The “Fantastic Four” Rumor And Why We Should Be Talking About It

So, last week, Bleeding Cool broke a story about a rumor (no diss to Bleeding Cool, but we’re not upgrading it to “fact” status until Marvel confirms it….and it’s highly unlikely they’re going to say this one out loud the old fashioned way) that Marvel is on a tear to cancel any Fantastic Four titles. Word is the powers that be are operating under the idea that the comics give undeserved promotion to Fox’s movies since Fox owns the film rights to Fantastic Four. Of course, X-Men comics make entirely too much money for Marvel to pull such a snub with them. After all, as much as fans love Marvel, we all know they’d tie Wolverine to a ceiling fan and beat him with a lead pipe if they thought money would fall out of him. (Fun Fact: Disney/Marvel sees 5% of the gross from all of Fox’s films based on Marvel heroes.) With that in mind, it seems like the popular theory is that the Fantastic Four titles are such mid-level money makers that Marvel could afford to take the “L” and put them “on hold” for a bit. Allegedly, even FF images have been taken down in the offices. They definitely didn’t show up on the cover of the 75th anniversary project AT ALL. Now, if it were just Ultimate FF, I could probably understand because that, ladies and gentlemen, is a shitty book. But if the rumors are true (and I can’t stress enough that this is NOT something Marvel has confirmed via press release), perhaps this should be a bit more disturbing to fans whether they read Fantastic Four or not. When…