Writer Kurt Busiek has responded to Mark Millar’s assertion that his influential Marvel comic The Ultimates was only called that because the publisher at the time considered the Avengers “a dead franchise.”

Busiek, who was writing The Avengers when Millar and artist Bryan Hitch launched their title in 2002 as part of the company’s Ultimate line, refuted those comments in a series of tweet, insisting he’s the one who asked Marvel not to use “Avengers” in the name.

RELATED: Millar Reveals Why Marvel’s Ultimates Left ‘Avengers’ Out of the Title

“My end of the story is that they didn’t call the book ‘Ultimate Avengers’ because I asked them not to, not because Avengers was a dead franchise,” he wrote. “Marvel back then wished most of their books were selling as well as we were. […] But my reasoning was that if they did ‘Ultimate Avengers,’ they’d invariably promote it as the cool new thing, an improvement on that old uncool existing book, and I didn’t want to be working on a book that the publisher was dissing.”

Busiek also acknowledged that the debut of The Ultimates played a role in his decision to leave The Avengers following the completion of his “Kang Dynasty” storyline.

RELATED: C2E2: Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Millar One on One

With Ultimate X-Men, they launched it, it was promoted as the cool thing, then afterward Grant [Morrison] took over the mainline X-Men and it got to be ‘new and fresh.’ On Spider-Man, I think it was similar,” he wrote. “So when they did Ultimates, which was ‘Ultimate Avengers’ in all but name, I knew it was time to take a bow and leave, so that the next creative team could be new and fresh, rather than hanging around and getting labeled old and fusty.”

We never get to see the whole story at once, but from my end, I’d told Tom Brevoort that if they did ULTIMATE AVENGERS I’d seriously consider leaving AVENGERS, and he told me a few days later that they wouldn’t do that, so I stuck around and did The Kang Dynasty.

— Kurt Busiek Resists (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018

But my reasoning was that if they did ULTIMATE AVENGERS, they’d invariably promote it as the cool new thing, an improvement on that old uncool existing book, and I didn’t want to be working on a book that the publisher was dissing.

— Kurt Busiek Resists (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018

So when they did ULTIMATES, which was ULTIMATE AVENGERS in all but name, I knew it was time to take a bow and leave, so that the next creative team could be new and fresh, rather than hanging around and getting labeled old and fusty.

— Kurt Busiek Resists (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018

Ironically, in the wake of Busiek’s stories, Avengers was eventually passed to writer Brian Michael Bendis in 2004, who was shaping the initial stories in the Ultimate Universe with Millar. Bendis then scrapped the traditional roster with the “Avengers Disassembled” storyline, which began a new era, with books like New Avengers and Young Avengers emerging.