What has best-selling comics writer Jonathan Hickman have lined up for his next big superhero project? It looks like he will be writing a DC or Marvel story that features a large, interconnected group of characters and a deep, sometimes impenetrable mythology.
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The author took to Twitter earlier today to offer fans the opportunity to “pick your poison,” with a poll that proposed The Eternals, the Legion of Super-Heroes, The New Gods, and X-Men.
As of this writing, X-Men is running away with the poll, with nearly 40% of respondents saying they hope to see Hickman taking on Marvel’s merry mutants. The two DC options are in a dead head with 26% saying The New Gods and 25% saying Legion of Super-Heroes — and only 10% of those polled currently saying they want to see Hickman on The Eternals.
The Eternals, a Marvel property, was created by Jack Kirby. The titular Eternals are a race of immortals who have watched civilizations rise and fall, and who were designed by the Celestials to be an offshoot of human evolution who would protect the planet. The most recent success story with The Eternals was a series by Neil Gaiman and John Romita, Jr.
The Legion of Super-Heroes is a team of teenage superheroes from a thousand years in the future. With ties to Superboy and Supergirl, the team wear rings that allow all the heroes, regardless of their individual abilities, to fly and understand almost any language in the universe. A version of the team is currently appearing on The CW’s Supergirl.
The New Gods, another Kirby creation, are best known as the umbrella under which popular characters like Darkseid, Mister Miracle, and Orion are categorized. Two alien races of gods — one good, and one evil — live on warring planets, with Darkseid often attacking other worlds in the hopes of growing his army of mindless Parademon drones and discovering the secret of the Anti-Life Equation, which he believes will allow him to conquer Highfather and the gods of New Genesis once and for all.
The X-Men, one of Marvel’s most popular properties for decades now, need no introduction.
Per a follow-up tweet, it sounds like Hickman’s story ideas all center around death and rebirth: he offers titles like “Death of the Eternals,” “Who Killed the Legion of Super-Heroes?,” “The New New Gods,” and “X-Men: Here Lies Chris Claremont.”
Given that Chris Claremont was a wildly popular writer on X-Men, we have to assume that last one is a joke. Still, it could be fun.
Due to the larger-than-life nature of the properties, and the fact that each of the first three have traditionally had difficulty finding an audience since about 1985, each new writer who tackles projects like the New Gods, The Eternals and the Legion tend to wipe the slate clean, reboot, and/or reinvent the mythology. Hickman has historically succeeded in doing this sort of thing, but with these particular properties, bringing something completely new to the table could be a real challenge.
Hickman has had major hits on comics like SHIELD, The Avengers, and The Fantastic Four as well as creator-owned series like The Nightly News and The Manhattan Projects.
