UNCANNY X-MEN Writer Kieron Gillen Gives Up

Kieron Gillen

He’s tackled video games, Asgard, and Britpop, but now, after a year writing Marvel’s merry mutants, Kieron Gillen is giving up.

“I just can’t take it anymore.” Gillen said. “Every single panel is a struggle. It’s like trying to cover every song from SMILE armed only with a vocoder and a very large bottle of absinthe, which is to say, a lot of fun to imagine until it’s how you pay your rent.”

Gillen, like many comic creators, grew up fantasizing about writing the X-Men. He had been co-writing the book with Matt Fraction before taking over the title full-time, a challenge he rose to gladly. The X-Men REGENESIS event, and the subsequent relaunch of the flagship UNCANNY title, are what sent him over the edge.

“New readers. Old readers. There’s no way to please everyone with this book. Do I explain what Nimrod is to the newbies, or delve deeper into Namor and Scott’s latent, homoerotic tension? There is no right answer.”

To clarify, Gillen isn’t leaving the title. He is just giving up trying to make it work. When asked what to expect from upcoming issues, Kieron had this to say:

“Phoenix comes back next month. I don’t know how or why, but she just does. I guess Bendis and the guys have some event for it next year, but she shows up in the new issue for us and she fights Thanos, who is trying to get Rogue to go out on a date with him. I can’t be arsed with consistency anymore.”

“It was a lot easier writing about cynical hipsters obsessed with Kenickie. You try explaining to your friends that you can’t come out for tea because you’re too busy researching The Brood.”

On the other side of the aisle, Jason Aaron continues to drink Wild Turkey straight while browsing reddit and churns out scripts for WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN with astonishing ease.