Have you heard the latest gossip about Marvel Comics and their FANTASTIC FOUR comic book? Bleeding Cool has posted a series of articles (summarized here) indicating that Marvel plans to place FANTASTIC FOUR and ULTIMATE FF on hiatus. The reason? One of their corporate higher ups reportedly does not want to give Fox Studios "free publicity" during the production, promotion, and release phases of their upcoming "
Fantastic Four" movie. Fox Studios owns the movie rights to these characters and Marvel benefits financially very little from these movies -- directly anyway.
The "X-Men" movies are also produced by Fox Studios, but the comic books related to these characters make a huge amount of money for Marvel Comics. So, the rumor goes, Marvel Comics is willing to keep those titles in place, but with greatly reduced internal promotion -- and often in tandem with the publishers Avengers titles.
Part of the rumor is that artists have been specifically told
not to include any Fantastic Four characters in their Marvel 75th Anniversary sketch card submissions. Check this out:
My understanding is that the characters can continue in other titles -- just not under their own team's title. In other words, there is no reason to assume that Mister Fantastic will be scrubbed from the pages of NEW AVENGERS.
Once again, this is a rumor -- but it is a rumor that's gaining traction in the more traditional comic book news websites (
here). I will post more if/when I learn more.
