When I first heard that one of my favorite comic writers, Jonathan Hickman was taking over the direction for Marvel’s X-Men, I was over the moon. He’d previously done legendary runs on The Fantastic Four and The Avengers, so it was only right that he reinvigorate the X-Men line of comics that (at the time) had become stagnant and directionless. He solidified his dominance by elevating comic lines by writing the 2 incredible limited series House of X and Power of X. There was no doubt this was going to be another legendary run… or so I thought.
But then The Krakoan Age started for Marvel’s mutants. They now had their own Mutant Nation and a new status quo in Marvel 616. But from the start, you could tell that this didn’t feel like Hickman. There were a bunch of X-Men relaunches with Hickman writing a few himself. But the X-Men line seemed to grow way to big for my taste. I tried to find at least a couple of books to read, but I quickly lost interest. For me, none of the new X-books had that same magic from the old days. And when Hickman left the X-Men line, it added to the suspicion that he didn’t have full control of what was going on. His last line of comics was The Inferno storyline that once again.. was amazing! It felt like true Hickman writing. And even though it was reduced to only 4 issues and felt rushed, it still was classic Hickman.
Over the years, the X-Men comics have been rolling along, and I’ve tried to jump in here and there to no avail. It did look like the flagship X-Men book was brewing something nice, and Gerry Duggan’s corner of the X-verse was doing some good stuff with Beast going dark and battling X-Force and Wolverine (which I wanna go back and read), I still couldn’t get into it.
But it looks like the next event Fall of X is going to end the Krakoan Era and scatter the mutants back into the world that fears and hates them. This might be yet another opportunity to jump into the books. I’m really intrigued by the over-arching villainous Orchis and what plans they have for mutants. This might reinvigorate my love for the X-Men.