As far as passive aggressive moves go, Marvel now reigns supreme in their quiet war with 20th Century Fox over the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters. It has long been rumored that events like the death of Johnny Storm, Wolverine and Deadpool in Marvel’s comics were all reactions to 20th Century Fox holding on to the movie rights to those characters, with Marvel escalating even more this year by actually canceling the ‘Fantastic Four‘ comic-book series. The rationale behind a lot of these moves, which does make a certain amount of sense, is that Marvel does not want to continue to produce stories for these characters and their franchises that can then be used in 20th Century Fox’s movies franchises. And since there’s no sign of 20th Century Fox returning the characters to Marvel to be used in the MCU (unless ‘Fantastic Four,’ ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ and ‘Deadpool’ all tank at the box office), Marvel is essentially relegating the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises to the back burner until they regain the movie rights to the properties. Also of note, in the 2015 line-up, all of the characters currently featured in the MCU are front and center.

And in the latest move by Marvel in this tug-of-war, the company nixed all of the Fantastic Four characters and the X-Men from their annual lineup poster, after years of Reed Richards, Wolverine, Beast, The Thing, Sue and Johnny Storm, Cyclops, Storm, Collossus, etc. being front and center. Check out the posters from 2007 and 2013 below, and then compare them with the 2015 poster above.

2013 Marvel line up poster 2007 Marvel line up poster

What are your thoughts on Marvel’s move to pull some of their most popular (and oldest) characters from the line-up, as well as their general handling of the characters associated with 20th Century Fox? Do you think they are shooting themselves in the foot by dumping some of their biggest money-makers in comics over a feud in the film/MCU world? Or do you think Marvel should continue this little war until 20th Century Fox agrees to share the characters akin to what Sony and Marvel are doing with Spider-Man (who remains front and center in the line-up) Let us know your thoughts below!

Source: Blastr