It's like Tony Stark made his Iron Man-funding fortune in vain.

Marvel was all set to announce a partnership with the fourth largest military contractor in America, Northrup Grumman, to issue a comic book that teamed up The Avengers with a new team of superheroes, NGEN's, tagline "Start Your N.G.E.N.S!"

NGEN stands for Northrop Grumman's Elite Nexus. Because branding is everything.

And this partnership was going to be announced this weekend at NYC Comicon, when all of a sudden Marvel found out that arms dealing was not that "special something" that made Tony Stark a hero. And that you could pretend your partnership was all about STEM education for the youth, but you were still selling the Military Industrial Complex to little kids. A typical fan reaction:

So before they could be embarrassed any further, Marvel called off the whole thing, comic book and all.

And released a statement:

The activation with Northrop Grumman at New York Comic Con was meant to focus on aerospace technology and exploration in a positive way, However, as the spirit of that intent has not come across, we will not be proceeding with this partnership including this weekend's event programming, Marvel and Northrop Grumman continue to be committed to elevating, and introducing, STEM to a broad audience.

Seems fans know that "Hey kids, learn STEM so you can design weapons of mass destruction for the Military Corporate Welfare State!" isn't the message Marvel should be promoting.

Comic from Writeups.org.

h/t BBC Newsbeat