Marvel’s X-Men Are Getting A Full Reboot Care Of Jonathan Hickman
Following Disney’s Fox buy out and with both X-Men: Dark Phoenix and the much-delayed New Mutants on the way, the future of the X-Men is a little mysterious, though hopefully not for too much longer.
Even if you’re not overly familiar with Marvel Comics, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the name Jonathan Hickman at least in passing in these last few months. He’s one of the major architects of Infinity, the crossover event that inspired whole swaths of both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and introduced the concept of Thanos’ Black Order. Hickman’s run on the main Avengers title lasted around 3 years and helped redefine the team for modern audiences all over again–both on page and screen.
And now, another major arm of the Marvel universe is primed to get the Hickman treatment as he returns to Marvel for a major X-Men overhaul. Starting with two weekly, 6-issue mini-series called House of X and Power of X, Hickman plans to kickstart a brand new era of X-Men stories that will unfold across the Marvel universe in waves.
In an interview with Comicbook.com, the writer detailed his plans. “We needed to sell the idea that this is what we’re going to be doing for the next few years. So if you want to read X-Men books during the run from late-July through September, House of X and Powers of X are the only new X-books available and everything that’s going to follow is based on them. We wanted to be clear to the fans, to the stores, and just as importantly, to the creators who are going to be staffing these books in the future. We wanted the message to be very clear: This is a whole new era for the X-Men. This is what we’re doing now.”
The X-Men lines are no stranger to reboots and new issue number #1s. The latest volume of Uncanny X-Men was relaunched in 2018, hot on the heels of companion books like X-Men: Blue and X-Men: Gold, both of which kicked off with new #1s back in 2017; and X-Men: Red which concluded its mini-series run last year as well. Add to the list the X-Men adjacent Major X mini-series, still currently in progress and things get even more complicated.
Put plainly, the X-arm of the Marvel Universe is not currently the most accessible line of comics around. Though, as Hickman hopes, that will be soon to change.
“One, House of X, is a story about a pivotal month in the history of the X-men where everything changes for mutants on Earth,” Hickman elaborated. “And the other, Powers of X, is a story about the history of mutants in the Marvel Universe. It works as a series of reveals and revelations where each issue of HOX that follows POX–and vice versa–makes you reinterpret the issue you had previously read.”
Both 6-issue series will eventually culminate in what Hickman calls “wave 1” and “wave 2” of the rebooting initiative. “At the conclusion of our 12 weeks of HOX and POX, we’ll be launching an entirely new universe of X-books. Some will be traditional fare, some carry through on ideas presented in HOX and POX. Some books are completely new concepts. I, personally, will be writing the ongoing flagship X-book,” he said. “[…] We also just finished our plans for our ‘Wave 2’ books that will debut in 2020 and we’re getting ready to hire talent for those.”
House of X #1 and Power of X #1 hit stores on July 24 and July 31 respectively, everywhere comics are sold.