Hello and welcome to Comic Book Herald’s Hickmania, a series running through 2022 where we’ll be reading and analyzing the creator-owned works of writer Jonathan Hickman, from his debut The Nightly News through to his most recent output. We’ll be reading one creator-owned work a month through 2022, and each month I’ll release a new analysis with a new guest discussing the comic!
Today we’re talking The Red Wing
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[Read more…] about Hickmania #5: The Red Wing (W/ Sean Dillon!)
and I’m joined by 
. The plot is a rather straight forward tale of “Alien invaders are coming to conquer the Earth, boo-hoo we’re all going to die. Wait! The superheroes will save us!” that you’ve seen time and time again. Thin plots can work wonders for exploring ideas. 
is one of the more difficult books in Jonathan Hickman’s backlog to evenhandedly discuss. This isn’t due to enormous storytelling or thematic complexity, or that the premise inherently incites controversy in the same fashion as his inaugural Nightly News. No, it’s simply because the entire story pivots around a gag about bestiality gang rape. There is no downplaying that. It’s three issues of buildup to that punchline and a chunk of the last issue is spent chuckling over the assorted humiliating fates of the victims. One has to hope Hickman’s gained more than an ounce of taste and perspective in the roughly decade-and-a-half since this, but it’s almost surely the vilest thing he’s ever penned. It is, on that basis alone, impossible to recommend.
and