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The first issue of Marvel Comics’ Imperial has just been released, but the future of the company’s sci-fi franchises is already beckoning — and it’ll be a future without current architect Jonathan Hickman, the writer who’s pulled all of Imperial together.

“Jonathan is writing Imperial and will be co-writing the assorted Imperial one-shots that come out between issues #3 and #4. But that’ll be it for him thereafter,” Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort confirmed in his most recent newsletter, responding to a fan asking whether or not Hickman would be attached to a series spinning out of the four-issue series. Imperial is the latest Marvel Comics series in which Hickman has been brought in to redefine existing characters and concepts — in this case, the publisher’s ‘Marvel Cosmic’ science fiction properties — into an ideally more commercially successful form.

Hickman not sticking around for a spin-off series means that Imperial is different from both Hickman’s acclaimed Ultimate Universe and X-Men work, where he wrote introductory miniseries setting up core concepts before settling into ongoing series exploring one of those concepts in more detail — X-Men and the best-selling Ultimate Spider-Man, specifically.

Speaking in early May, Hickman told the Off-Panel podcast, “A big thing I do for [Marvel] right now is, I try to give them a tree to hang some branches off of. So the Ultimate Universe works that way. The Imperial thing is going to work that way where, when we’re done with it, three or four other writers can come in, and they can kind of pick up a book that’s already moving forward - like, it doesn’t have to start from an origin point. That’s kind of my job, is doing the origin point.”

So far, Hickman’s origin point has included folding in the Black Panther and Hulk franchises into the traditional ‘Cosmic’ properties; it’s also already known that Hickman will also be adding Professor Xavier from the X-Men into the mix in a future issue. Notably, only one of the Imperial War spin-offs announced features a title traditionally considered a ‘Marvel Cosmic’ concept.

Imperial #2 will be released July 16, and #3 on August 20; the series then goes on hiatus while a number of tie-in issues under the banner Imperial War are released, each co-written by Hickman. The Imperial War issues announced to date are:

• Imperial War: Black Panther by Hickman, Victor Lavalle, and Cafu (August 20)
• Imperial War: Planet She-Hulk by Hickman, Stephanie Phillips, and Emilio Lasso (August 27)
• Imperial War: Exiles by Hickman, Steve Foxe, and Francesco Manna (September 3)
• Imperial War: Nova - Centurion #1, by Hickman, Jed Mackay, and Matteo Della Fonte (September 10)

It’s unknown if more Imperial War one-shots will be announced by Marvel before Imperial’s return. The final issue of the core series, by Hickman and artists Iban Coello and Federico Vicentini, has yet to be dated by Marvel.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.