Mark Waid's writing gig on Fantastic Four seemed like the perfect fit in many ways both for Marvel and Waid. It was a popular writer on a book that needed some love, and Waid had said he was enjoying his run tremendously. Well, that's over. Mark Waid has confirmed for Newsarama that issue #508 will be his last.

The decision came at the end of last week, according to Waid. "Friday, I received a call from Marvel informing me that FF #508 would be my last issue," Waid told Newsarama. "I'm very disappointed, but, hey--it's Marvel's sandbox, not mine."

Waid began his run on the title with last August's much ballyhooed issue #60, which was priced at $0.09, a promotional "one-upping" by Marvel of DC's recent $0.10 issue of Batman, and Waid's first comic work following his no-compete clause from CrossGen, which had expired. Joining Waid on his run was former Flash collaborator, Mike Wieringo. Under the two, the series gained critical and commercial acclaim, and climbed upwards in the Top 300 selling comics list, as calculated by Diamond.

Perhaps the team's most anticipated storyline to date, "Unthinkable," featuring the return of a slightly re-imagined, and exponentially deadlier Dr. Doom began recently, and discussion of the arc has been burning up messageboards in regards to Doom's upcoming "unthinkable" act.

"I wish I'd had a longer run, and I'll admit I was surprised at being so abruptly fired," Waid told Newsarama. "A few weeks ago, Bill [Jemas] phoned and tried to convince me to jettison our high-adventure approach and everything else we've been doing in favor of making the FF a wacky suburban dramedy where Reed's a nutty professor who creates amazing but impractical inventions, Sue's the office-temp breadwinner, the cranky neighbor is their new "arch-enemy", etc. Editor Tom Brevoort and I discussed that option at length; ultimately, I apologized and explained that I didn't feel it was something I could write nor something that played to any of my strengths--a radical revamp like that was just too much of a departure from what I was originally hired to write. I simply, honestly, couldn't even wrap my head around the idea. Still can't. And when word came back, 'We'll use that concept somewhere else. Tell Mark to keep doing what he's doing,' all seemed well.

"But -- they're not my characters. Ultimately, my job is to sell the publisher something he wants to publish. So, in a good-faith attempt at bridging the gap, Tom and I put our heads together and - kind of to our surprise! - figured out a logical way to deliver a run of stories following 'Authoritative Action' that could temporarily 'suburbanize' the series without completely changing the FF's personalities beyond recognition. To be honest, we were kinda proud of ourselves for being play-along guys and assumed we were good to go for the long haul, but our effort was, in retrospect, pointless. It would seem the decision to replace me was made the moment I failed to get with the program. Still--Bill's company, his prerogative."

Fantastic Four #508 is the final issue of the six-part "Authoritative Action" arc which begins in August with issue #503, and should end (barring double ship months) next January. As reported previously, Howard Porter is illustrating the arc.

As for the art side of the series after issue #508, while not knowing of Waid's departure for sure when asked about his future with the series on Saturday (the artist was at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC), Wieringo indicated that if Waid were leaving the title, he most likely would be as well. The departure of Waid will come at a slightly odd time - as it has stated in the past, Marvel likes to shine up the comics versions of it characters in time for when the movie versions are coming out. As Marvel claimed in it's first quarter report, it is projecting a (yet uncasted, and currently in rewrite) Fantastic Four movie to be released in November of 2004. While the likelihood of a heavy CGI movie being cast, shot, post-produced, and up and ready for release in a little under 17 months is…well, really neither here nor there for this discussion, if Waid's replacement is brought in for a radical direction change for the series, there would be little time to produce that many monthlies to be collected into trades for the film's release, barring the series double-shipping between February and October of 2004.

Shortly after this article was posted, Mark Waid posted a response (see the thread linked below) stating that it was his understanding that Marvel President Bill Jemas will be the new writer on the series following his departure.

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