Xmen #20 Preview

[Rang10]

Hickman said his X-Men run was going to be different than the stuff he did with FF and Avengers.

I personally like the digressive approach he's taking with the X-Men run.

Hickman just said he is going to go really slow and not develop his own ideas, wow

The very thing you have to realize in this is what he started with HoX/PoX isn't forwarded anywhere. His own run lack characterization with ideas that were executed for other writers. Yet his run was slow. This isn't what Hickman's standards suppose to be.

Exactly, his runs may be slow (I didnt though his FF was really slow, it was normal pace for me) but wht he is doing on X-men books is mostly glacial pace and mostly letting other writers develop his ideas

[JB]

After HoxPox we never see Moira again, but we got three or four invasions on Krakoa, the tenth Xavier death, geriatric botanic ladies... Maybe this era is not as well planned as people think.

Hickman did say in a few interviews that he and the writers were playing with ideas while they built Krakoa's role in the world and that eventually things would turn.

"There's going to be a shift coming, and when that does it will kind of go back to a structure with what we're talking about: X-Men, heroes of Krakoa. Then other things will happen. I'm intentionally introducing individual elements that are going to get collapsed later. It's funny - I've done this trick before, but the X-Men fans don't read the other Marvel books I've done."

And here we are. The above quote is from just before everything got locked down around the world. So as far as I can tell things are going according to plan, just delayed because of covid.

[gonnagiveittoya]

Interesting. Wonder what Hickman means by "collapse". Of the turn he's referring to is meant to be this new team then hopefully that'll be enough between that and Way of X to keep me on board

[JB]

Interesting. Wonder what Hickman means by "collapse". Of the turn he's referring to is meant to be this new team then hopefully that'll be enough between that and Way of X to keep me on board

Yeah I remember reading this interview and thinking cool, there's going to be an actual team of X-Men soon. Fast forward one year but we made it.
"Then other things will happen" has me intrigued all over again.

[Rang10]

Hickman did say in a few interviews that he and the writers were playing with ideas while they built Krakoa's role in the world and that eventually things would turn.

"There's going to be a shift coming, and when that does it will kind of go back to a structure with what we're talking about: X-Men, heroes of Krakoa. Then other things will happen. I'm intentionally introducing individual elements that are going to get collapsed later. It's funny - I've done this trick before, but the X-Men fans don't read the other Marvel books I've done."

And here we are. The above quote is from just before everything got locked down around the world. So as far as I can tell things are going according to plan, just delayed because of covid.

Hickman really think most of x-men fans didn't read other books, maybe he is is right LOL

Interesting. Wonder what Hickman means by "collapse". Of the turn he's referring to is meant to be this new team then hopefully that'll be enough between that and Way of X to keep me on board

I think you are expecting too much. I think tht the collapsing will be mutants being on different factions nd/or maybe he will start the Moira story finally

but I saw it all coming. Still freaking slow from what he did before

[Devaishwarya]

Yeah I remember reading this interview and thinking cool, there's going to be an actual team of X-Men soon. Fast forward one year but we made it.
"Then other things will happen" has me intrigued all over again.

Yes. And here we are, indeed.

XM-Fan: What do we want?
XM-Fans: X-Men Stories!
XM-Fan: How do we want it?
XM-Fans: The way we think it should be written!!
XM-Fan: When do we want it?
XM-Fans: YESTERDAY!!!

[ericng]

I'm just saying this is a glacial pace even by Hickman standards. 20 issues and we've gotten no advancement on the main story and he's just about to hop off the book

Hickman has run out of good ideas.

[Lady Midnight]

Can we really see Mystique working with Fabian Cortez?

I wanna see Mystique recruit her old Brotherhood chums like Pyro, Avalanche, and Blob. Maybe add in the Freedom Force vets and other unused Brotherhood folk (coughPhantaziacough). #BrotherhoodOfEvilMutants2022

I can see Mystique using Cortez, and him being arrogant enough to believe that she considers him a partner.

[Omega Alpha]

Hickman has run out of good ideas.

This is silly. If anything, he has too many good ideas- so much he has to leave some for other writers to explore, and even then he doesn't explore all the ones that he has.

[cranger]

This is silly. If anything, he has too many good ideas- so much he has to leave some for other writers to explore, and even then he doesn't explore all the ones that he has.

Yeah, I have been rather critical of Hickman's era, but it is not for a lack of good ideas. Maybe a lack of stories, particularly well plotted stories, but there is no shortage of good ideas coming from him.

[Lucyinthesky]

I think this will be the issue where they bring Destiny back or show Mystique Moira so she understands the stakes or both. She looks like she´s giving them an ultimatum and they already told Moira she they would tell the truth behind Krakoa to the X-men.

