by Kim Filchak, Reporter

Hello and welcome back to Rampant Speculation! This week has been filled with rumors about Marvel, their competition with FOX Studios, and what this conflict means for the fate of “The Fantastic Four” comic. Here I will try to lay out all the facts as we currently know them and maybe make a few guesses as to what all of the hints and rumors might mean.

As reported previously in Rampant Speculation!, the entire scandal began on March 23rd when Bleeding Cool noticed the fact that both the X-men and Fantastic Four were left off of the cover of the “Marvel 75th Anniversary” magazine. The folks at Bleeding Cool speculated this was a deliberate choice by Marvel as the movie rights to both teams currently reside with FOX Studios.

Bleeding Cool later updated the story on May 29th with news from an anonymous source who informed them that Marvel was planning on putting both “The Fantastic Four” and “Ultimate Fantastic Four” on hiatus. The characters from the comic would still appear in other titles (“New Avengers”, “Iron Man”), they would just no longer have their own ongoing series.

“Twentieth Century Fox pretty much has an eternal claim on Fantastic Four and X-Men movies, if they keep making them, after the deal was done during Marvel’s bankruptcy days, with very little benefit to Marvel.
The belief inside the higher echelons of Marvel is that promoting these properties in comics only benefits Fox’s movies at the expense of those from Marvel Studios. Which is why the Inhumans are being pushed as mutant replacements in the Marvel Universe. And Marvel have been pushing Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy and other comics over the X-Men. And while X-Men comics remain solid sellers, they are no longer the focus of internal promotion unless, as with the upcoming AXIS event, the Avengers get equal billing.”

This report elicited an official “no comment” from Marvel Comics and an unofficial response by Marvel Comics executive editor Tom Brevoort on his Tumblr dismissing the idea, which Bleeding Cool was quick to point out was not a denial.

Bleeding Cool responded to Brevoort’s tumblr comments on May 30th by doubling down on the accusations, citing further sources who confirm that something is indeed afoot, along with what looks like what could possibly, maybe, be written instructions given to sketch card artists to no longer use any of the main Fantastic Four characters. Bleeding Cool also suggests that the possible culprit of all the shenanigans is Marvel CEO and largest Disney shareholder Ike Perlmutter.

Then CBR stepped into the ring and backed up Bleeding Cool, reporting that their own sources were saying much the same; Marvel Comics is planning on putting “The Fantastic Four” comic on hiatus. This is when the story began to get some serious play with a number of site reporting that possible cancellation of the books.

Eventually Brevoort had to once again address the rumors via his tumblr, this time in far more explicit terms.

“Anyway, there’s a lot of fear and crazy going on out in the world as people jump to conclusions and work themselves up into a lather. It was a good weekend for those that profit from such things, I expect.

We are publishing FANTASTIC FOUR. Next month, we will be publishing FANTASTIC FOUR. A year from now, assuming that it’s still selling well, we will be publishing FANTASTIC FOUR. Given enough time, anything can happen—we went a couple of years, for example, without a THOR series, as well as a year and a half with FF, AVENGERS, CAP and IRON MAN not being a part of the Marvel Universe. So anything can happen. But it probably won’t.

And for the couple of folks who punctuated their complaints by saying that they were dropping all of their Marvel books, and switching over to DC—well, first off, you must think that I’m a very simple man. But you can, as always, do with your time and money as you will. I will point out that if the purpose of your endeavor is to insure the continuation of FANTASTIC FOUR, then perhaps buying MORE FANTASTIC FOUR would be in better service to that goal than buying less. Just a thought.

Oh, and James Robinson sent me notes for the 75th Anniversary Special story that he is doing this morning. And as you’d expect, the Fantastic Four are at the core of it.”

That said, The Hollywood Reporter noted that the tumblr post is neither an official comment from Marvel Comics nor a definitive “No, this is totally not going to happen ever” and that the statement was worded to allow for some schematic based “wiggle room” should there be any truth to the rumors.

