X-Men's Biggest Reboot Of All Time Crashed And Burned, According To Its Architect

Published Oct 13, 2026, 9:31 AM EDT

Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor.

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The X-Men franchise had never attempted a reboot on the scale of what Jonathan Hickman did with House of X/Powers of X in 2019. This was the inauguration of the Krakoan Era, which lasted half a decade, wrapping up in 2024. Except Hickman wasn't at the helm when the story ended, the way he was at the beginning. Marvel's Krakoa endgame proved divisive among the X-Men fandom, and Hickman has gone on record saying he's not pleased with it either.

"It ended badly, and it bums me out," Hickman said in a recent interview, when asked about Krakoa and the story he started with House of X. That's a blunt, but realistic admission from the author. Especially considering that several of his subsequent reboots, including the latest volume of Ultimate Spider-Man and the Imperial saga, have been similarly truncated by Marvel. To Hickman, this is the nature of the game working for Marvel Comics, but it is still a disappointing reality for a creator who comes up with the beginnings and endings of his stories at the same time.

That's how Jonathan Hickman described the first stage of his creative process in his latest appearance on the Battle of the Atom podcast. Hickman appeared on the show to talk about his brand-new X-Men reboot, which is as radically different from Krakoa as Krakoa was from everything that came before: Midnight X-Men. The podcasts' hosts made it through most of the episode before finally breaking down and asking the author about Krakoa.

Hickman reiterated his disappointment with how things played out, but also came to the defense of the writers that picked up the Krakoan ball where he left it and carried it to the finish line once Marvel decreed that the end was in sight. The truth is, the substance of the ending is less the issue. The real problem, for Hickman, is that the ending didn't track with what he'd set up way back in 2019.

Jonathan Hickman Repeats His Disappointment With How Marvel Ended X-Men's Krakoan Era

When asked if he'd go back and rewrite Krakoa's ending, given the opportunity, Jonathan Hickman demurred. It would be "not cool" to write over what his fellow X-Men creators did with the franchise after he stepped away from the franchise in 2021, just two years into the Krakoan Era. Many of the writers who worked on the bulk of the Era had been there from the very beginning, and while Hickman spearheaded the reboot, it was always meant to be bigger than just him and his vision.

Still, the full story of Hickman's departure, and what his original plan for Krakoa was, are still hotly debated topics in X-Men fandom. Hickman has refused to say what his ending would have been, to the point where Battle of the Atom's hosts knew better than to ask. But they did press him on how he feels about the compromises he has had to make to his plans for X-Men, and just in the past year, Ultimate Spider-Man.

Krakoa's Ending Needs To Be A Lesson For Marvel As Jonathan Hickman Launches "Midnight X-Men"

Jonathan Hickman pushed back against the idea that he's not good at endings, reiterating that decisions made above his head, often for business rather than creative reasons, have been the real enemy when it comes to pulling off long-term cohesive Marvel storytelling. The real question, now, is whether the lessons of Krakoa and the Ultimate Universe 2.0 will change how Marvel approaches its new Midnight horror reimagining of Marvel lore.

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​​​​Meaning, with the debut issue of Midnight X-Men out now, readers have seen the start of Hickman's new X-saga. So, we know Hickman knows how it is supposed to end. But will Marvel let him do the ending as he plans it, and will they let him take all the time he needs to get there in a satisfying way? After what happened with Krakoa, these are urgent questions for X-Men loyalists.