Comics Publisher To Fabricate Stories

NEW YORK - Marvel Entertainment Editor in Chief, Joe Quesada, announced that the industry giant will depart with tradition and begin making up stories next month.

Until now, comics companies have always published the real stories behind superheroes' adventures. As many fans know, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby established the original arrangement with the Fantastic Four and all other Marvel published heroes have been included via a Grandfather Clause in the contract.

"You have no idea how much we have to spend to catch up to all these guys," complains Quesada. "We've tried a variety of tactics over the years. Stan was the best at it because there were far fewer superheroes back then. You add up the costs of: keeping a tail on them to get the details of their activities, [body] cavity searches, transcription fees, jet packs, fancy time travel gizmos for missed photo ops, pensions for survivors of 'Hulk smash puny human' incidents; plus the ordinary costs of production and the most responsible thing to do—for the sake of our stockholders—was to start making stuff up."

Fan reaction has been mixed.