SPACE, MAN
Jonathan Hickman is the king of Image’s cerebral new comic Frontier…
Introducing Frontier, Image Comics’ gritty new sci-fi series from Jonathan Hickman.
Pitched as “like Star Trek but super depressing”, Jonathan Hickman’s new Image series Frontier initially appears to resemble the dark flipside of Trek’s utopian ideals. Set in a future where humanity is kicked out of an intergalactic alliance for being too violent – before being reluctantly welcomed back when a greater threat in the form of The Accursed rears his head – the one-time regular Marvel scribe insists it actually has little in common with the voyages of the Enterprise.
“It doesn’t share any similarities with Gene Roddenberry’s vision beyond asking, ‘What if things went the other way?’” Hickman tells Red Alert. “That’s something I’m sure plenty of people will have trouble with, but if you read the two oral histories of Star Trek that just came out, you know that Roddenberry doesn’t like Wrath Of Khan, which is unquestionably a greater sin than anything I’ll be committing.”
Hickman also cites Iain M Banks’ Culture series and Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos books, as well as online game Eve Mechanics, as influences. But despite sending Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into the depths of outer space in series like 2013 crossover Infinity, he insists that Frontier is very different to his Marvel output. “It might share some headspace with New Avengers," he muses, “but I don’t think it’s quite that dark.”
Having started out scripting and illustrating series like The Nightly New, Frontier also sees Hickman return to the drawing board for the first time in almost a decade. “It’s not really anything to do with the series itself,” he says. “Frontier was just the thing that was in my head when my schedule cleared up.” Bold indeed.
Frontier #1 is published by Image Comics on 16 November.