Marvel's G.O.D.S. father Jonathan Hickman: "I want to only do things that excite me as a creator"

G.O.D.S. are coming to the Marvel Universe, and nothing will ever be quite the same. The new series by Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti is a little over a month away from launch, leaving little time before Marvel Universe magic gets redefined, recreating a number of familiar Marvel entities in the process… all while telling a human-level story attempting to introduce something new into the world.

Juggling all of that is no easy task, but Hickman and Schiti are far from strangers to ambitious comic book projects; the artist took on 2022’s Avengers/X-Men: Judgment Day miniseries, while Hickman has done everything from remake the X-Men franchise with 2019’s House of X/Powers of X one-two punch to reset the Marvel Universe as a whole with 2015’s Secret Wars — a comic book series that laid the groundwork for the future of Marvel Studios’ output for the next few years.

Following a closed-door retailer call to discuss the new series, Popverse had ten minutes to speak with Hickman about G.O.D.S., its origins, and just what the title really means.

Popverse: I have a really easy first question: Is this an ongoing series? I thought this was a miniseries!

Jonathan Hickman: I have written the first trade as an eight-issue series that is really about 12 issues. [Laughs] I mean, I’m a mess, what can we do, right? Obviously, Marvel wants to do a lot more, but that will depend on whether people like it or not. I have no control over th — well, I guess I have some control over that. So, we’ll see. But everybody at the company is behind it, everybody digs it, Valerio really crushed it, so… we’ll see.

It was really interesting to hear Tom [Brevoort, Marvel executive editor and VP of publishing] liken it to Saga and Sandman during the retailer call, because on the one hand it’s this big idea — we’re redefining Marvel Magic and Marvel Cosmology — but on the other, you made a point of talking about the small, intimate, human stories.

Tom describes it that way because I told him, I was like, 'I think it’s gonna be like the Endless for the Marvel Universe? That might be what it’s gonna be?' And then I handed in the script, and he said, “I think you wrote Saga instead.” [Laughs] That’s where that came from.

It’s really nice that we’re taking a swing here, especially as the market is skittish right now, and everything is a safe bet or a traditional title, it feels like that way at Marvel and DC right now. We’re taking a swing, and I think the company should be applauded for that, and I hope we’ve done right by the opportunity. I think we have, but again, whether it hits right, whether people like it, we’ll just have to see.