Popverse's top stories of the day

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Watch: Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]
• Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]

Marvel has put out a teaser for the eighth issue of the much-hyped Jonathan Hickman/Valerio Schiti series G.O.D.S., with the text “To All Things, An Ending… For Now.” It’s the kind of line that launches no small amount of speculation as to its meaning, especially considering that it was initially unclear how long the series would run for ahead of its launch. Popverse has confirmed however with Marvel that the series will, in fact, end with #8 this May.

We asked Marvel back in August 2023 about the length of the series; writer Jonathan Hickman revealed at the time that he’d written the initial storyline of eight issues, but couldn’t really speculate beyond that. “Obviously, Marvel wants to do a lot more, but that will depend on whether people like it or not,” he said at the time. “I have no control over th — well, I guess I have some control over that. So, we’ll see. But everybody at the company is behind it, everybody digs it, Valerio really crushed it, so… we’ll see.”

Around the same time, Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort wrote in his newsletter that, in Marvel’s eyes, G.O.D.S. was “an ongoing title assuming that the support of the readership allows it to be. So it’s all really going to come down to how much people like it once that first issue drops and how well it performs moving forward. But our intention is to keep on going indefinitely.”

The support of the readership, it appears, was not there. While the $9.99 first issue was one of the top 50 comics of the year by dollar value, it failed to make the list in terms of units ordered, and the traditional laws of attrition meant that subsequent issues declined in sales with each successive release.

G.O.D.S. was an ambitious title for Marvel — a rarity, in that it was for all intents and purposes a new series centering around all-new characters (albeit with close ties to existing Marvel concepts and characters) at a time when relaunches and reboots of more familiar properties make up the rest of Marvel’s publishing line. That it didn’t find favor with audiences is a lesson that many will be attempting to unpick for awhile, I suspect, but Jonathan Hickman can at least console himself with the fact that, even if G.O.D.S. wasn’t a hit, his next Marvel project definitely was.

G.O.D.S. #1 - #5 (of 8) is on sale now, and a collection of all eight issues is scheduled for August 27.

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.