Earlier this week, word broke that Mark Waid will be leaving Hulk after Marvel’s Original Sin event. And Waid won’t be the only departure in the coming months.
On his Tumblr account, Kieron Gillen revealed that he is leaving Iron Man following the conclusion of the Hulk and Iron Man Original Sin story.
“I’ve had a bunch of people asking about the absence of Iron Man from the new solicitations,” said Gillen. “Basically, the situation is this. An enormous opportunity turned up.
We looked at my schedule. We realized that it just wasn’t going to work. The new book Marvel was offering was so utterly irresistible, I knew something had to give – and I realized that I was actually in a good place to bring my run to a conclusion.”
“I realized the ORIGINAL SIN story would be a damn good climax for everything I’ve done,” continued Gillen. “And between all I’ve put in play with the Mandarin War, Iron Metropolitan and where the HULK/IRON MAN story ends up, there’s a mass of toys for the next writer to play with. And hey – with the annual? That’s 31 issues total, which is exactly as long as my Uncanny X-men and Journey Into Mystery runs. Yeah, there’s a pang about the other things I was going to play with, but when you hear of what this opportunity is, I suspect you’ll understand.”
Over at Comic Book Resources, Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso responded to Gillen’s announcement with a statement of his own: “When you read the ‘Original Sin’ tie-in story, ‘Hulk vs. Iron Man,’ you’ll see why this was the perfect place to bring Kieron’s run to a close, and why there’s no ‘Iron Man’ title in the August solicits. Kieron is leaving the series on a high note, and on his own terms, pencil sharpened and poised to write another epic story we’ll be talking about soon.”
The absence of Iron Man from the Marvel solicitations for August suggests that another relaunch of that title may be in the cards. If so, it would likely come in September or October.