[ZephyrSurf]

I gotta agree that Krakoa's era has been moving to glacially. When this era began, my biggest complaint was krakoa was too ill defined, and two years in... it's still really ill defined. Now a lot of these second wave books are picking up the slack the first wave dropped, but the issue is also the entire scatter shot approach. Hickman has a lot of themes he always falls back on, and some land in certain runs and others don't.

Hickman loves interlacing storylines, but the difference with x-men is that none of them are really focused on for an extended period of time unlike his other works, like Avengers or East of West.

Like does anyone really care about the peacock foundation in X-force? or the hellfire Kiddies in Marauders? Excalibur coalesced in X of Swords, and I'll be real with you. Apocalypse' Family sucks, and that undermines a lot of the build up and pay off for that section.

I do think these second wave books like SWORD and Hellions and Way of X and X-factor and Vita's run on New Mutants is really digging into a lot of what people wanted out of HOX/POX but weren't being fed in Dawn of X.

[Lucyinthesky]

I gotta agree that Krakoa's era has been moving to glacially. When this era began, my biggest complaint was krakoa was too ill defined, and two years in... it's still really ill defined. Now a lot of these second wave books are picking up the slack the first wave dropped, but the issue is also the entire scatter shot approach. Hickman has a lot of themes he always falls back on, and some land in certain runs and others don't.

Hickman loves interlacing storylines, but the difference with x-men is that none of them are really focused on for an extended period of time unlike his other works, like Avengers or East of West.

Like does anyone really care about the peacock foundation in X-force? or the hellfire Kiddies in Marauders? Excalibur coalesced in X of Swords, and I'll be real with you. Apocalypse' Family sucks, and that undermines a lot of the build up and pay off for that section.

I do think these second wave books like SWORD and Hellions and Way of X and X-factor and Vita's run on New Mutants is really digging into a lot of what people wanted out of HOX/POX but weren't being fed in Dawn of X.

Agreed but I think this was part of the plan, so far Hickman seems to be oppening storylines that are going to be developed on different titles because he would mostly do world building the first year(two because of COVID) but I get the sense he´s now going to do a character focused story but I will wait until we know more about what title is he going to take next.

[Spit and Syntax]

I really think COVID killed the publishing line momentum. The Hellfire Gala was planned to be in December and act as an annual Christmas event each year of this era, and X Swords also changed completely in order to adapt to publishing in COVID. Fantastic books like Hellblazer got cancelled with DC downsizing a lot of initiatives and I’m sure it’s the same for Marvel in terms of scope and confidence in the publishing line.

Not to say that the books haven’t been slow, but I do think a lot of the pacing got mixed up and a lot of story elements have been moved back due to the way the world is right now. It makes me quite interested in how X-Men will be heading into this year because I’m certain that if the pandemic didn’t happen, the issue to issue layout of Hickman’s mainline book would have looked extremely different.

[Rang10]

I gotta agree that Krakoa's era has been moving to glacially. When this era began, my biggest complaint was krakoa was too ill defined, and two years in... it's still really ill defined. Now a lot of these second wave books are picking up the slack the first wave dropped, but the issue is also the entire scatter shot approach. Hickman has a lot of themes he always falls back on, and some land in certain runs and others don't.

Hickman loves interlacing storylines, but the difference with x-men is that none of them are really focused on for an extended period of time unlike his other works, like Avengers or East of West.

Like does anyone really care about the peacock foundation in X-force? or the hellfire Kiddies in Marauders? Excalibur coalesced in X of Swords, and I'll be real with you. Apocalypse' Family sucks, and that undermines a lot of the build up and pay off for that section.

I do think these second wave books like SWORD and Hellions and Way of X and X-factor and Vita's run on New Mutants is really digging into a lot of what people wanted out of HOX/POX but weren't being fed in Dawn of X.

I dont like new mutants or x-fctor, specially x-factor that is so badly written. I dont think they are rally digging anything.

The thing is that each book have a storyline, it is not that unified. Then X book story takes over for a x-over that none obooks were hinting at it like X of swords.

I really think COVID killed the publishing line momentum. The Hellfire Gala was planned to be in December and act as an annual Christmas event each year of this era, and X Swords also changed completely in order to adapt to publishing in COVID. Fantastic books like Hellblazer got cancelled with DC downsizing a lot of initiatives and I’m sure it’s the same for Marvel in terms of scope and confidence in the publishing line.

Not to say that the books haven’t been slow, but I do think a lot of the pacing got mixed up and a lot of story elements have been moved back due to the way the world is right now. It makes me quite interested in how X-Men will be heading into this year because I’m certain that if the pandemic didn’t happen, the issue to issue layout of Hickman’s mainline book would have looked extremely different.

Lots of books are thriving on the Covid era. Just X-men realy lost it and it has nothing to do with Covid. A giant bad event really can destroy sales and momentum