Parting Shot: Jonathan Hickman Parts Ways with the Fantastic Four

Marvel Comics has confirmed that writer Jonathan Hickman will conclude his work on the publisher's Fantastic Four and FF titles later this year. As demonstrated by David Uzumeri's ongoing annotations, Hickman and his artistic collaborators' work with the characters created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee has been especially rich and compelling, and the writer's penchant for epic and meticulously plotting made Marvel franchise one of the company's most popular.

"I always had an end point in mind, but along the way I really fell in love with writing Marvel's First Family and I also had all these dangling bits to clean up, so I agreed-[and] wanted-to stay on," Hickman told Marvel.com's Ben Morse. "Then all the gears started turning on all the [Avengers Vs. X-Men] stuff and what comes after and it just became obvious that October would be a good time to hop off."

Hickman's mega-story wraps up with October's Fantastic Four #611 and FF #23.