In some big, random, sort of shocking news, Charles Soule has replaced Matt Fraction as the writer of the upcoming “Inhuman” from Marvel, a book that recently was announced as being pushed back from January to April. Many speculated that the reason for the delay was artist Joe Madureira going a wee bit slow as he is known for, but now it seems like the delay could at least partially be caused by Fraction’s departure. Either way, it’s cool news for the fast rising Soule, a man who took our Breakout Writer award this year for his work on books like “Swamp Thing”, “Letter 44” and “Thunderbolts.”
Crazy theory time, though: could Matt Fraction be leaving Marvel all together? He’s now out on three of his four books at Marvel, with “Hawkeye” being the only book he’s still working on (and even that has had some subtle hints of potentially being near its end). We know he’s one of the featured guests at January’s Image Expo, and with the sales of “Sex Criminals” and “Satellite Sam” being pretty damn stellar, he might be at a point where not only is it preferable creatively to work on creator-owned, but commercially as well.
If that’s the case, could we see the follow-up to “Casanova: Avaritia” end up at Image? I’m not sure how that works exactly, if Fraction could take “Casanova” away from Icon back to Image, but hey, idle speculation is idle speculation. It is very interesting that his Marvel workload is dwindling so significantly, and the timing is even more so.
Lots of intrigue here, but the one thing we know for sure is a good writer got a great gig. Congrats to Soule, and we’re looking forward to what he has to bring to the table on that book.
Note: According to Rich at Bleeding Cool, “I’ve been able to confirm that Fraction and Marvel are happily working on other projects.” So there that is.
