Off Panel interview with Hickman

[spirit2011]

I am going to have fun saying I told you so. Hickman doesn't write like that HoX and PoX should have been education. Who was the main character in HoX and PoX? Hickman is more story focus than character focus. Cyclops is going to be important but how is that an different from any X-men book over last 30 years?

HOX OPX are setup issues.

He and JDW already said that the sole focus of x-men is cyclops personal journey. You can't get more solo than that.
ok that they could just call the book "cyclops" instead of x-men

[Snoop Dogg]

If you actually look at Hickman's previous Marvel work, the fear would not be that he writes a book like Red that's just a one-man show, but that with a cast so large he'll end up in another situation like Avengers where most characters didn't have arcs or a firm purpose outside of association with a team. However, because the whole line is in lockstep with Hickman, the burden is alleviated because so much of the cast is spread across the different books. Hickman doesn't need to do whole character arcs for Storm, Logan, Jean, Emma, etc because they are main characters in other books with smaller casts with writers who can handle their trajectory. So JH can focus on his select actual cast (which we know is like Scott, Moira, Xavier, Magneto, various villains, blah blah) and not worry as much. He also will be able to go at his own pace this time (but hopefully he doesn't meander.)

[The Kid]

If you actually look at Hickman's previous Marvel work, the fear would not be that he writes a book like Red that's just a one-man show, but that with a cast so large he'll end up in another situation like Avengers where most characters didn't have arcs or a firm purpose outside of association with a team. However, because the whole line is in lockstep with Hickman, the burden is alleviated because so much of the cast is spread across the different books. Hickman doesn't need to do whole character arcs for Storm, Logan, Jean, Emma, etc because they are main characters in other books with smaller casts with writers who can handle their trajectory. So JH can focus on his select actual cast (which we know is like Scott, Moira, Xavier, Magneto, various villains, blah blah) and not worry as much. He also will be able to go at his own pace this time (but hopefully he doesn't meander.)

Thank you. HoX and PoX pretty much centered around Xavier, Magneto, and Moira. We can expect Scott to join that group in X-Men and each issue will rotate out different X-Men who are in the other books into the issues as needed.

[spirit2011]

If you actually look at Hickman's previous Marvel work, the fear would not be that he writes a book like Red that's just a one-man show, but that with a cast so large he'll end up in another situation like Avengers where most characters didn't have arcs or a firm purpose outside of association with a team. However, because the whole line is in lockstep with Hickman, the burden is alleviated because so much of the cast is spread across the different books. Hickman doesn't need to do whole character arcs for Storm, Logan, Jean, Emma, etc because they are main characters in other books with smaller casts with writers who can handle their trajectory. So JH can focus on his select actual cast (which we know is like Scott, Moira, Xavier, Magneto, various villains, blah blah) and not worry as much. He also will be able to go at his own pace this time (but hopefully he doesn't meander.)

Moira will have her own solo, so not even her will be a big focus.

Magneto and xavier seems to drop in and drop out. So it lasts Cyclops as the main focus and core member.

there was like 4 characters developed on his avengers

[TheDeadSpace]

Moira will have her own solo, so not even her will be a big focus.

Magneto and xavier seems to drop in and drop out. So it lasts Cyclops as the main focus and core member.

there was like 4 characters developed on his avengers

I'm curious as to where you would put Scott if you dislike his current position in X-men?

[spirit2011]

I'm curious as to where you would put Scott if you dislike his current position in X-men?

Still on x-men? I don't have problems with Scott on x-men, now him being the solo core member I have some

[TheDeadSpace]

Still on x-men? I don't have problems with Scott on x-men, now him being the solo core member I have some

Who else would you want?

[PsychoEFrost]

Who else would you want?

Like you need to ask...

[TheDeadSpace]

Like you need to ask...

I think it's a fair question. I'd rather not assume. At least I hope.

[saahir]

And always by the same few people....

[loke13]

I think it's a fair question. I'd rather not assume. At least I hope.

It's Jean. It's always Jean.

[Desmark]

I wonder if he will be able to write a effective team book because so far his FF run was a Reed and Doom love letter with some other characters getting to do something once in a while. Pox and HOX again seemed to be in the same vein. It's too long since I read his Avengers run so I may be misremembering but even that was a narrative driven by Tony, Captain America and Reed and the illuminati.

[Killerbee911]

They(the X books) tend to be repetitive in the kind of stories that they have been told for the past couple of decades. As people got more and more frustrated the stuff got more and more destructive and that's why whenever you come onto an X-Men book and you make a list of characters you want to use, half of them are dead, half of them don't have powers, half of them just came back from being dead and somebody's pitching that they're gonna kill them again, I mean, like the fandom of the X-Men, the books themselves had become a really dark and destructive place, and I don't think that's good.

The other thing is, it doesn't mean anything when we kill characters in our books anymore, because everybody knows that the ip is coming back and it doesn't have the impact. And I've said this in the writers room and stuff like this, we need to stop telling stories about killing characters. I understand sometimes narratively you want to do something dramatic, but let me tell you, as a storytelling mechanism, walking in the room and kicking all the toys over isn't a good look anymore. It's not the kind of stories that people want to read. It's not actually helpful in terms of you doing your job five years down the road. It's actually makes all of our jobs incredibly difficult.

But you know the other reason is just that, like I've said earlier, I want us to be telling positive stories about the characters. And ..here is a tangential thing, but it illustrates the point: we've gotten a bunch of pitches in about X-Men stuff. As soon as I took over, we've started getting pitches in. All the pitches..not all, but a lot of the pitches were literally breaking ****. It kinda proved my point that what everybody is expecting to happen is for the other **** to drop and everything to not work, and everything to go bad. And the radical storytelling choice here of doing positive books where people don't die ... One of the reasons why I did the resurrection stuff was not only because I wanted everybody to be able to have all the mutants back without us doing like literally 30 issues of bringing characters back in various ways. We've brought everybody back and we made it so that if you told a story where they died, it's a plot device and not a emotional hammering of the reader. Like you can't play it as 'oh my God this is awful and terrible', like you have to be more creative than that. I've challenged all of the X writers to.. it's just fine if you have a story where a character has to die, that's fine, but what's the other story? Like what's the more interesting story? ”

This such a great quote

I wonder if he will be able to write a effective team book because so far his FF run was a Reed and Doom love letter with some other characters getting to do something once in a while. Pox and Did again seemed to be in the same vein. It's too long since I read his Avengers run so I may be misremembering but even that was a narrative driven by Tony, Captain America and Tony and the illuminati.

New Avengers was pushed by Tony and the Illuminati, Avengers was very much like HoXPoX yeah Capt,Iron Man and Thor got hint more focus than others but it was more about the story that was trying to tell and it move around its very large cast. Ex Nihilo, Starbrand, Hyperion, Sunspot, Cannonball, Smasher, Captain Universe,etc he got them fair time in books.

[FluffyCyclopsRLZ]

It's Jean. It's always Jean.

[Snoop Dogg]

I wonder if he will be able to write a effective team book because so far his FF run was a Reed and Doom love letter with some other characters getting to do something once in a while. Pox and HOX again seemed to be in the same vein. It's too long since I read his Avengers run so I may be misremembering but even that was a narrative driven by Tony, Captain America and Reed and the illuminati.

FF was certainly Reed and pals or Frank and pals because they were the core of the book, but the balance was muuuuuuuch better than Avengers.