Scans_Daily

There's things I like about Hickman -- he's different in style and aesthetic (although I don't tend to care that much about such things one way or the other), and there's some interesting ideas here. But, I don't think I like how he changes characters and ignores things from their arcs to fit his purposes. This feels like a complete reboot of the series -- which they haven't done to this extent before. Morrison came closest and lost a lot of fans, which is why Whedon reverted it back to status quo. The problem the X-men series has always had is it veers between Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/ Grant Morrison/Jason Aaron "the school dynamic of a training of powers/paramilitary group that can find a way of living among humans, and get their approval by helping them" and the Kieron Gillen/Jonathan Hickman "us vs. them" dynamic of mutants and humans trying to kill each other. Both are tiresome after a while. And the tension between those two story lines (Xavier = School) and (Magneto = Us vs. Them) to date has always swung more towards Xavier. Then there's the mix of the two, Whedon, Bendis, Rosenberg, etc.

So the reboot isn't on a thematic level but on a character level -- which I don't think is a good idea. It's also getting rid of some of the soap opera elements and taking it more into speculative sci-fi, which is going to lose a lot of people. I'm not sure Marvel realizes how many people read for the soap opera?

The problem with long-running serials like the X-men, the Avengers, daytime soap operas, Doctor Who -- is the continuous change in writers, and the writers often don't know the source material as well as long-time fans do, or they just happen to interpret it in vastly different and weird ways. So, I kind of handwave it as fanfic or various what if scenarios played out with the same characters. Which is why I love these things -- because I like to see all the what if scenarios for a character.