Jonathan Hickman previews the big ideas behind his new Marvel comic, “G.O.D.S.”
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Few modern superhero comic writers have ideas as big as Jonathan Hickman. His last major Marvel comic, House of X/Powers of X, relaunched the X-Men after years of declining sales and made mutants the stars of Marvel again. Many of his other stories, involving the Fantastic Four and Avengers, have since become fuel for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As a result, anticipation is high for his next Marvel comic, which launches this week. Except this time, Hickman and artist Valerio Schiti aren't playing with heroes as recognizable as Wolverine or Captain America. With G.O.D.S., Hickman and Schiti are redefining abstract Marvel concept characters like the Living Tribunal and the Lords of Chaos and Order. It's a story of conflict at the cosmic level, between one faction described as "The-Natural-Order-of-Things" and another as "The-Powers-That-Be."
Knowing Hickman, we probably won't grasp exactly what's going on until we've read all eight issues of G.O.D.S. But EW just had to catch up with Hickman and pick his brain about his big plans. Check out our conversation below, and look for G.O.D.S. #1 in stores this week.
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel The cover of 'G.O.D.S.' #1, by Phil Noto
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: One reason I remember connecting with House of X is how it felt plugged into things in the wider culture, things that were happening in society. Over the past decade we've seen new social movements of people standing up together for their rights, like the mutants do in House of X, and now wherever some corporation introduces a new A.I. tool, my mind immediately goes to that story's villains, Nimrod and Orchis. As you've been developing G.O.D.S. over the past few years, is there anything in the zeitgeist you felt particularly connected to?
JONATHAN HICKMAN: The short answer is, it's kind of impossible to keep that stuff out of your art. But in this instance, I think we've descended into pure existential questions of "What's a good human?" and "What's a bad human?" Who are we? What are we doing? A book called G.O.D.S. is definitely a platform to write about some of that. I feel like one of the things that I'm pretty good at is not writing didactic stuff, but still feeling like it has a heavy theme or a prominent message, right?
One of the ways you do that is you narratively empower both sides of an argument. I don't mean that everything has two sides. I just mean you make sure your antagonist and your protagonist have very, very relatable and strong conceits. When you're talking about a concept like this, "Does everything mean something" or "Does everything mean nothing?" It feels like a pretty strong theme in regards to current society? Ultimately, this is a very personal story about these characters. But there is that questioning of, "What is chaos, what is order? What is eternity, what is infinity?" All of that stuff is definitely there in each of the issues. And frankly, just like with House of X, it's fun to play with. It's very easy to lose yourself inside of the story. I really try to channel a kid's excitement for asking hard questions and trying to be delighted in answers to those questions that are mind-blowing, either in a joyful or a mischievous way.
When it comes to characters like this, at the level of gods, the conflict feels more complex than just good vs. evil. The tagline for G.O.D.S. is that it's the Powers-That-Be vs. The-Natural-Order-of-Things. How do you think about different factions forming at this cosmic level of existence?
This is such a ridiculously me answer: I made a graph. I did the three axes of the universe: Life and death, good and evil, science and magic. Then I played with where all the abstracts would fall on that and where all the superheroes would fall on that, just as an exercise and seeing if the conceptual shape worked for what I was trying to make. The way these things work, you can't control whether something resonates with the audience. You can do really good stuff and it fails. You can do stuff that's not as good and it succeeds. Sometimes it comes down to just the right moment, the right time. But I definitely put my back into trying to figure out if this was something that could work with the Marvel Universe. And I think I've landed on doing it in a way that does.
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel Agents of The-Powers-That-Be work to avert disaster in 'G.O.D.S.' #1
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel Heroes assemble in 'G.O.D.S.' #1
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel Cosmic things happening in 'G.O.D.S.' #1
You've said that the characters in G.O.D.S. each have their down-to-earth Peter Parker version, and their larger-than-life Spider-Man incarnation. Given that conceit, what was it like working with Valerio on this story? On last year's Judgment Day event, he was really good at depicting those different levels of scale, gigantic gods fighting in the sky and normal people on the ground reacting to that. How did working with him help you craft this story that takes place both at this gigantic cosmic level and at this very personal level among these characters?
Well, Valerio's brilliant. One of the things I pride myself in doing is, when I work with an artist, I try to write to whatever their strengths are. I really want to give them the canvas to really show off what they're good at. I worked with Valerio years ago on New Avengers, and he was brilliant on that, just absolutely brilliant. Since then I've asked for him on multiple things and could never connect, but when it was apparent that we were going to do this, I knew that he would be perfect for it, and he is perfect for it.
What you can't control is just how into it they are, that's just part of the collaborative nature of this stuff. When it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But when it does work, it's magic. He immediately latched onto this stuff and made it his own, and it's his book as much as if not more than mine, because he brought it to life.
There's a page with Doctor Strange and a bunch of panels and heads at the bottom. I wrote it as a nine-panel page, and it's hard to make a dynamic nine-panel page. Of course you can do it, and it's been done many times. But generally speaking, that's a very difficult ask. But Valerio takes pages like that and he makes them dynamic in a way that you are hoping for, but that you're not expecting. He's done that page after page after page. I mean, the thing about drawing a Marvel comic book is there has to be a certain level of the energy there, or else it's not Marvel. He has to be applauded for that. He's crushed it. He's been a dream to work with, and this is going to be a really big book for him. I'm super happy.
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel The heroes of 'G.O.D.S.' visit the Collector
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel The heroes of 'G.O.D.S.' visit the Collector
Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti for Marvel The heroes of 'G.O.D.S.' visit the Collector
One thing I really love about House of X is that on the one hand, it kicked off years and years of X-Men comics. But on the other hand, I can pull that hardcover off my shelf at any time and read it as a totally coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end. Were you trying to accomplish something similar with G.O.D.S.? How do you balance that when you're planning a story?
I am guilty of writing for the trade. I think about the collection from day one. This book is very interesting in that we are going to eight issues and then we're going to collect the hardcover. And those eight issues, as you may have heard, are about 12 issues' worth of pages. So it'll be House of X-size. What is different about it is that I like to add in extra content, the data pages, all that kind of stuff. I think, but I don't know for sure, that all of that stuff isn't going to show up until the hardcover. So it'll actually be a completely different experience than the monthly book. And the reason for that is all the monthly issues are long and we just have a certain page count that we are trying to keep the price at the correct ratio of where we want it to be. So that could happen, that could not happen. That's going to be a case-by-case issue. We'll see.
But the object is always to make a beautiful book. I'm very happy about the fact that the vast majority of my stuff at Marvel is still in print, because I treat the collection as the final version while still maintaining the importance of the monthly book.
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