New Brevoort Formspring

A couple of reasons.

First off, you need Brian to actually want to write the book, and to want to write it more than the other things he’s already got on his plate. Contrary to popular belief, nobody who works for Marvel is a servant to be placed onto whatever title we like. Every creator has a huge voice in what they take on and what they do not.

Secondly, it’s also a question of priorities. Would putting Brian on FANTASTIC FOUR over X-MEN be in Marvel’s overall best interests at that particular moment?

Thirdly, doing so would be no guarantee of success. Directly after their phenomenally popular ULTIMATES run, we had Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch take over FANTASTIC FOUR. And it did all right, but not the sorts of sales numbers you’d expect given what they were coming off of. So much of what we do is alchemy, pairing the right creators who have the right story with the right characters at the right moment. Brian taking on FANTASTIC FOUR might have shot it over the moon, or it might have just done okay–there’s no way of knowing for sure. And putting him on the book tomorrow might have a different effect than putting him on the book yesterday would have.

Finally, FANTASTIC FOUR is ending–but so is AVENGERS and NEW AVENGERS and ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN–I would have thought that people would have caught on to what is going on a little while before this.