It was announced today that in June every last character that any five readers complained about will be killed off except for Wolverine.

"I really think this will help make everything simple for the new reader," said Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada. "There were just too many redundant mutants, and we needed to evolve the X-Men into somthing simpler."

New writer Grant Morrison will be in charge of the mass slaying of the characters complained about. Only Wolverine, who makes oodles of money for Marvel, will be spared.

"Basically, Charles Xavier goes schitzophrenic, and uses his mind powers to wipe out all of the X-Men," Morrison said. "Except for Wolverine, who has a healing factor, which protects him from everything from a paper cut to total obliteration."

"Then," added Morrison, "Wolverine becomes so enraged with Charles that he pops the middle claw into his head and says 'You're a dick" as Charles bleeds to death."

As for the new books proposed by Quesada, never fear. Wolverine will replace every last one of them.

"You're going to see a real human side of Logan," Quesada said. "In the Rogue book, he's going to reflect upon his near-pedophile relationship with her, as well as Jubilee and Shadowcat. In the Blink book, he's going to be anguished at never taking her to McDonald's for a cheeseburger."

And what about characters who are well-protected against psi-attacks like Jean Grey and Gambit?

"Basically, Gambit is going to be busy shagging some meaningless girl, so his mind is elsewhere at the time... that meaningless girl will be Jean Grey," Quesada said. "So, her mind is elsewhere, too."

"Also, I'd like to issue a challenge," Quesada added. "I challenge that turd Fabian Nicezia to write Wolverine beating the crap out of the Thunderbolts. I mean, Wolverine is the best there is at everything from tiddleywinks to setting farts on fire. And Fabian hasn't helped the industry at all lately. Why does he sit around on his ass? Maybe I oughtta fire him next. Just like what's-his-face from Cable. He sucked, too, because he forgot to send me a birthday gift two years ago."

"I like killing off characters," Morrison said. "I pretty much hate them all, except for Wolverine. So why even bother having the X-Men?"

And remember, all of this is for the tens of tens new readers that have jumped on board due to the X-Men movie released back around July of 2000.

"These new readers are crucial to us," Quesada said. "I mean, nobody even reads our books now, so we need to get those new readers in, and dumb it down to the point where every last shred of X-Men history is gone."