American comic book writer and artist
Jonathan Hickman is an American comic book writer and artist, best known for his creator-owned series The Nightly News, The Manhattan Projects and East of West, as well as his lengthy stints as a writer on Marvel's Fantastic Four, The Avengers and The New Avengers. Hickman's other notable work at Marvel includes the S.H.I.E.L.D. limited series, the creation of the Fantastic Four spin-off title FF, as well as two crossover limited series, Infinity and Secret Wars, both of which acted as centerpieces for the eponymous company-wide crossover storylines. Between 2019 and 2021, Hickman worked on "Dawn of X", a relaunch of various X-Men-related titles for which he provided the core storyline and concepts.
Early life
Jonathan Hickman was born and raised in South Carolina. He graduated from South Florence High School in Florence, South Carolina.[2] After high school, Hickman earned a degree in Architecture.[3]
Career
Before breaking into comics, Hickman worked in the fields of Web and CD-ROM development and later, advertising.[3] Between 2006 and 2008, Hickman published his debut comic book series The Nightly News[4] and Pax Romana,[5] both of which he wrote, drew, colored and lettered, through Image. Soon after, he was invited to write for Marvel, and, in 2009, Hickman launched his first ongoing series Secret Warriors which followed Nick Fury and a group of superpowered operatives as they undertook espionage operations in the wake of the company-wide crossover storyline "Secret Invasion".[6][7] The following year, Hickman wrote the S.H.I.E.L.D. limited series which detailed the secret history of the eponymous spy organization operating within the Marvel Universe.[8][9][10][11] During this period, he continued to publish various creator-owned projects through Image: Transhuman with artist J. M. Ringuet, A Red Mass for Mars with artist Ryan Bodenheim[12][13] and The Red Wing with Nick Pitarra.[14]
In 2009, Hickman began his run on Fantastic Four with the Dark Reign: Fantastic Four limited series, illustrated by Sean Chen,[15][16] taking over the series proper with issue #570, drawn by Dale Eaglesham. In the storyline "Three", which concluded in Fantastic Four #587, the Human Torch appeared to die stopping a horde of monsters from the other-dimensional Negative Zone.[17][18][19] The series ended with the following issue and was relaunched as simply FF. Hickman finished his run on the Fantastic Four and became the writer of The Avengers and The New Avengers as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch in late 2012.[20][21] Hickman's run on the titles spawned two company-wide crossover storylines, "Infinity" in 2013[22] and "Secret Wars" in 2015.[23] After taking a leave from Marvel to focus on his long-form creator-owned titles, Hickman returned to the publisher for "Dawn of X", the 2019 relaunch of the X-Men family of titles which began with the House of X and Powers of X limited series that laid out the new status quo developed by Hickman. He subsequently wrote the core X-Men series while the creators of other titles worked closely under his supervision.[24] Hickman announced his departure from writing X-Men in August 2021.[25]
In August 2021, Hickman was among a group of creators with whom fellow comics writer Nick Spencer formed a deal with the subscription-based newsletter platform Substack to publish creator-owned comics stories, essays, and instructional guides on that platform. Hickman indicated that he would collaborate with artists Mike del Mundo and Mike Huddleston and writer Tini Howard on a new series, Three Worlds, Three Moons, which will give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of building a fictional universe.[26]
