Marvel is canceling Fantastic Four… and this time, it may stay canceled for a while.
For months, Marvel and 20th Century Fox have been rumored to be feuding over the film rights to X-Men and the Fantastic Four ahead of the Fantastic Four reboot film in 2015. It would be easy to write off the reports as conjecture if there were no signs that they were true. But both the Fantastic Four and X-Men have been downplayed by Marvel’s marketing department and now Fantastic Four is coming to an end several months before Marvel’s Secret Wars event.
Obviously, Marvel won’t keep Fantastic Four away from comic shelves forever. But with a new movie coming out next year, that’s normally the time to be selling comic books not pulling them.
Anyway, the creative team of James Robinson and artist Leonard Kirk are crafting their final Fantastic Four storyline that will see the series briefly revert to its original numbering. In Fantastic Four # 642, the Avengers take on Thing, Human Torch and the Invisible Woman while Reed Richards finds himself as a prisoner of the man who is out to destroy his family.
Fantastic Four # 642 will be released in January 2015.