If this doesn't make Fox return the movie rights, nothing will!

Source: ThanosCopter Newswire

In the latest round of the ongoing battle between insane 1%er and Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter and Fox Movie Studios, Marvel's entire editorial staff has been instructed to hunt down and kill any person who mentions either The Fantastic Four or The X-Men. Fox bought the rights from a willing Marvel in the 90s to make X-Men and Fantastic Four movies, and this fact infuriates the Marvel of today, which would really like those rights back. In order to accomplish that goal, the company has been systematically eliminating any mention of the two teams from marketing materials and merchandising, blocking the creation of an X-Men animated show, and downplaying the characters' importance in the comics. The latest offense, as reported by Bleeding Cool, was removing the X-Men and Fantastic Four completely from the Marvel character line-up poster:

Rich Johnston posted two previous versions of the poster, from last year, and from 2007, to illustrate how the X-Men and Fantastic Four have gone from prominently featured to nonexistent.

How this is supposed to affect a movie franchise that reaches tens of millions of people when comics readership as a whole consists of like 100,000 people who will probably go see X-Men movies regardless of whether Marvel is selling lunchboxes, nobody knows.

Perhaps that's why Marvel decided to step up their game with the new death sentence on anyone - employees, press, readers, or even civilians - who mentions the name of either character in passing conversation. To accomplish this task, Marvel has invested in the latest tracking and teleportation technology, as well as deadly and efficient weaponry, in order to kill as many people who talk about the X-Men or Fantastic Four as possible.

The morale at Marvel's offices has reached an all time low with editors wracked with guilt at spilling so much blood in the pursuit of corporate vendettas.

"I murdered 78 people last night," explained an exhausted Sana Amanat as she took off a blood-soaked kevlar vest and hung her katana on a hook on the wall of the Marvel bullpen. "I think I'm becoming numb to all the killing."

Nick Lowe wiped gore from a knife onto his pants and sighed. "I know what you mean. I had to take out a whole family this time. They had just watched Days of Future Past together and were discussing the movie. It was a real mess."

"What's this I'm hearing?" said Editor in Chief Axel Alonso as he emerged from his office menacingly. "Not having second thoughts, are you?"

"N..no," said Lowe. "It's just... aren't we hurting our own fans here? Do they deserve to suffer because we willingly sold the rights to our characters when we needed the money?"

"Shut up!" barked Alonso as he slapped Lowe hard in the face. "What the fuck are you doing working in mainstream superhero comics if you don't want to kill the fans?!"

Lowe's face welled up with tears as Amanat's hand inched toward her gun. The room was tense, and... and...

Hang on, there's someone knocking at my door. I'll be right back.

*goes to the door*

Hello? Who's... Tom Brevoort?

No... No, I wasn't talking about...

Did I? Are you sure? That couldn't have been...

Tom! Tom, what are you doing with that chainsaw?! Are you insane? Agghh! Aggghh! Nooooooo! Aaggghhhhhhh! Oh god! Aaaaggghhhhhhhh!

We'll... keep you posted... on this... folks. Stay tuned!

Aggghhh! No, Tom, no!!! You're a poor caretaker of these beloved - aaagghhh - characters! Owwww oh god aaggghhh!