Originally Posted by
InformationGeek
I never read his Fantastic Four run. Someday I will but not now.
It's no surprise to anyone, but I absolutely despise his Avengers and New Avengers run. It's in my Bottom 10 Worst Comics I ever read. It was the first Avengers comic I read and honestly, it felt like Hickman never really cared to write an Avengers story. It was about anything else but the Avengers. While he certainly put thought into what he wanted to do and where to go, the storylines were just not that compelling. The characterization felt barely there and it didn't help that characters he did put effort into really went no where. A lot of his stuff went nowhere in the end thinking about it and he even admitted that he never really got to do everything he wanted to in an interview in the past, which does explain some things.
The rotating cast of artists, even if they were usually good elsewhere, turned in some rather middle of the road to down right ugly art. I don't know what was going on, but Deodato and Yu produced some of their worst stuff here, especially when it came to drawing female characters. My god, the barbie doll frames, ass shots, and more were so distracting.
The pacing was glacial and not engaging, some of the worst write for the trade paperback I've seen since Bendis. The dialogue was so tedious and dry, while also leaning heavy into purple prose at times. Infinity was awful due to its horrible pacing and horribly abrupt resolutions. Smasher, the only character I kind of liked, got a great backstory... but was then just made some guy's love interest, popped out a baby, and really did nothing of consequence (Hickman did her dirty). New Avengers felt like ass pull after ass pull, so artificial in how the conflicts could never work out correctly and how things must turn out a way that I could never find it believable. Also, I hated every character in that.
And sure, people can scream about dem themes and meanings, but if I can't like the characters, can't find the plot by itself compelling, and find the artwork grating at times, why should I care about the messages here? It's like 2019's Black Christmas movie. You have the themes, but you got nothing else to offer that's good!
Oh, and Secret Wars? It was better than Infinity, but like the rest of Avengers, I could not remotely stand the artwork of this comic and I just did not find the story all that interesting.
Trying to read his independent stuff, I just gotta admit Hickman just has no appeal to me whatever. But his Avengers is just some of the absolute worst trash I ever read. Maybe it would've appealed to me more if I had read tons of other Avengers comics before hand, like with Mark Waid's Daredevil or Matt Fraction's Hawkeye (though I really doubt that with Hawkeye since I hate the character writing of that), but as it stands, I hate Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers while just acknowledge Secret Wars was a thing at some point.