How would Fox have any impact on the comic? What screwed-up contract did they write?

I think it's more, a movie with a certain direction would accompany a comic series to help promote it, but while Fox have the rights, they can't do a joint effort like that.

This doesn't surprise me. Robinson is an okay writer. I like Kirk's art and feel he should be on something else. But they put no promotion into it.

Marvel Comics is a mess. It's going through a phase because of the films. I will use X-men comics as an example. When the first X-men film came out, Marvel did it's best to hurt the X-men fanbase by changing the logo, changing the format, even the setting in the comics to closer match that of the films. Of course at the time they had huge success because one of the writers in this almighty relaunch was at the time one of the biggest writers in comics, Grant Morrison but this was only 1 comic out of 3 or 4 that succeeded. It wouldn't settle down again to a more X-men like setup until Brubaker and Carey took over (Carey's work was superb and some of the best X-men work after Claremont's legendary run).

Now with the Avengers being top dogs, it's a mess again. It used to be 1 Avengers book and the main characters had their own series fans bought Avengers and then their main favourite character's own book (where as X-men had 2 or 3 team books and fans bought all of them). Now what do we have? 5 or 6 Avenger's team books, plus their own series. The comics and characters are spread too thin (see Wolverine and Spider-man as examples of that). But it also means what where once the big great names of writers and artists went to the big books, they no longer are. Jonathan Hickman is not the all star writer who should be on Avengers, and his stories are stupid, Avenger's are meant to be Earth's heroes not the Universes (trying to make it more Justice League than Avengers is a bad idea). In the case of Fantastic Four, the last time big names were put on it were Mark Millar and Hitch.

We have ridiculous cross over stories every year without delay meaning writers cannot do their own thing and have to do something to tie it in every year.

New X-men time travel crap was the worst premise in any Marvel comic, I've read ever.

Now, I've dropped most of my books and am down to just Avengers (which I haven't read my copies in months, might drop it too), Uncanny and X-men, Uncanny is getting better recently but Cyclops charactisation is way off still and thank god for Wood's X-men, proper traditional X-men book...
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Rant over.

The negative effect is kind of sad. You would think that because of the films, sales of the comic would go up but generally, that it's the case. They make loads of merchandise but comic sales aren't increasing like they want. You are right on the casting thing, the idea that if I mention things I get labled as racist yet they'd never do the same to Luke Cage... 

Second theory is good though but I do not think it will stay gone for long. We know how the comic industry works and it's a case of relaunch and revamp every few years. Steve Rogers was dead for only 2 (real time). Peter Parker's change was met with pretty must distaste but they all come back in the end.