As officially confirmed in the backmatter of this week’s 25th issue, “the Manhattan Projects” is going to be going on hiatus until March 2015.
Hickman writes in the backmatter of the most recent issue:
The book and team will be on hiatus until March when Manhattan Projects will return with a few, but rather significant, changes.
Nick and I always knew that when the comic got to a certain point we would be changing format, as Manhattan Projects was always intended to eventually be a book where we could tell any kind of story — in any genre — we wanted. We were also aware that doing so would mean that we would be changing the entire structure of the book. Gone will be the sprawling ensemble narrative that moves each individual character’s story incrementally along, and replacing that will be tight arcs focusing on a single (or few) characters.
Those that have been following the book will understand where Hickman is coming from. The characters have been separated recently to such an extent as to become completely disparate from one another for the most part, so splitting the book apart into smaller arcs focusing on just one single place or character(s) now that the book’s first big mega arc has been brought to a close.
While the book had been missing from solicits for sometime, this is not really an unusual occurrence for books these days, especially creator-owned books at Image, who often take a month or two off to debut a trade and allow the creators to rest their hands a bit. In this case it’ll be more than a few months, but the new direction of the book sounds like exactly what it needs — and we look forward to its arrival. With the book also coasting on pretty even numbers month to month, a soft reboot is the kind of maneuver that we see a lot of in comics today, so getting somewhat of a fresh start should see a nice boost to “The Manhattan Projects'” clout.
“The Manhattan Projects” is set to return in March 2015 with “The Sun Beyond the Stars,” though it’s not known which character(s) this will focus on (though there are a few candidates based on issue #25).
