as written by Mulder

FROM: Bob Harras
TO: Larry Hama
CC: Scott Lobdell, Chris Claremont, Ben Raab, Steven Seagle, Joe Kelly

Gentlemen:

Please keep this memo top-secret. Don't let any of this leak to Wizard or to the other usual sources. Steve, you and Joe just gave Wizard a nice big interview, so they should be happy. Anyway, memorize the contents of this memo, and then destroy it. We don't want unauthorized copies of this floating around the Internet.

As you all know, Marvel is swimming in red ink and we are in the middle of Chapter 11. Not chapter 11 of our latest X-over, you lunkheads, I mean we're technically bankrupt. Fortunately we can still keep putting out the books, and we all still have jobs. Except for you, Scott.

Just kidding.

Anyway, we have to trim down the line of X-titles that we let get a little... bloated over the years. Sales dipped a little bit, and investors will not supply us with much needed cash-ola if we don't trim the fat at least a little bit.

Thus... I'm just gonna come right out and say it: we need to cut some books.

Ben, you've done a wonderful job with Excalibur this past year. The writing and characterization have been pure crap; plot lines are both needlessly re-hashed and "surprises" are loudly telegraphed. Sales are in the toilet. You are fulfilling your mission brilliantly.

Scott, I'm afraid you haven't been up to snuff. Your broad hints at unfathomable, uninterpretable changes in both UNCANNY and GEN-X have been good, but sales have still remained steady. I'm afraid we're going to have to take you off some books until you can write as poorly as the rest of us.

Chris, you hush now; I knew you would take that last remark the wrong way. OK, I've gotten your phone calls, you can HAVE the peach writing assignment. Wolverine is yours.

Larry, I know this leaves you without a book, and you've been our number one man for years now, simply years in a row you've been cranking out the top-notch writing on wolverine like clockwork. Now nobody in his right mind would cancel wolverine, which is why I gave it to Chris; but I have a special job for you, Larry. I need you to take on a special assignment. Larry, I need you to take Generation X and just drive that baby right into the ground. That's right, I have to cancel a ton of books around here, and in order to do that, I need sales right down in the toiled. I need you to do your absolute worst job of writing ever. I need people rubbing their eyes, to make sure they are correctly reading the word "HAMA" on the cover, after yet another god-awful issue of GenX. I know this is going to hurt your reputation something rotten, but I really need you to kill this book. Do whatever you can to ruin the writing. And the plot. And the dialog. And the accents. And the vocabulary. And the characterization. And the characters themselves. And the motivation. And the continuity. Larry, I am only giving you this amazingly difficult task because I know you're up to it. Please, for the love of God, kill Gen-X swiftly. Just drop a bomb on it. Then we can please the shareholders as we cancel an armload of x-titles at once. I swear to God, I'll make it up to you if it's the last thing I do.

Now remember the plan, but don't breathe a word of this to anyone. I would hate for this to get around.

Thank you and God Bless.