Colorist Paul Mounts Quietly Leaves Fantastic Four After More than 100 Issues

When Fantastic Four rebooted (again), James Robinson and Leonard Kirk were solicited as replacements for writer Matt Fraction and artist Mark Bagley--but nobody thought to ask about colorist Paul Mounts, who had weathered a number of creative team changes to remain one of the only regular fixtures on Fantastic Four for more than one hundred issues of the comic. Starting his time on the title with Fantastic Four #500 back in 2003, Mounts took over as the regular colorist on the series with #510 and has stuck around more or less ever since. A number of fans and industry-types realized that Mounts did not color Fantastic Four #1 when it was released from Robinson and Kirk earlier this week -- it was colored by Jesus Aburtov -- but Marvel hadn't said anything about it, and Mounts's only comment was to retweet a comment from the Tales From the Longbox podcast that said, "So @PaulMounts isn't coloring the new FF? Truly the end of an era." Asked whether Mounts is off the title for good by a regular reader, Marvel Executive Editor/Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort responded via Formspring, "Seems to be." Mounts is certainly one of the most prolific colorists in the title's history, although it's hard to know just who ranks where since the first 129 issues featured no colorist credit at all (comics historian Mark Evanier says Stan Goldberg colored many of those issues). Inquiries to both Mounts and Marvel for comment have yielded no response so far; if and when a comment is forthcoming, we will update this article.