Hickman Leaving the X-Men, X-Books to Relaunch in January

EW: X-Men comic fans have been fearing this day, but alas, it has arrived. EW can confirm that Jonathan Hickman, the writer behind the celebrated 2019 comics House of X and Powers of X (illustrated by Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva) that relaunched Marvel's mutants with a radical new status quo, will be departing the X-Men line after his upcoming Inferno series wraps up.

"Oh, plans have changed entirely," Hickman says. "When I pitched the X-Men story I wanted to do, I pitched a very big, very broad, three-act, three-event narrative, the first of which was House of X. And while this loosely worked as a three-year plan, I told Marvel upfront that I honestly had no idea how long the first part would last because there were a lot of interesting ideas that I had seeded that other creators would want to play with, and so, we left this rather open-ended. I was also pretty clear with all the writers that came into the office what the initial, three-act plan was so no one would be surprised when it was time for the line to pivot."

Hickman continues, "However, I also knew that I was cooking with dynamite, and it was very possible that what I had written in House of X, and the ideas contained within, was not actually the first act of a three-act story, but something that resonated more deeply and worked more like Giant-Size X-Men, where it would represent a paradigm shift in the entire X-Men line for a prolonged period of time. So, during the pandemic, when the time came for me to start pointing things toward writing the second-act event, I asked everyone if they were ready for me to do that, and to a man, everyone wanted to stay in the first act. It was really interesting, because I appreciated that House of X resonated with them to the extent that they didn't want it to end, but the reality was that I knew I would be leaving the line early."

"Marvel doesn't really pay me to just write ongoing monthly books, there's an expectation for me to write bigger books that have a wider reach than that," Hickman tells EW. "In an effort to facilitate both things, we've all spent the last six months or so reorienting the line, me creating Inferno to assist with that, and then bringing in some new writers to add to the existing team, and then plan for the next several years of X-books. So after Inferno, I'll be leaving to go work on my 'Next Big Marvel Thing™' and starting in January the X-Line will rocket forward starting with a weekly series that leads into the very cool, refocused, line of books. Yes, it's taken us a little while to get everything assembled correctly, but the end result — everything that's coming after Inferno — is going to be pretty great."

As it happens, EW has been interviewing Hickman and these collaborators — writers Vita Ayala, Gerry Duggan, Al Ewing, Tini Howard, Benjamin Percy, Si Spurrier, Zeb Wells, Leah Williams, and artist Pepe Larraz — about the past two years of radical new X-Men comics. Check that out below; hopefully it will assuage some of the sadness from Hickman's coming departure.

Solving the Psylocke paradox

EW: One of the most popular X-Men characters from recent decades is also one of the most complicated. The mutant telepath Psylocke, a.k.a. Betsy Braddock, started out as the English sister of Brian Braddock, a.k.a Captain Britain. But in 1989, Betsy's mind was transplanted into the body of a Japanese ninja assassin, later established to be a mutant named Kwannon. Despite the complicated situation of a white woman's mind in an Asian woman's body, the resulting character became immensely popular. Psylocke starred not just in X-Men comics, but also video games and even 2016's big-screen blockbuster X-Men: Apocalypse, where she was played by Olivia Munn. Finally, in 2018's Mystery in Madripoor comic by Jim Zub and Thony Silas, both Betsy and Kwannon were returned to their original bodies. But it fell to the new X-writers to reckon with all that baggage, as Betsy took up the mantle of Captain Britain in Excalibur and Kwannon (now taking the name Psylocke in her own right) became the field leader of the Hellions.

TINI HOWARD: That's something that we talked about from the very first X-meeting I was in. Even before we started forming our own stories, we talked about, 'what are some things that are really important to us, some things we want to set up the way they deserve'? One of them was a resolution to that Psylocke situation that wasn't just these two characters fighting until they got along. It was important not just to us creators but to fans, especially Asian fans and all female fans, who felt bothered or hurt by some of the ways that had been handled over its 30 years. Here's this problem that's really tangled and had also become important to people in various ways, so it was really necessary to resolve. This was something I took really seriously, and had my nerves about. But Zeb is incredible as a collaborator, he does such incredible work with Kwannon.

ZEB WELLS: I thought a way I could build off what Tini was doing and honor the character, was to make Kwannon the most compelling character apart from all of that as possible. To show that there was a super interesting tragic character under all of that this whole time.

She gets put into this situation where she has to lead this team and keep an eye on them and become a leader. The goal was to make that as interesting as possible and to make her as defined a character as possible. The Fallen Angels miniseries had taken a great first step, digging into the tragedy of her assassin background. With the brave new world of Krakoa, I thought we had the chance to take all of that together and make a very compelling character.

TINI HOWARD: We just kind of developed these women having these separate fears and thoughts about each other until they could come together. It ends up being extra fun and satisfying because one thing we can do in these books, because we have so many different books going, we can have conversations feel different or look different or include different details. If you read Hellions, you know Kwannon basically had a psychic therapy session where she killed Betsy Braddock a bunch in her mind. I don't think Betsy knows that, I don't think she's supposed to know that. It's not important to her to know that, that was Kwannon's therapy, that was her working through stuff.

Betsy working through stuff was completely different, and she needed Kwannon to help her out of it. It was based on guilt and complicated stuff. Some of that was scary to write, because a lot of it is my own experience being a bumbling white lady. That's an experience I can write about. It's not even like she was being thoughtful about it like 'i'm trying to get out of this,' sometimes you get emotional and you're nervous and you're gonna do something that doesn't make any sense because it brings you some kind of catharsis. No, white lady; get in your portal!