Popverse's top stories

• The Popverse Superfan presale for C2E2 2026 celebrity photo ops and autograph is here - here's everything you need to know
• “Acting is a contact sport”: Actor/director Bryce Dallas Howard on stunts, safety, and chasing adrenaline
• The Popverse Superfan presale for ECCC 2026 celebrity photo ops and autograph is here - here's everything you need to know

Writer Jonathan Hickman's vision for the X-Men during their Krakoa era will remain one of the most haunting takes in superhero comics. With the relaunch of the X-Men titles with House of X/Powers of X in 2019, Hickman unveiled a bold new status quo for Marvel's Merry Mutants on the living island of Krakoa. With a group of mutants called the Five, the X-Men now had the ability to resurrect any fallen mutant, who could be reborn with their memories intact.

Hickman's tenure on the X-Men franchise was truncated - cutting into what fans had hoped for, and as Hickman has spoken about briefly, prematurely for him as well. As the writer has said, he had a three-act plan for the X-Men that largely when unrealized due to forces at Marvel and the world-at-large that stymied it.

While speaking to Popverse about his Ultimate Spider-Man series with artist Marco Checchetto ahead of its series finale in 2026, Hickman expressed that he was satisfied with his experience on the Ultimate line, much more so than the X-Men line because he was afforded an opportunity to tell the entire story he set out to tell.

"Well, I think what I would say is, generally speaking, when I leave a book, I have said everything that I want to say about a quote property unquote, right. And I would generally say that this is true regarding me writing Spider-Man stuff," Hickman began. 

"Obviously I write a bunch of Marvel Universe things and Spider-Man will show up again and I'm sure some of those, it’s inevitable. People seem to like Spider-Man [chuckles]. But... I mean I feel like I have said everything that I wanted to say. And you know I set up Endgame to work a certain way, very happy with what Deniz [Camp, writer of The Ultimates] is doing, really crushed it at the end. And so, generally speaking, once I'm done with something, I'm done with it."

"I think the only thing I would say that that's not been true about is when I was doing X-Men," Hickman added.

This isn't the first time that Hickman has spoken about how his third act plans for Krakoa never materialized. Previously, Hickman stated that his work on X-Men was his "most disappointing creative experience that I've had because I didn't finish the story that I set out to do, which is a cardinal sin and a total, total bummer.”

After Hickman wrote the Inferno mini-series in 2021, his time working on the X-Men Krakoan books was over. But of course, the conclusion of Inferno wasn't the conclusion of the Krakoan age as a whole: that would take place during the Fall of X arc. 

In the end, there were a few elements from Krakoa that were left on the table. I'm still thinking about the babies born on Krakoa who are now in the White Hot Room, along with the island itself. I know they're okay, but the parental instinct in me can't let it go. 

Anyways, at least Hickman got to tell the story he wanted to tell with Ultimate Spider-Man, and it's an absolute banger of a book. 

Popverse members can read the entire interview with Jonathan Hickman here. 

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.