X-MEN Editor Sheds New Light On Why Jonathan Hickman Abandoned The Krokoa Age After Relaunching Team

X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White has addressed some of the challenges Jonathan Hickman faced after rebooting the team in 2019, better explaining why he ultimately chose to walk away from the line...

By JoshWilding - May 14, 2024 06:05 AM EST

Filed Under: Marvel Comics

Source: AIPT

Secret Wars writer Jonathan Hickman rebooted the X-Men in 2019 with House of X and Powers of X, two titles which saw the mutants figure out immortality and create a new base on the island of Krakoa.

The game-changing storyline completely changed the role of mutants in the Marvel Universe and is set to wrap up this summer, roughly five years after it began. However, Hickman left the X-Men line much sooner than any of us expected, meaning we never got to see his full vision for the heroes.

Talking to AIPT about the "Krakoa Age," X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White admitted that much of what Hickman hoped to do with the team quickly proved to be off-limits to him.

"There were plans to use [Namor] - that’s why Jonathan set things up," he explains. "He fully intended to use him in probably a few different places. But that’s the risk of trying to do things with characters that aren’t yours - by which I mean, not under our editorial purview. Namor is a character who was part of the Brevoort office as part of the Avengers."

"They had plans with him that they started doing that prevented him from showing up in our books...He’s not going to show up in any of our endings. We very much wanted him to show up in the Fall of X era, but he’s kind of in a place where we can’t use him."

Also causing problems was Fantastic Four writer Dan Slott's apparent unwillingness to share Franklin Richards.

"It is not an oversight that [Franklin] is so prominently talked about in the first issue of House of X," White says. "Obviously, that’s a character that Jonathan has spent a lot of time thinking about and caring about when he wrote Fantastic Four. So he was 100% going, yes, Franklin Richards is one of, if not the most powerful, mutants of all time."

"As much as we wanted to use him because he’s a mutant, he’s clearly a Fantastic Four character. And they made the decision that I - sorry, guys, do not agree with - to make him not a mutant," he adds. "And he’s their character to do that with. And that’s the direction they went. And as a result, he was not on the table for us anymore."

Elsewhere in the interview, the editor also revealed that Marvel Comics scrapped plans for a book Hickman planned to write revolving around Cannonball and Sunspot. With that disappointment added to an ever-growing list, it's no wonder he decided to walk away from X-Men.

Hickman has previously said a big part of why he left is that the publisher wasn't ready to move into the second act of storytelling in the era, instead preferring to continue telling stories revolving around the X-Men's time on Krakoa. It's a shame we didn't get to see what he wanted to do with these characters in his entirety, but the writer has since relaunched Marvel's Ultimate line.

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21 Comments

Doomsday8888 - 5/14/2024, 6:18 AM

Can't blame him i guess but f*ck Marvel, f*ck Slott and their fake ass creative freedom.

Doomsday8888 - 5/14/2024, 6:20 AM

P.S. If i'm not mistaken, Franklin has gone back being a mutant under a new writer now that the Krakoa era is over, it's like they did it on purpose, the timing to f*ck over Hickman was perfect, amazing.

FireandBlood - 5/14/2024, 6:18 AM

And neither office did [frick] all with Franklin or Namor, holding them back from what would’ve been another Hickman classic out off nothing but pure spite.

[frick] Slott and [frick] Brevoort, too!🖕

rebellion - 5/14/2024, 6:24 AM

The moment he left, it started to suck again. Im happy we got what we got. HoX/PoX is the best xmen thing ive read since messiah complex/war and second coming.

FireandBlood - 5/14/2024, 6:39 AM

@rebellion - It was good at the beginning. So [frick]ing good!

rebellion - 5/14/2024, 7:09 AM

@FireandBlood - yep, you could there was a singular vision behind it. And then it all turned into costume changes and rushing through undercooked plot points.

