Jonathan Hickman's Successes and Failures

[Mercury]

I am curious to read what people think are Hickman's successes and failures during his time as "Head of X." I have my own opinion, which I've spliced together from a post of mine on another thread:

• Success: He Eternal-ized mutants, threw in a dash of House of Cards, and plopped them on an island. Groundbreaking. Actually, to contradict my sarcastic irreverence, it was and is sort of groundbreaking and certainly injected much-need life and novelty into the franchise. He was able to streamline, enliven, and add depth and high stakes to the world of mutants.
• Failure: There are myriad ways he could've told his story and more effectively. A story, mind you, he seems to have had neither the control nor wherewithal to bring to a conclusion until now. Everything he's doing in Inferno he could have spread throughout X-Men and/or other books for the last two years. The fact that he was unable to speaks to his failure as a head writer. Also, his choice to focus on such a small group of characters out of the sprawling number of X-characters there are was disappointing and left one wanting.

[Ambaryerno]

add...high stakes to the world of mutants.

Doing away with even the PRETENSE of death in comics having an impact is exactly the opposite of adding "high stakes." There ARE no stakes when characters can be casually killed off and then rez'ed again five minutes later, as if they never died at all.

[jwatson]

Doing away with even the PRETENSE of death in comics having an impact is exactly the opposite of adding "high stakes." There ARE no stakes when characters can be casually killed off and then rez'ed again five minutes later, as if they never died at all.

Not for me. it is one of my favorite things and has added the stakes. most deaths imo come off as writers going for that "emmy" anyway so they rarely have much impact on me especially in a medium such as comics and especially in a franchise such as xmen where death means so little several characters often joke on panel about the revolving death door for mutants.

But then imo stakes is what characters and people end up having to live and deal with not death which is so often nothing more than a fleeting scene in comics for drama.

[AJpyro]

Success: A new yet old spot for Mutants to flourish alongside San Francisco and the Mansion.

Failure: Not giving the Academy X Mutants their due/own book. Being too episodic with the FLagship. Severe lacking of past character dynamics/interactions.

[MYCMTSC]

Not for me. it is one of my favorite things and has added the stakes. most deaths imo come off as writers going for that "emmy" anyway so they rarely have much impact on me especially in a medium such as comics and especially in a franchise such as xmen where death means so little several characters often joke on panel about the revolving death door for mutants.

But then imo stakes is what characters and people end up having to live and deal with not death which is so often nothing more than a fleeting scene in comics for drama.

Exactly. Death hasn't meant much in comics, especially the X-Men, and the only characters that really suffered were the Tags and Synches of the world. The delicacy of this Utopia, the threat of corruption, the legitimate fear that mutants bring united...I feel like those are far more exciting stakes than killing Quill or Darkstar or Skin or pretending an A or even B-Lister is going to be gone for very long.

[jwatson]

Personally i think his biggest success is modernizing the marvel universe. What other modern universe can say they not only added a whole modern super hero civilization but an entire planet into the solar system actually two if you count the orichis base and now the eternal one. So often characters have to go light years away for these kinds of stories. Not only that he created an enviorment where you can literally make any kind of mutant story. That in itself is a feat. If we just think about how the other heroes of marvel have yet to really react to these things there is unlimited story potential.

I can't speak to his greatest failure because only an individual can truly speak to what they feel failed them.

[pkingdom]

I've been vocal about his weakness from the start, so might as well reiterate. The story he wanted to tell wasn't well suited to the medium of comic books, and you can tell he was upset at having to deal with things like solicits and and scheduling books, even before covid. It relied on far too many narrative shortcuts and straight up narration and text walls to let us know what was happening, while ignoring characterization for 90% of the cast. Why would someone like Jean, who explicitly rejected something like Krakoa in her most recent appearance prior to this, be so gung ho about it? We've never even gotten a hint. Its been 2 years!

Plot points were hyped up to be a big deal, then get ignored for months, if not years. Then suddenly they matter for a month, and then back in the closet they go. In fact, between HoXPoX and Inferno, about 2/3rds of the stories told don't matter. If you got invested because of all of the mysteries and hints dropped in HoXPoX, then you maybe only needed to read a few issues of X force out of the dozen plus number of series. And even then, when seemingly huge things went down, it took months, even years for them to amount to anything. Remember the whole "mind controlling an entire country and committing dozens of war crimes" thing in X force? Amounted to nothing. Concluded with a data page. Hell, it took a second event for their first major event to matter! The conclusion to X of Swords didn't come into play until the Gala!

The biggest problem though was that it doubled down on the worst X-men trend. Namely, only the white ones matter. The real power players are still all the white people. We got teased for more than a year about Storm doing big things, and she instead is just repeating her story with the Morlocks but to diminishing returns. And the less said about Bishop the better.

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

Doing away with even the PRETENSE of death in comics having an impact is exactly the opposite of adding "high stakes." There ARE no stakes when characters can be casually killed off and then rez'ed again five minutes later, as if they never died at all.

I disagree. If the hook of a story at this point in the existence of everlasting IP is to threaten to kill a character, it's probably too weak a story and shouldn't be published.

[BobbysWorld]

Also I can not STAND the mutant supremacist **** running rampant with so many characters who would normally never stand for that. And with Krakoa in general. The entire era would have a totally different vibe if they'd made the tonal focus the mutants initially isolating on Krakoa because they've been hunted and persecuted for so long its just a comfort to have a place they actually feel safe, instead of just 0-60 in five seconds flat where the idea they were ever persecuted is basically a distant memory and many of them act like they're just isolating because they're better than everyone else.

