"Fantastic Four" May Live On-Screen, Disappear From Comics

[Alvarez]

Because it's not called X Men Death Of Wolverine. Equally, Silver Surfer is fine. More later today.

Yeah, because it's not obvious that Wolverine is an X-Men character.
Or that Fox recently had a film called the Wolverine.

What of Battle of the Atom then?
Someone else brought this up, man.

Hell, even the Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier is being promoted.

[Rich Johnston]

That is kind of true. Rich does hit on the truth some of the times, but many times it's not entirely accurate.

For example, he did post an image regarding rules about artists not doing FF images on Marvel sketch cards. That may be the end all be all of where this story lies. That there is some politics going on with it, but it just extends to artists not being allowed to do those images on sketch cards. Nothing more.

But I guess we'll have to wait and see on this.

The sketch card thing was not part of my original story. But it certainly bolstered it.

[Rich Johnston]

Rich, if this is a personal vendetta from the Marvel CEO then why did he allow such a quick title relaunch in the first place after Fraction wrapped his run up? And why is the Marvel CEO so disenfranchised with his product to not know the difference between Fantastic Four and Ultimate FF?

What I've learned through your site is that you have a certain baseline for these things. They don't always turn out exactly as mentioned, but you do normally have some validity to your rumors. Avengers vs. Ultimates was in reality Cataclysm. You guys were very close on the first Marvel NOW reshuffle. So you have some credibility. This one just seems idiotic. I can see the titles getting cancelled, but not the hated of the F4 being pressed by one man the way you're indicating.

You're a great snake oil salesman and I'm sure whatever company owns Bleeding Cool loves the traffic you draw, but I'm iffy on you. Fun as hell to read everyday though.

Do you know the history of Isaac Perlmutter? He is a man who will not only cut off his nose to spite his face , but use a chainsaw to do it. And this situation has happened recently, in the last month or so.

Avatar Press owns Bleeding Cool.

[Rich Johnston]

This is all bullcrap. The reason they might cancel the book is they cant sell the book. Freaking thing is at on the list 60 after 3 issues. The last series sold poorly as well. Good story but if Fantastic four was selling 100,000 copies a month there would be no talk of canceling it.

Possibly true. But the book outsells a lot of other books at Marvel. Just not enough to prevent it from being cancelled to prove a point.

[Rich Johnston]

Yeah, because it's not obvious that Wolverine is an X-Men character.
Or that Fox recently had a film called the Wolverine.

What of Battle of the Atom then?
Someone else brought this up, man.

Hell, even the Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier is being promoted.

This is stuff that has come down relatively recently. More on BC today.

[Alvarez]

This is stuff that has come down relatively recently. More on BC today.

Are you seriously moving goal posts?

[Rich Johnston]

Wow, I love that super convincing document on Bleeding Cool with no indication that it is from Marvel that could have easily been typed up on any computer and screenshotted. It's very convincing.

But it wasn't. It was passed to me by an artist and I verified its contents with another artist. It was from the card company in question.

[Rich Johnston]

Are you seriously moving goal posts?

No, not at all. You're asking why this story didn't affect promotion from months ago and I'm saying because this has all come down recently.

[Rich Johnston]

Why not just re-brand the comic, "Avengers: Fantastic"?

Fantastic Avengers. That would probably do it. I'm stealing that.

[Zeitgeist]

Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[Alvarez]

No, not at all. You're asking why this story didn't affect promotion from months ago and I'm saying because this has all come down recently.

Both Last Will and Death of Wolverine are recent.
What's more, AXIS an X-Men related event was JUST heavily put into promotion.

Look Rich, I know you have a job to do.
You have to get page views and all that jazz.
But until some actual proof is given via Marvel...

This will be taken with the same grain of salt that the Marvel Reboot news was.

[zebop]

Ridiculous as this may be, if this actually did come to fruition I would not be disappointed. Frankly I found Hickman's F4 run to be a suitable "stopping" point as far as being an ongoing title. Fraction's run was meandering with the sole high point being FF, which really had little to do with the F4 proper. Robinson seems to be doing fine so far but if no one takes over after him for a few years, then I'd be perfectly happy.

I haven't given a hydroelectric dam about Fantastic Four since it passed "the world's greatest comic magazine" several exit ramps long before Millar, Hickman, Fraction and Robinson got their grubby mitts on Marvel's First Family.

Everything has an expiration date and while I recoil in disdain at Fox's prior Fantastic Four flops, I don't doubt there's still some life left in the comic franchise, but it's not a title that has been a priority for years. Maybe when the powers that be croaked Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pellliter's run for the fatally overhyped Mark Millar/Bryan Hitch failure.

Putting the FF in storage for a while might help the title more than it could hurt it. It's not that the book sucks. It's that I don't even care whether or not it does.

[alexh]

This sounds fairly unlikely - Fox/Sony/Universal do not *own* these characters, they license them, and if I recall correctly, Marvel still makes money off the merchandise those films bring in if not the film itself.

Besides the say 40,000 people who buy a F4 comic on a monthly basis are probably largely the sort who would go see a F4 film anyway, regardless of whether a comic was being published.

[Rich Johnston]

Both Last Will and Death of Wolverine are recent.
What's more, AXIS an X-Men related event was JUST heavily put into promotion.

Look Rich, I know you have a job to do.
You have to get page views and all that jazz.
But until some actual proof is given via Marvel...

This will be taken with the same grain of salt that the Marvel Reboot news was.

As the Marvel Relaunch as Marvel Now was. Same kind of story...

The Marvel Reboot wasn't news though, it was the reported speculation of retailers last week after Marvel had deliberately teased that there would be a reboot. Never said there would be though. You might want to ask why CBR declined to run the Time Runs Out story until now though...

Also, did you not read the article where AXIS is mentioned? It's linked in the CBR piece at the top.

[The4orTy67]

"Movies don't affect the comics."