Then it started getting… Well I don’t know what to call it. Interesting? Seems “The Fantastic Four” may not be the only team in Marvels cross-hairs. Moviepilot has posted an article reporting that Rob Liefeld, co-creator of “X-force” and one of the founders of Image Comics, has jumped in and made a bunch of comments about his take on the Marvel vs FOX conflict on twitter, only his tweets are about what Marvel is doing to hurt the X-men movie franchise. In those tweets Liefeld primarily addressed what he sees as Marvel’s strategy of denying X-men: Days of Future Past access to licensing for the merchandise cross promotions for the recent movies, “starving them out”. He further speculated that Sony Studios smartest move would be to go the opposite direction of FOX and work with Marvel Studios to incorporate Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This idea has gotten some traction when Moviepilot reported in a different article about a provocative tweet by Max Landis (Writer of Chronicle) that hints that there is some possibility there.

And then there is today’s huge news! Everyone from Variety to Time is reporting on the Lucas Arts announcement that Josh Trank, director of Chronicle and the Fantastic Four movie that is currently filming, will be directing the next stand-alone Star Wars movie.

I don’t even know what this news means for the big picture of the ongoing narrative of the Marvel V FOX battle, but my inner conspiracy theorist is positive that it all means something. The thing that keeps me from just shrugging this off  is that Star Wars a Disney owned property along with Marvel. What does it mean?!? Is Marvel, via daddy Disney and his hot new girlfriend Lucas Arts, luring away talent in order to undermine the Fox Fantastic Four franchise before it even has a chance? Or is it just a case of they really like him as a director and want to hand him one of the most sought after gigs on the planet. Who even knows at this point?

My two cents on the matter comes strictly from my observations as to what is going on within the comics themselves. From where I sit it is clear that Marvel Comics is doing everything they can do, short of a total reboot, to bring their comic books into line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe ( And I can only hope they have learned from watching DC’s New 52 fall apart that a total reboot NOT the thing to do). Right now this most obvious in superficial ways, character designs in the comics are reflecting the appearance of the actors who play them and the characters who all play roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are on the primary cover of the Marvel 75th Anniversary Magazine. Mostly though what makes me think they are consciously pulling focus away from properties they do not have the rights to is that they are killing Wolverine. Which honestly seems like the biggest red flag of all. Wolverine is the single most popular character in the X-books and the anchor character of the of the X-Men movies. If you had asked my X-book obsessed self in the 1990’s if Marvel would ever kill Logan I would have thought you were on crack. Back in the day it sometimes seemed like Marvel Comics was inventing titles just so he could guest-star in them. Along with Spider-Man, and later addition Deadpool, Wolverine was the face of Marvel. And now they are killing him off.

Do I think that Marvel is doing this to spite FOX and damage the X-Men and Fantastic Four mega-franchises that FOX is trying to build out of mustache twirling evil? Eh, I think this reads more like enlightened self-interest. Marvel is going to put their money and storytelling where it will get them the most bang for their buck and that inevitably will end up being with the properties they actually own the rights to. Unless FOX is willing to play ball with them than Marvel is not going to help them out, they have their own brand to take care of.

Actually if I really wanted to be paranoid I would note that not so long ago Marvel “killed off” Spider-Man. Peter Parker’s body was taken over by Otto Octavius, bad guy and noted d-bag, who then ran around being terrible while ruining Spider-Man’s and Peter Parker’s reputations. They also killed off Peter Parker in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, replacing him with the wildly popular Miles Morales who was for a while there the only legit Spider-Man around, not Peter Parker whom Sony was basing their movies on. Now suddenly we have hints that Sony may willing to play ball with Marvel Studios and like magic both Peter Parker’s are back from the dead. I am not saying it was a tactic, but if it was a tactic? It clearly would be a damn good one.

Right now everything, EVERYTHING, about this perceived war between studios is just rumor and speculation. On one hand this whole conspiracy seems very counter intuitive, FOX Studios does not need the support of a comic book, with a very limited audience saturation, to ensure people’s butts are in theater seats on opening weekend and Marvel would only seem to be hurting themselves by killing one of their own comics out of what could look like spite. On the other hand this is Hollywood and crazier things have happened. The best we can do is wait and see what happens with future solicitations for Marvel Comics and if “The Fantastic Four” appears in them, until then we are all just guessing.

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