writers to add to the existing team, and then plan for the next several years of X-books. So after Inferno, I’ll be leaving to go work on my ‘Next Big Marvel Thing™’ and starting in January the X-Line will rocket forward starting with a weekly series that leads into the very cool, refocused, line of books. Yes, it’s taken us a little while to get everything assembled correctly, but the end result — everything that’s coming after Inferno — is going to be pretty great.”
The bottom line is things change, plans change. the X-Line is currently an exciting fertile ground for new ideas for a bunch of really great writers and artists to flesh out and explore. While no one can take the revolutionary new direction Hickman sent the X-Line in away from him, it’s always felt to this writer that if anything Hickman was the evening star that set the general direction that the line would go in and the rest of the team was the vehicle that got us there. whatever the case with Victor LaValle still in the dugout so to speak and 160 pages of Hickman’s INFERNO to come, the X-Line feels exciting as ever