Marvel comics have made various mutant-related titles since their introduction into the Marvel Universe. Recently in comics, mutant titles have been decreasing in numbers and a new team of super-powered individuals called the Inhumans have emerged. The Inhumans have actually been around in comics for an awful lot of time but never made it big until recently. With powers very similar to mutants (such as the X-Men), the Inhumans have recently been taking up more space on the shelves, while mutants have been falling off of the shelves. Many X-Men lovers, such as myself, have been wondering why Marvel would intentionally replace one of their most profitable set of characters with a remarkably less popular group.
The X-Men have reached incredible points in the comic book industry: they've outsold the Avengers in comic books, they've been the center point for many crossovers and events, they've had animated T.V. series, and they've even made it onto the big screen. What could've gone wrong for these genetically superior superheroes?
Was it the amount of money their comics have been making for Marvel? Most definitely not, they've created a tremendous amount of revenue for the company since they've come out. Even in recent years, the Inhumans titles have not been outselling the X-Men titles. Look at the chart below from Gaumer at outrightgeekery.com and you can see that the two Inhumans titles have actually been slacking far behind any one of the three X-Men titles that were recently being published.
In fact, in an interview with Chris Claremont, who is considered one of the most influential X-Men writers of all time, Claremont argues a different reasoning behind the mutants' fall in the comic book world. Claremont states that the mutants' decline is not about comic book sales, but rather about movie rights. As most fans know, Fox owns the movie and film rights for the X-Men, Silver Surfer, and the Fantastic Four (who have all also been very scarce in comics lately). This separation between these characters and the rest of the Marvel Universe in the movies is, as Claremont says, the reasoning behind the decline. Claremont even says that if the movie rights were still owned by Marvel/Disney then the X-Men would still be some of the largest titles out.
Marvel is thinking, "Why promote Fox's titles if we can promote a similar group for our own movies." In other words, if they replace the mutants with a similar but less popular group of superheroes that they own the movie rights to (like the Inhumans), they can boost movie sales for themselves and not 'advertise' for Fox's characters in the comics.
