I feel like Hickman is the new Brian Wood - the incredible artist who catches my eye by using bold (if sometimes static) designs, and then completely overwhelms me with the quality of their writing, to the point that I don't really notice when they stop drawing, because I'll buy anything with their name on it.
Pax Romana tells the story of a large group of people from the near-ish future sent back to early-Christian Rome to change the course of human history. The group quickly dispatches their Catholic Church overseers, and begin to implement their own agenda.
As seems to often be the case with a Hickman book (read the brilliant 'The Nightly News'), there is a lot of text - entire pages of dialogue with a little illustration, and an incredible amount of research. In this issue we learn that the time-travellers intend to push Christendom through a rapid succession of social orders - fascism, communism, and then democracy in an accelerated fashion, even though they don't expect to be around to see the fruits of their labour.
Their plan is complicated by a sudden appearance at the end, which makes me look forward to the final issue, which should be out sometime (one can never tell when with a Hickman book).
I know that Hickman's been tapped to co-write 'The Secret Warriors' (or something like that) with Bendis at Marvel, as part of their new post-Secret Invasion wave of books. I'm curious to see how he deals with a more traditional comic series (his Red Mass for Mars is the closest he's come), and I hope that his big money work-for-hire doesn't stop him from doing gems like this.
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