I was reading (more like revisiting the "best of"s) Hickman's F4/FF & Avengers/New Avengers a while back, and I was quite shocked at just how larger the scope and the scale were in those. Which is weird, considering how big the X-Verse is and how big the playing field is in the current status quo. But for some reason every new issue feels no different than when they were hanging out at the mansion. It's just Utopia 2.0 now and they have orgies and tiki bars. You take FF. In just 5 issues there were intergallactic wars and alternate universes converging on city-wide machines as a bunch of crazy supergeniuses were fucking around with an Infinity Gauntlet. His F4's first few issues had an interuniversal council that fought Celestials and an Amper Uber-Galactus. But we're 20 issues into his X-Men and all I remember was the shitty X Of Swords event and the muties being smug cunts on some trade meeting. There's just no energy to it. Regardless of how high the stakes are supposed to be, it all feels hollow.

My take is that it's because of the huge cast and excessive amount of tie-ins. Back then he only had to juggle two books and at most some spin-offs that literally didn't matter to the story. Now you have it all bleeding into each other, with the writing styles clashing and slowing down the pace. I honestly think that it won't pick up, especially with how bad Hickman is at endings. Even the Homo-Novisima stuff seemed pretty tame. I don't know, I don't think his heart's really in this. He always made characters sound a tad robotic, but contrast his early Marvel stuff to the current X-Stuff and it's as if he's doing it on purpose. Seriously, go back and read Secret Warriors and F4. His X-Men are almost like braindead robots.

I can't be the only one who's noticed all these things.