Last spring the comics news website Bleeding Cool reported rumors that Marvel Comics was considering cancelling its Fantastic Four title in 2015 before the release of Fox’s latest attempt to reboot the Fantastic Four movie franchise. The driving force behind the cancellation according to Bleeding Cool is Ike Perlmutter, the cantankerous Israeli exec behind Marvel’s rise to its current prominence, who remains a powerful force in the Marvel/Disney realm due his enormous stock holdings.
Perlmutter is reportedly upset that, after two failures to establish a Fantastic Four franchise with films in 2005 and 2007, Fox, mindful of how Paramount became the laughingstock of Hollywood after the studio allowed rights to the “unfilmable” Iron Man property revert to Marvel Studios where it immediately became a flagship franchise, refused Marvel/Disney’s offers to get the movie rights to the FF back in favor of trying to reboot the franchise a third time with a film directed by Josh Trank that will debut on August 7, 2015 (see "'Deadpool' Movie Gets a Date, 'FF' Moved Back"). Perlmutter, according to Bleeding Cool, doesn’t want the new Fox Fantastic Four film to "benefit" from an ongoing Fantastic Four comic book series.
Even though Comic Book Resources independently confirmed the initial Bleeding Cool reports, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort reiterated last June that Marvel would continue to publish the Fantastic Four, "assuming that it is selling well" in 2015. The most recent issue of the Fantastic Four (#10 of the rebooted title written by James Robinson) was ranked at #99 in the latest ICv2 estimates of the Top 300 Comics for September, which means that it is not bestseller, though it ranks well ahead of lots of Marvel titles that are in no reported danger of cancellation.
The latest twist to the saga came when Bleeding Cool found a citation for a new Fantastic Four collection from Marvel’s book distributor Hachette. Slated for release in the Spring of 2015 is Fantastic Four: The End Is Fourever, which according to the copy includes "Fantastic Four #642-644 and the Triple Sized Final Issue #645."
So will the Fantastic Four end with a triple-sized final issue next spring? The evidence appears to suggest that it might, though even if the current FF comic does end in 2015, it is a near certainty that Marvel will reboot its cornerstone Fantastic Four comic once Fox’s latest Fantastic Four film has left the theaters and disappeared into the budget DVD bins of history. After all, most comics historians date the founding of the modern Marvel Universe from the release of Fantastic Four #1 in November of 1961.
Book Solicitation Copy Indicates It Might
Posted by ICv2 on October 7, 2014 @ 11:28 am CT
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