In 2006 Jonathan Hickman broke onto the sequential scene with his groundbreaking and highly original, The Nightly News; a story about a cult who make it their mission to wreak havoc on reporters and news corporations by staging terrorist attacks against them. He followed this huge success with Transhuman, where two rival science groups compete in creating the first superhuman, and then Pax Romana; a tale where the Catholic Church creates a time machine in order to send a modern day army back to the late 300’s CE. The army’s mission is to prevent the fall of the Roman Empire from happening, thus securing Roman Catholicism as the world’s dominant religion for all time. It’s an intense read.
All three of these works were published by Image. Hickman served as both writer and artist for News and Pax, but was only the writer for Transhuman (J.M. Ringuet was the artist). Image is currently publishing Hickman’s fourth series with them, Red Mass for Mars, which he is writing along with Ryan Bodenheim providing the art, but fans have been eagerly awaiting the final chapter for months.
Perhaps the delay has something to do with Jonathan’s most popular work of late getting the spotlight as well as wide-spread recognition; he is currently writing Secret Warriors and Fantastic Four for Marvel! In Secret Warriors he spins a secret-ops style story starring Nick Fury and Ares’ son, Alexander, and in Fantastic Four his mastery of the science fiction genre is awesomely displayed as Reed Richards learns his importance to the universe, and the rest of the team gets trapped in the future. It’s fantastic stuff!
Enjoy this two part interview I conducted with Jonathan at Collector’s Paradise in Los Angeles, back in August 2009!
Andy Liegl
andy@comicattack.net
Good stuff Andy. Hickman for me is an anomaly. Sometimes his plots get me hooked just from the previews but other times I just don’t get dazzled by certain ones. “Death of The Invisible Woman” was the latest I can think of. I bought the first issue and thought it was cool but I also knew where it was going before it got their, so it really in the end, was the reason I didn’t keep buying FF after that arc. Secret Warriors has always looked cool but hasn’t made my pull list yet. Maybe in trade.
Dude, you have to sample his stuff. I’d suggest Pax Romana or Nightly News first. Then move onto F4 and Secret Warriors. It’s all really solid!