Superspecialawesomeguy - 5/14/2024, 6:44 AM

The Krakoan Age was a dead man walking as soon as Hickman left tbh.

kg8817 - 5/14/2024, 7:14 AM

@Superspecialawesomeguy - Everything about the Krakoa storyline is what I don’t like as “my” version of the X-Men in my head and the characters I’m used to, so I never read it. But comics NEED to do stuff like this to tell worthwhile stories and MOVE FORWARD, even if they leave people like me behind. But seems editorial just wants to keep them in the past. Shame indeed.

P.S. since I didn’t read this, why are there two wolverines in that picture - one in his weapon X getup? Multiverse?

clintthahamster - 5/14/2024, 8:12 AM

@kg8817 - Looks like that was a variant cover for Powers of X #1, so it's likely just showing different eras of the characters. There appear to be multiple Nightcrawlers, Jeans, and Storms, too, though I'll admit I haven't actively read X-Men in more than 30 years, so I DEFINITELY don't know what I'm talking about. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

OrionPax - 5/14/2024, 4:48 PM

@kg8817 - Powers of X covers the past, present, and future of mutants, so there are multiple iterations of Logan in those stories

OrionPax - 5/14/2024, 4:50 PM

@clintthahamster - the red one actually isn’t Nightcrawler, but rather one of Sinister’s Chimeras (mutants who have been artificially created by a mix of multiple mutants) so that guy is a combo of Nightcrawler & Wolverine’s DNA

clintthahamster - 5/14/2024, 6:43 PM

@OrionPax - Huh. I thought it might be Azazel, after I commented, but that makes sense, too.

marvel72 - 5/14/2024, 8:50 AM

The House Of X and Powers Of X limited series was really good and the issues Hickman wrote were good as well, it was everything that spun off afterwards with the exception of Wolverine and maybe X-Force.

I would recommend his Fantastic Four and Avengers run though, they are better than his X-Men run.

Cleander - 5/14/2024, 9:20 AM

I hated the Krakoan Era. X-Men just made my skin crawl but I was glad that the "discrimination" aspect of mutant stories was revealed to be nonsense and they're actually a different species (a superior species lol) whose main goal is to conquer.

FireandBlood - 5/14/2024, 10:04 AM

@Cleander - They were always a ‘superior’ species. They just embraced it more, instead of trying to kneel to the xenophobic POS humans that still can’t peacefully co-exist with different coloured variations of their own species, let alone anything else.

Cleander - 5/14/2024, 10:09 AM

@FireandBlood - neither the humans nor the superior human believe in coexistence.

RitoRevolto - 5/14/2024, 10:25 AM

On one hand, I'm glad he didn't stick around (lol sorry) to remove the mutants from Krakoa even sooner; those are some of my favorite X books. (Fvck whatever this new mess is they're about to do.) And on the other hand, it's weird that so much pettiness runs rampant in these writing offices. Like y'all are grown ass men. 😑

FireandBlood - 5/14/2024, 11:18 AM

@RitoRevolto - Right? I’m sitting on a character not knowing wtf to do with it, and a genius like Hickman comes along and says “let me cook”, you let him cook!

RitoRevolto - 5/14/2024, 11:29 AM

@FireandBlood - That envy be making people SICK lol.

SpiderBloke2099 - 5/14/2024, 2:45 PM

f*ck the Krakoan Age. I prefer the X-Men not palling around with mass/multiple-murdering nutbars who they used to fight and not having immortality that removes any jeopardy from the stories.

encyclopedicmin - 5/15/2024, 2:45 AM

Jonathan Hickman should resurrect Krakoa and include Franklin and Valeria this time along with other developing mutants like Gerry Drew Danielle Lucas/Cage and other mutants in a sequel mini series Dan Slott is the worst for that stupid retcon about Franklin and Valeria.

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X-MEN Editor Sheds New Light On Why Jonathan Hickman Abandoned The Krokoa Age After Relaunching Team

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