As Black Lives Matter protests started taking place around the world, turning the past week into the largest civil rights movement in recorded history, X-Men writer Jonathan Hickman took to Twitter to pledge his support for the movement. Though the fan-favorite comics writer admitted he aimed to stop explaining his writing as of a few years ago, Hickman wrote a multi-tweet thread doing just that – telling fans the theology behind his X-Men run and the overall family of books he oversees for Marvel Comics.
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“I promised myself a couple years that I wouldn’t ever explain my writing or comment personally on how I felt about what I was working on because I wasn’t really interested in being the focus of attention — I wanted my work to be,” Hickman wrote. “Maybe the was wrong.”
The writer added, “I’ve spent the last couple of years writing about nothing but what’s currently going on and I think my feeling [sic] are clear. We’re slaves to economic systems, the world is broken, and you can only stand on the backs of others for so long before they rise up. I believe that.”
Hickman’s X-Men run began last summer with House of X and Powers of X, and has now expanded to nearly a dozen books. Hickman remains on the main X-Men title while he serves as the architect behind the stories of the other titles from New Mutants to Marauders and beyond.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen next,” the writer continued. “I’d like to believe everything’s going to be okay. I just don’t know…and that’s probably the worse part.”
He then told fans he’s opened his direct messages should they find the need to contact him and talk about what’s going on in both the world and within his series. Before too long at all, the writer returned to the thread on Twitter to admit the idea of the tweets might have fallen flat.
“Justice checked back in and I mean this sincerely,” Hickman concluded. “I tried. I failed. I’m flawed and fallen like everyone else, but this especially (It’s obvious, I suppose) isn’t the platform for me. Which I guess is the point of the books and not me.”
Before signing off, he linked to a popular Carrd page with resources on petitions you can sign or organizations you can donate to in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. You can see that webpage here.
