Did the X-Men and Fantastic Four Go Into the Disney Vault?

Russ Burlingame

06/30/2017 11:00 am EDT

Could Disney's corporate culture be behind the apparent disappearance of the X-Men and Fantastic Four from Marvel Comics?

...No, we aren't talking about those persistent reports that Marvel is "burying" the characters becuase Disney doesn't own their film rights free and clear. In fact, kind of the opposite: we're suggesting that Marvel has been more on the level with fans than many have been willing to believe up to this point.

Here's a quick recap, for the uninitiated: 20th Century Fox currently holds the rights to film adaptations of Marvel's X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises, historically two of the publisher's biggest brands.

Both properties have had an...uneven...few years in the comics. While the X-Men titles recently made a big comeback, their role had been reduced prior to that, and that reduction had come around the same time as a rise in visibility for The Inhumans, a group of characters whose story seemed to closely mirror traditional X-Men tropes, but whose film and TV rights were firmly in Marvel's hands.

Around the same time The Fantastic Four, the comic that kick-started the "Marvel Age" of comics, was cancelled, reports started to pour in about the ways the use of X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were being discouraged or forbidden on Marvel merchandising and the like -- and some reports went a step further, suggesting that longtime Marvel chief Ike Perlmutter was behind the decision to torpedo characters whose film rights the company didn't own.

It was a compelling narrative backed by a fair amount of evidence, so when Marvel fired back at those accusations by saying, basically, that there was no merit to them, there were plenty of fans who did not believe them.

The position the publisher took is that, like many other properties over the years (including The Inhumans), the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were being put on the back burner in part to build up demand for them and make their inevitable return more exciting to casual fans.

DC, for context, seems to have taken a similar route with Legion of Super-Heroes, another long-running series that has struggled in recent years -- but DC gets a bit more of a pass with the audience because there are no stories about the publisher attempting to "hide" the property as there are with Marvel's sketch card controversy.

That Marvel's answers have not satisfied fans is partially because of the evidence that seems to contradict them and partially because fans are simply not forgiving when something they love is "taken" from them, so hardcore fans of the properties being put on the back burner are more open to the conspiracy theories that explain what they think they are already seeing.

In spite of those doubts, though, it occurred to us that Marvel is, after all, owned by Disney -- and there's a very "Disney" reason why the move might make sense...

...What if the X-Men and Fantastic Four properties went into the "Disney Vault?"

The "Disney Vault" is the term used by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment for its policy of putting home video releases of Walt Disney Animation Studios's animated features on moratorium.

The decision to take popular movies off the home video market has always been a controversial one for Disney. They generally try to bolster sales on the reissue by creating new content just for the new release, something that has the additional benefit of encouraging those who already own the previous version to buy a second (or third, or tenth...) time.

There is not, of course, a 1:1 parallel for that in comics -- there is typically no second life for single-issue comic books, and the trade paperback/collected edition market is a different animal entirely.

The decision to restrict merchandising of the properties is similarly vexing, and does not have an easy or obvious explanation; note that even when a movie goes into Disney's vault, it does not typically change the toys-and-merch marketing plan.

Still, the notion that taking properties off the table, seemingly indefinitely and with no clear plans, is not believable...doesn't hold water in a Disney environment. The Disney Vault is real, it frustrates the hell out of fans, and it has been proven to be a winning strategy for the corporation for years.

It's entirely possible Disney's strategy has rubbed off a bit on their partners at Marvel. If so, fans will have to wait until they finally pull the Fantastic Four out of the vault (X-Men have already had a successful, recent relaunch) to find out just how effective the strategy might be. And if it succeeds? Don't be surprised to see Marvel use it more down the line.

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Cover by Jim Cheung

Inversion Variant by Dave Johnson

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Art by Terry Dodson