G.O.D.S. are coming to the Marvel Universe, and nothing will ever be quite the same. The new series by Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti is a little over a month away from launch, leaving little time before Marvel Universe magic gets redefined, recreating a number of familiar Marvel entities in the process… all while telling a human-level story attempting to introduce something new into the world.

Juggling all of that is no easy task, but Hickman and Schiti are far from strangers to ambitious comic book projects; the artist took on 2022’s Avengers/X-Men: Judgment Day miniseries, while Hickman has done everything from remake the X-Men franchise with 2019’s House of X/Powers of X one-two punch to reset the Marvel Universe as a whole with 2015’s Secret Wars — a comic book series that laid the groundwork for the future of Marvel Studios’ output for the next few years.

Following a closed-door retailer call to discuss the new series, Popverse had ten minutes to speak with Hickman about G.O.D.S., its origins, and just what the title really means.

Popverse: I have a really easy first question: Is this an ongoing series? I thought this was a miniseries!

Jonathan Hickman: I have written the first trade as an eight-issue series that is really about 12 issues. [Laughs] I mean, I’m a mess, what can we do, right? Obviously, Marvel wants to do a lot more, but that will depend on whether people like it or not. I have no control over th — well, I guess I have some control over that. So, we’ll see. But everybody at the company is behind it, everybody digs it, Valerio really crushed it, so… we’ll see.

It was really interesting to hear Tom [Brevoort, Marvel executive editor and VP of publishing] liken it to Saga and Sandman during the retailer call, because on the one hand it’s this big idea — we’re redefining Marvel Magic and Marvel Cosmology — but on the other, you made a point of talking about the small, intimate, human stories.

Tom describes it that way because I told him, I was like, 'I think it’s gonna be like the Endless for the Marvel Universe? That might be what it’s gonna be?' And then I handed in the script, and he said, “I think you wrote Saga instead.” [Laughs] That’s where that came from.

It’s really nice that we’re taking a swing here, especially as the market is skittish right now, and everything is a safe bet or a traditional title, it feels like that way at Marvel and DC right now. We’re taking a swing, and I think the company should be applauded for that, and I hope we’ve done right by the opportunity. I think we have, but again, whether it hits right, whether people like it, we’ll just have to see.

What was the origin point? Was this something where you were approached with, 'Fix Marvel magic?'

No, I was tasked with doing Black Mirror for the Marvel Universe. That’s what the origin was. The two properties I was, “given” isn’t the right word, but that we settled on when I came back to Marvel was, a Black Mirror for the Marvel Universe, and a “we got the Fox stuff back so let’s kick ass with the X-Men and see if we can’t knock that out of the park.”

That, obviously, has really transformed over the years. That element is still there — there are one-and-done issues that feel like that, that feel like a weird exploration of the Marvel Universe — but there’s this other thing as well. There’s a lot packed in there, but that was the origin.

Did it transform because that’s where your head goes? Do you want to see the systems, or —

I don’t know if I’m allowed to answer this honestly or not… When I came back, one of things I was going to do [was] micro-content that was also video stuff. But Marvel underwent changes, and obviously Marvel television used to be handled by publishing, but that all changed and that went over to Marvel Studios. I got caught up in that, and what was essentially comics-slash-micro-television-episodes — like, ten minute episodes — turned into this.

At some point, I sat down with it, and I rewrote all of it into what it is now, but it definitely slowly evolved into what it is now.

Are you someone who went back to read all of the… I mean, you’re talking about the In-Betweener. Have you gone back to re-read all of the old Marvel cosmic stuff as research for this?

Well, I mean, I’m old enough that I grew up with those things. I worshipped at the church of Jim Starlin, just like all the other guys my age for a little bit. I have all of the original Dreadstar books, even the Epic Illustrated stuff. I was there, you know? So… it was a lot like working on the X-Men in that instance, in that, this was a Marvel thing that I was involved in [as a reader]. There was the kid me that remembered it, and then there was the adult-professional-writer-person who was tasked with the job, and that was definitely the synergy of that.

It’s not a love letter like the X-Men, which is nostalgic, it is “I understand those concepts, and where they were going with it, and I’m just trying to make it more accessible.” It’s one of the corners of the Marvel Universe where, like Marvel Cosmic, every once in awhile, we get it right, and it hits really big. Like, people love Annihilation, right? And people are like, “we want more Annihilation,” but the thing is, sometimes it’s only accessible to Keith Giffen’s brain, right? That is a thing that happens! So, it’s an effort to make it more palatable to people who used to writing superhero books. You want to put a patina on it so that it’s more usable.

Obviously, we won’t know the answer to whether it’s been successful in that vein for a couple of years, but we’ll see.

I see traces of 3 Worlds 3 Moons in here as much as I do Marvel mythology. You talked about the importance of this being new in the retailer conference. Is this where your head is right now, about doing something different and appealing to — I don’t want to say the non-comics readers, but the people who didn’t buy Epic Illustrated back then?

If I’m being honest, where my head is at is, I want to only do things that excite me as a creator. I’ve been around long enough that I don’t have any interest in doing anything that bores me because it won’t be good. I’ve got a long enough track record, that — I’ve talked to Grant Morrison about this, when I was interviewing him for 3 Worlds 3 Moons. I was asking him for advice, right? “Dear Grant…” I was asking him, I was like, tell me how you deal with the thing where, when a new Grant Morrison book comes out, it doesn’t matter if it’s better than all the other books that came out that week, what matters is how it compares to the other Grant Morrison books. You’re not competing with everyone else, you’re competing with yourself. That’s where I’m at.

I generally create for a readership of one, which is me. I’m solely interested in, is this good compared to all of my other stuff. And I would like for it to be better, so that I can sleep at night, and not be mediocre. That’s very much where I’m at. I’m only interested in doing stuff that blows my hair back and excites me, or something that has that little spark of fire that I hope could grow bigger. I’m working on another book for Marvel right now that I swore I would never work on, and the sole reason why I’m doing it is that there was a way into it that I had never considered before, I found it, and now I’m having the time of my life working on it. How long will that last? I don’t know. And I’ll definitely quit when I stop feeling that. But this is a book that’s definitely in that vein. I want to do stuff that excites me.

Okay, here’s a simple last question: What does G.O.D.S. stand for? It’s an acronym.

Well, we haven’t revealed this yet, but if you look at the title page — I actually think we didn’t put it in the first issue because we had to pull the data pages out of it because it was already out of it — the little dots have numbers in them. It’s more like a word puzzle than it is an acronym. We’ll reveal that soon enough.

We had a big fight over the name G.O.D.S. Marvel was like, “can we put dots in between it, so that it means something?” And I was like, “no, but we can do this, and that would make it cool.” They were like, “fine, whatever. We won the dot argument, so whatever.” [Laughs]

G.O.D.S. will launch with a 64-page first issue available October 4.

Revisit the initial announcement of the series right here.