X-Men Comics Writer Blames Movie Rights Deals For The Downfall Of X-Men Comics
By Ethan Anderton/Nov. 7, 2016 4:00 pm EST
Find out how X-Men movie rights ownership has hurt the comic books after the jump.
In an interview with Bleeding Cool (via Collider) about the state of X-Men comics, specifically their low sales, Chris Claremont offered up this bitter take on the topic:
That has nothing to do with comic sales, that has everything to do with the fact that the film rights are controlled by a rival corporation.
So I think the corporate publishing attitude is: “why would we go out of our way to promote a title that will benefit a rival corporation’s films when we could take that same energy and enthusiasm and focus and do it for our own properties?”
Hence the rise of the Inhumans as the new equivalent of the mutants. I could wish for something else but it ain’t my 5 billion dollars.
Indeed, both in the Marvel cinematic universe (by way of Agents of SHIELD) and in the comics, Inhumans have become the new mutants. That’s essentially because those characters can have similar powers and have a team element like the X-Men, but Marvel doesn’t have to worry about benefiting Fox’s movie franchise by giving them fresh stories to turn into movies. That’s also why they’re not really creating new characters in the X-Men universe anymore.
