Marvel’s upcoming X-Men writer Jonathan Hickman took to Twitter to describe X-Men continuity as “some nonsense.”
Not only did Hickman describe X-Men continuity as “some nonsense” but he added, “There are no rules here. There is no order. Just random unconnected gibberish.”
He would continue by indicating that he appears to be creating a rule book for the X-Men and providing some order, “I just wrote 5000 words on when someone can, and cannot, utter the phrase “Omega Level.”
X-Men continuity is some nonsense.
There are no rules here. There is no order. Just random unconnected gibberish.
I just wrote 5000 words on when someone can, and cannot, utter the phrase “Omega Level”
This is a job I have in the United States of America.
— Jonathan Hickman (@JHickman) June 25, 2019
Hickman’s tweet is indicative of the state of Marvel Comics and especially its editorial staff. The comic book publishing company has run from event comic to event comic over the past few years and has had no qualms tossing aside years of continuity in favor of a new writer’s hot take on an iconic character like Captain America or Iceman.
In fact, former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter succinctly described the problems of Marvel Comics in an interview with AIPT in November 2017.
“I think they forgot what business they’re in. I think there’s some brilliant talent out there–if you just flip through the books, the pictures are incredible. Sometimes they don’t tell the story as well as they should, sometimes they’re actually designing pages to sell in places like this [a comic convention], and not really thinking about the best way to tell a story. The writing, I cannot account for much of the writing. You have brilliant guys like Mark Waid who will do something and it’s great, but so much of the stuff is what they call decompressed storytelling…”
Shooter would also criticize a number of Marvel’s recent editorial decisions specifically taking issue with Nick Spencer’s Nazi Captain America.
“Eh, they shouldn’t… Captain America a Nazi? Are you kidding me? Jack [Kirby] is rolling in his grave. Joe Simon is going to rise up out of his grave and kill those people. That was so wrong because that was not anything like the original intent of the creators.”
He also warned about new creators “ignoring the equity that was built up over the years.”
“So to me, people are just caviler about ignoring the intentions of the original creators–ignoring the equity that was built up over the years. It’s, “I’m in charge now so I’ll do anything I damn well please,” and that’s almost always a mistake. When Walt did Thor, he didn’t reboot it or throw away the past. He just made it good.”
It appears Hickman will definitely be putting his own stamp on the X-Men, but he also plans on cleaning up the rules the X-Men abide by. Rules that will hopefully be used by editors and creators in the future to follow. And if you’ve read any recent X-Men books, you know it can be quite confusing trying to figure out which timeline each character is from or which alternate reality they came from. Hopefully, Hickman cleans that up and makes it much more digestible while also getting back to classic X-Men stories.
Marvel is definitely banking on it as they compare Hickman’s upcoming House of X and Powers of X series to Giant Sized X-Men, Age of Apocalypse, and New X-Men, which they describe as “four iconic series that introduced a new era for Marvel’s mutants and revolutionized the X-Men.”
Time will tell whether or not the series lives up to the solicitation, but one thing is clear Hickman is already making his mark on the X-Men and it’s not just in the stories, but in the editorial guidelines and rules as well.
House of X hits comic book shops on July 24th. While, Powers of X hits comic book shops on July 31st.
What do you make of Hickman’s comments? Are you excited about his future with the X-Men? Are you happy that someone appears to be taking charge of the X-Men on the editorial end?