shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

Great rundown, Tuomas, but I think you meant New Avengers rather than Secret Avengers as a companion piece to Time Runs Out?

But then Time Runs Out and Secret Wars we find out that Cap's role in this was meaningless, nothing he does or doesn't do matters, and the multiverse will be destroyed anyway. So the whole time travel story was kinda pointless.

Yeah this kind of reminds me of Locke in Lost - where, in retrospect, the whole character arc is essentially pointless. I think that's part of why the ending to the pre-Secret Wars stuff in unsatisfying.

It's not that Hickman leaves tons of plot loose ends -- but that they just hacked off instead of tied up.

Great rundown, Tuomas, but I think you meant New Avengers rather than Secret Avengers as a companion piece to Time Runs Out?

Yeah, sorry about that! In my posts above I was talking about New Avengers, not Secret Avengers (which isn't even written by Hickman). It's just that because New Avengers involves a group of superheroes working in secrecy, I always conflate the two names in my head.

Yeah this kind of reminds me of Locke in Lost - where, in retrospect, the whole character arc is essentially pointless. I think that's part of why the ending to the pre-Secret Wars stuff in unsatisfying.

This was one of the reasons why I recommended just reading Hickman's New Avengers and not Avengers as a prelude to Secret Wars. Avengers does have some good subplots, but some of them are kinda long-winded and don't really lead to anything (the whole Builders thing and Infinity were essentially a looong interlude that didn't really matter that much, and ended in a rather unsatisfying finale)... Whereas New Avengers is tightly plotted and works nicely as a whole (of course it helps that it has only one long plot and a limited set of characters).

Another problem with Infinity (and Secret Wars too) is that Hickman doesn't really get Thanos at all. It seems he's just read the 70s Starlin comics and Infinity Gauntlet, and from them concluded that Thanos is a megalomaniac villain who wants to conquer the universe or something... He completely ignores all the character development Thanos has gone through starting from the last issue of IG, i.e. the last 20+ years of his publication history.

Lockes story is the best thing about Lost!

Also, I like the Avengers run, perhaps more than New Avengers. But it should probably be taken as it's own thing, that doesn't fit perfectly together with the incursion story. As a bunch of loosely related vignettes, with an enormous and ever-changing cast, it's quite good. Overall it's mostly a story of how the plotting of Iron Man and the idealism of Captain America, comes to blows yet again.

It also helps that the weirdest tangent, everything about AIM, is followed up in Al Ewings pretty great New Avengers.

I'd agree that Hickman doesn't really care about Thanos.

On the other hand, I reread most of the Fantastic Four/Future Foundation runs recently and I still got the chills when adult Franklin says, "To me.... MY GALACTUS!"

oh yeah, tiny correction to Tuomas's excellent summary:

Kid Franklin's roommate is Leech, not Artie. He was supposed to be keeping a damper on Franklin's powers, but the Richards family didn't realize Leech has a lot more control now and was letting Franklin cut loose for their little adventures.

Ah, you're right. I'm always mixing up Artie and Leech too.

IIRC years ago I read some Elseworlds type of story where it was revealed Galactus *is* Franklin... Or did I dream this up?

That sounds familiar, but Marvel's been playing so fast and loose with the glimpses into alternate realities in recent years that I can't even keep track anymore.

Ah, okay, yes. Earth X is what you're thinking of.

Oh yeah, that's the one!

Oh, and one further addition to the summary:
* Dr. Strange finds about Doom and Molecule Man's plan, and he's there with them when they attack the Beyonders. This explains why acts the way he does in Secret Wars.

wtf, something ate my post or maybe it ended up on the wrong thread

Earth X was kind of thrown in the trash as far as things go, but a number of the ideas in the series have popped up in different ways. It had an amnesiac Galactus who didn't remember he was Franklin Richards.

Hickman's timeline has Franklin living until the end of the Marvel universe, after which he will become the last surviving person and therefore become the Galactus for the next one.

I didn't know Valeria had such a fucked up character background!

I like the current take on her where they just write her as if she and Franklin are just a normal pair of siblings, with the caveat that one has the potential for godlike powers and the other is a three year old with an intellect nearly on par with her dad's who thinks of Doom as her uncle.

Wait, isn't Franklin's deal with Galactus that he'll be there with him at the end and they'll carry on to the next universe together?

Hickman's run is a great example of both a genuine universe-scale cosmic story and a great big box of tools for the next writer to root around in if they want.

Anyone read his Secret Warriors run - worth the effort?

It's what actually turned me on to his Marvel work, and it's pretty good! I'm not sure how much Bendis had to do with the initial plotting, but it has that wheels-within-wheels Hickman thing going, although all contained within one series. It also has enough callbacks for Nick Fury fans to make it worthwhile

Secret Warriors was decent but got completely fucked by forced crossovers and the like. I think his SHIELD series was great.

I've dug pretty much everything of Hickman's that I've read. Except maybe not so much his Ultimate stuff but that's more because it's Ultimate stuff than because of his contribution.

His Image series East of West is one of the only ongoing comics I still give a crap about.