And yes, I'm aware that large amounts of the tone surrounding that and other key aspects of Krakoa were most likely deliberate by Hickman and part of the theme he was building to, but I do think that direction is fundamentally a misfire for a franchise that's built itself upon being relatable to marginalized people rather than a generic sci-fi franchise that makes for a good critique of nationalism. *Shrugs* I honestly just don't think that's what the X-franchise ever needs to be about, even if conceptually I like a lot of the plot elements introduced.....but I'm not gonna be sad if the reason Hickman left ultimately is because the other writers didn't want to make the X-books all about an (admittedly valid, not saying its not, just that I don't think this is the place to do it) critique of nationalism and thus building towards an ultimate fall for Krakoa because of mutant hubris. I'm actually fine with other writers pulling things back from that and smoothing down the most egregious edges of the Krakoan era to at least make the story less....tone deaf, IMO, although of course that's entirely subjective.

[charliehustle415]

SUCCESS: Made Mutants fucking (emphasis needed) cool again.

Last time they were cool was when the coolest mofo in the world wrote them: Grant "effin" Morrison.

[Kingdom X]

We definitely gotta revisit this once the last issue of Inferno comes out but here are my thoughts for now.

Successes: He took the X-Men out of a terrible rut. The franchise had gone through TWO big relaunches after the IvX mess and the best we could hope for was at least one of the non-flagship titles being above average while the rest franchise went in circles. Second is story potential. Even if he didn't get to wrap up all his plot threads, he introduced enough new elements to the world of mutants that can be mined for years. He took big risks and undoubtedly left a mark on my favorite franchise.

Failures: Teases, teases, and more teases. A good 75% (if not more) of the X-Men ongoing was setup for future stories. For now we don't know the full behind the scenes details, but much of the ongoing reads like someone is planting seeds to years of future stories and it's a little sad that many of those seeds won't get to grow with their original vision. pkingdom is also right about doubling down on the whiteness of the franchise at times.

While I don't necessarily view this as a failure on Hickman's part because another writer certainly could have done it, but I do think we could have used a "how we got here" book or even one-shot. I understand the cold open to HOX/POX and not wanting to ruin mystery/ intrigue. Spending one or two of those Giant-Size issues on initial reactions to Krakoa, reunions, etc. would have been nice.

[thechronic92]

His biggest success was establishing a new status quo. He didn't have the limitations placed on other writers pre-Disney.

His biggest failure was characterisation. He prefers characters that are always politicking or backstabbing behind the scenes so naturally, he gravitates towards the grey/villain type characters. The characters that don't fall under that (Cyclops, Jean, Storm etc) regressed under him. He failed to make them feel like they truly matter and their roles are interchangeable.

[Spiderfan001]

Made people get into X-men again, I've had people who haven't read an X-comic in years pick one up.I've seen people who don't read big 2 comics pick up X-men for the story, that is insane to me.

Bad I'd say maybe diversity? Then again I get why he chose who he did but still wish otherwise.That and long-form storytelling that he won't be able to complete because of others.

And no X-book ever has made me feel the way his work has done.Not even close

[The Kid]

SUCCESS: Made Mutants fucking (emphasis needed) cool again.

Last time they were cool was when the coolest mofo in the world wrote them: Grant "effin" Morrison.

I could say a lot but at its core, this summarizes it

[BobbysWorld]

We definitely gotta revisit this once the last issue of Inferno comes out but here are my thoughts for now.

Successes: He took the X-Men out of a terrible rut. The franchise had gone through TWO big relaunches after the IvX mess and the best we could hope for was at least one of the non-flagship titles being above average while the rest franchise went in circles. Second is story potential. Even if he didn't get to wrap up all his plot threads, he introduced enough new elements to the world of mutants that can be mined for years. He took big risks and undoubtedly left a mark on my favorite franchise.

Failures: Teases, teases, and more teases. A good 75% (if not more) of the X-Men ongoing was setup for future stories. For now we don't know the full behind the scenes details, but much of the ongoing reads like someone is planting seeds to years of future stories and it's a little sad that many of those seeds won't get to grow with their original vision. pkingdom is also right about doubling down on the whiteness of the franchise at times.

While I don't necessarily view this as a failure on Hickman's part because another writer certainly could have done it, but I do think we could have used a "how we got here" book or even one-shot. I understand the cold open to HOX/POX and not wanting to ruin mystery/ intrigue. Spending one or two of those Giant-Size issues on initial reactions to Krakoa, reunions, etc. would have been nice.

Given how many of the criticisms of Hickman's era is the lack of or underwhelming focus on the emotional impact of numerous resurrections and major plot upheavals.......Marvel's missing a major opportunity I think. Make an oversized one-shot anthology of stories about various characters reacting to the resurrections and returns of loved ones, and that issue would sell like hotcakes.

Edit: Another major criticism of mine is that its been a great time to be a former X-Men villain but a lot of us read for the actual X-Men and not their antagonists. Don't get me wrong, I find what he's done with Destiny, Mystique, Apocalypse, etc to be extremely compelling and he's had me interested in reading about them and his new directions for them, BUT I don't like how much of the focus there took away focus from well, actual X-Men, since they're the characters I follow this franchise for.