What did you think of the Hickman Trilogy?
Jonathan Hickman is currently writing his X-Men epic, but before all that, he essentially had a Hickman Trilogy with Fantastic Four, Avengers and Secret Wars. Here, looking back, this is where we will discuss that.
Hickman's "trilogy" started with the Fantastic Four. This was where they finally came up with a reason for Reed Richards is Useless, where he meets alternate versions of himself, and learns that many of them are bad men. He tries to solve everything, forming the Future Foundation, and inducting Spider-Man into the Four after Johnny's "death", and building up the seeds that would carry over to Avengers and Secret Wars.
One of the things that stood out is that Hickman started in Fantastic Four, and essentially carried that story through the rest. His run on Avengers was unique among other Avengers' writers, considering that it was the least typical story for the Avengers and more of a stealth continuation of his Fantastic Four run. He did things different from other writers. Rather than making IM, Cap and Thor the usual Avengers Trinity that everything else revolved around, they were essentially side characters in this story. He promoted characters that are usually not tied to the Avengers side in prominent roles, such as Starbrand (cosmic), Sunspot (X-Men), Shang-Chi (Heroes for Hire), among many other characters outside the Avengers but still prominent.
Many outside elements were involved, such as those carrying over from Fantastic Four, with Doctor Doom being the overall villain, and the conflict between Black Panther and Namor with their respective nations also being important. The story freely used things like alternate history, cosmic, political intrigue, espionage, and epic scale battles, and more, at any moment. About midway through, it actually stops pretending to be an Avengers run and focuses on Reed Richards, leading up to Secret Wars.
Secret Wars was fun, but also very hard to follow, and I think it didn't help that it was after Marvel did a bunch of other events making the impact less special. I also wish it had more impact than it did on the universe afterwards. I think the only tangible changes were Miles Morales, his supporting cast, and The Maker, transplanting to the main universe. That said, it was a great time, seeing Marvel go all out with the story and universe, and some great new stories were made out of it. That said, heaven help anyone who thinks they can just jump in on Marvel by reading this story.
Overall, it was really good. I also think it helps he came in from an outside perspective, ie a fresh set of eyes. By his own admission, Hickman was mainly a fan of Marvel's X-Men, and was more of a DC guy if anything. He actually had only superficial knowledge of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers when he was assigned to them. This sounds like it would be bad, and in many cases it would be, but I think it helped him approach the properties from different angles than someone who's nostalgic for the old normally would.
I was actually thinking about going back and reading all of it for fun later.
What did you guys think?