So today on Bleeding Cool, they have an article : Jonathan Hickman’s Legion of Super Heroes Would Have Had a House of X (bleedingcool.com) that basically implies that many of Hickman’s House of X ideas would have originally been part of his pitch for The Legion of Super-Heroes and that his new series from Marvel G.O.D.S. shares a lot in common with the New Gods mythology.
It’s fascinating to think that we could have had Hickman-penned Legion and New Gods and you have to wonder what that would have looked like. So I ask you, my friends, what would it have looked like? Let’s talk about Legion and New Gods by Jonathan Hickman…
While I don’t mind DC acquiring the Marvel alumni G Willow Wilson, Chip Zdarksy, and Tini Howard. If DC ever managed to get exclusivity with writers like Johnathan Hickman, Al Ewing, and Saladin Ahmed. DC Comics would be in it’s best era ever.
Hickman work on X-men actually got me interested in the comic lineup before the franchise adopted it’s bad habits of saturated titles again. I think the Legion of super-heroes wouldn’t have the problem the X-men did and he would have had more creative freedom to explore these characters and his big ideas would work well in this far future setting.
Brian Michael Bendis, really had a bad time developing the cast individually where they often traveled together. Hickman does sledid work with juggling lot of characters and even give some focus to less popular ones. His best example of this is making one of the less popular X-men characters, Cypher, into one of the more important members in the book.
He would definitely make Bouncing Boy into a MVP.
As for New Gods. Interesting. I honestly think while I don’t like his Avengers book, Jason Aaron would probably be more suited towards New Gods. I’m so confused by Johnathan Hickman G.O.D.S. it seems like something that would work independent from the Marvel universe.
Alternate timeline idea is at least as old as the bronze age legion story that had anti-lad and legion needs a simplified continuity rather than a complicated continuity that includes alternate timelines.
Resurrecting dead characters is at least as old as the bronze age legion story that had clones of ferro lad and lyle norg invisible kid. I do like the idea of resurrecting dead characters like beast boy, kid psycho, mentalla, chemical king, magnetic kid, etc.
During the bronze age, there was a story about life extension which sounds reasonable to me and helps justify keeping the boy and girl codenames and can help justify keeping the legion members looking like high school students.
To make it easier for both 31st century legion and new gods to participate in events, I would have both groups have secret identities in current time just like other current time vigilantes.
I’ve always lamented that the Hickman Legion never came to pass. I’m betting it would have ranked with some of his best work (The Nightly News and S.H.I.E.L.D.) and then some.
New Gods by Hickman would be a work worthy of The King himself and then some, I bet. Maybe that one can happen if and when the Fourth World shows up in a future chapter of Gunn and Safran’s new DCEU?
Pulls out his wallet and puts a fiver on the box office counter.