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The first issue of Marvel Comics’ Imperial has just been released, but the future of the company’s sci-fi franchises is already beckoning — and it’ll be a future without current architect Jonathan Hickman, the writer who’s pulled all of Imperial together.

“Jonathan is writing Imperial and will be co-writing the assorted Imperial one-shots that come out between issues #3 and #4. But that’ll be it for him thereafter,” Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort confirmed in his most recent newsletter, responding to a fan asking whether or not Hickman would be attached to a series spinning out of the four-issue series. Imperial is the latest Marvel Comics series in which Hickman has been brought in to redefine existing characters and concepts — in this case, the publisher’s ‘Marvel Cosmic’ science fiction properties — into an ideally more commercially successful form.

Hickman not sticking around for a spin-off series means that Imperial is different from both Hickman’s acclaimed Ultimate Universe and X-Men work, where he wrote introductory miniseries setting up core concepts before settling into ongoing series exploring one of those concepts in more detail — X-Men and the best-selling Ultimate Spider-Man, specifically.

Speaking in early May, Hickman told the Off-Panel podcast, “A big thing I do for [Marvel] right now is, I try to give them a tree to hang some branches off of. So the Ultimate Universe works that way. The Imperial thing is going to work that way where, when we’re done with it, three or four other writers can come in, and they can kind of pick up a book that’s already moving forward - like, it doesn’t have to start from an origin point. That’s kind of my job, is doing the origin point.”

So far, Hickman’s origin point has included folding in the Black Panther and Hulk franchises into the traditional ‘Cosmic’ properties; it’s also already known that Hickman will also be adding Professor Xavier from the X-Men into the mix in a future issue. Notably, only one of the Imperial War spin-offs announced features a title traditionally considered a ‘Marvel Cosmic’ concept.

Imperial #2 will be released July 16, and #3 on August 20; the series then goes on hiatus while a number of tie-in issues under the banner Imperial War are released, each co-written by Hickman. The Imperial War issues announced to date are:

• Imperial War: Black Panther by Hickman, Victor Lavalle, and Cafu (August 20)
• Imperial War: Planet She-Hulk by Hickman, Stephanie Phillips, and Emilio Lasso (August 27)
• Imperial War: Exiles by Hickman, Steve Foxe, and Francesco Manna (September 3)
• Imperial War: Nova - Centurion #1, by Hickman, Jed Mackay, and Matteo Della Fonte (September 10)

It’s unknown if more Imperial War one-shots will be announced by Marvel before Imperial’s return. The final issue of the core series, by Hickman and artists Iban Coello and Federico Vicentini, has yet to be dated by Marvel.

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time, and get ready for all the free Marvel comics coming as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day / Comics Giveaway Day events.