What made Chris Claremont leave the X Men comic books?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 22 ноя 2020
- It's a question that has come up continuously over the years, often with different answers surrounding Claremont's departure from the X-Men. With one of the most celebrated comic book runs under his belt, what made Chris Claremont walk away from the title he put on the map? Was it due to the artists... or the editor?
Развлечения
Bob Harras. He choose between Claremont vision or Jim Lee's ego. Fun thing he ended up losing both in less than a year.
He really elevated the X men and helped create their own space with the spin off titles in the marvel universe. Even with his tropes you could tell he cared about the characters and brought them to life. I will always remember Ororo struggling with losing her powers and her relationship with Kitty Pryde. Also Colossus saying tovarisch and his gentle nature. I could go on and on. Having good art consistently helps too.
"We writers were seen as sh*t and were treated like sh*t!" - DC Comics writer Bob Haney
It was just a matter of time before that mindset reached Marvel! From what I heard from friends who still read Xmen, wben Claremont returned, he used a lot of time trying to undo things he hated that were done after he left!
I agree with the statement that the X-Men never really recovered from Claremont leaving the title.
In terms of X-men runs it’s hard to compete with Claremont’s
Still the best run on the X-Men. Especially with John Byrne. Nocenti and "Weezie" were excellent editors.
And Terry Austin as inker. The greatest era of X-Men.
I'd love to see the contract that Marvel has had with Claremont for a long time now. Being paid to not work 90%+ of the time sounds like a sweet deal.
Yeah they essentially pay him to stay off the market. I'd like to see that as well
@@TheNickcone given his last work with the X-Men, forced retirement was way overdue
Bob Harras was writing The Avengers when this debacle was going on. The Avengers had matching leather jackets. That tells me all I need to know about Harras. He ruins comics.
Clairmont said he got along with Jim shooter just fine. He said mostly because his books were on time and they sold. Lol!
I'd contend that no editor should "get along" with a creator whose books *aren't* on time and selling. Claremont was doing his job right and Shooter knew it. Professionalism pays off.
The X-Men had its greatest run during the Jim Shooter-era. He was one of the best editor-in-chiefs of all time, second only to Stan Lee or probably Roy Thomas.
Continuity was definitely more cohesive during Shooter's run.
Chris Claremont claimed he was fired when he spoke at the Sacramento comic con a few years ago.
I'm still thinking that Jim Lee doesn't completely clean hands in all of this, but it is clear that Harras was the real problem. I'm thinking that the veto power out of nowhere happened as something he could give out that would cost him nothing, and possibly placate where as the artists were wanting a cut of the proceeds to the merchandise with their art on it.
i mostly agree but given how wildstorm ended up, i doubt lee was really thinking that far ahead at the time and even after. he knew he could always bank on his art but in terms of business, he was just a bit better than his bro rob liefeld.
Sounds like Harras was a real weasel who wanted things to go a certain way and like a typical bad manager was too afraid to tell his employees this is the plan and if you don’t like it walk, so he just pitted them against one another and kept plausible deniability for himself.
The fact the same complaints followed him elsewhere says it all.
It's funny how much things have changed since the 90's. Back then, the artist really were selling the books. And if they didn't like the writer, the writer got moved off the book and they got another. Or the artist wrote them themselves. Which is why you'll see a lot of awesome art in 90's book. With very little story to speak of for the most part.
Now, the writer and cover artists are selling the books. And they'll just put anyone that can draw a stick figure doing the insides. Which is disappointing. I see so many awesome covers and then I'll buy the book and I could almost draw better than some of the artists. This isn't a rule. There are good artists. But I miss the days of typically good art. Now, we get decent writers, but so-so art. I wish they could get some of these cover artists to do the inside of the book they're doing so I didn't always feel ripped off. There should be some kind of in-between where you typically get good art AND good stories. I don't know how you can lose all of the artists from the 90's almost completely. And how very few modern artists try to emulate or build upon previous art. It's all this very sketchy stuff for the most part that looks rushed. Which is very annoying.
#Facts.
You lost me with "awesome art in the 90s"...all the Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane clones were drawing figures without taking into account basic anatomy and proportions. I also read a lot of comments on how the 90s art were full of "details"....uhhhh....there were a lot of unnecessary lines, cross hatching and shading, but, if you look at them really, most were always in action poses, teeth gnashing, muscles tensed....with some basic and essential details missing, like FEET!!!! Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and their clones would always cover their characters feet with some smoke effect, which made no sense. And most panels were just roided out muscular body builder-type figures in costume, with very little scenery. "Hot artists" really did sell the books back in the 90s, but their "art" were pretty mediocre, and not at all "awesome".
@@rj-yr4ql "Awesome art" is very subjective. And I agree that a lot of the art back then was weak. Colorful and bold, but weak. And yeah, Rob can't draw a foot to save his life. The bold art would get your attention, but I wouldn't say it's really good art. Just that 90's Extreme In Your Face stuff! Big guns, big chests, big muscles. Very 90's. The thing is the art today isn't really any better. A lot of modern artists seem to have no idea what a human being looks like. They'll forget the arms and legs in exchange for speed lines. There are some good artists, but too many are just doing quick, sketchy stuff for my taste. But, once again, it's subjective. I would have loved these same artists back in the 90's on Vertigo books. It's just that their style isn't great for superhero books.
@@rj-yr4ql Well said. ;}
I came to the X-Men via the 1st animated cartoon and Claremont had left the book shortly before that. But I really loved his writing style and how he brought the characters to life. The X-Men are completely polar opposite now from what they used to be under him (and Nicieza and Lobdell).
Nicieza and Lobdell did good jobs. But what was already happening is the issues where mostly build-up to the next big crossover and to often became padding. But Fabien and Scott treated the characters seriously and followed on from Chris' work. For a fair while you didn't seem to notice Claremont had gone, except for the inconsistency. But this was due to Bob Harris' direction.
I thought Harras wanted to pull from Denny O'Neil (who at the time he was editor on Daredevil, chose between Frank Miller and Roger McKenzie and the book exploded), and thought Lee would garner more sales than Claremont, so he sided with Lee. He hardly knew what would hit him months later, as Lee left for Image.
But Frank Miller turned out to be a great writer in the making. Hence why it worked.
Lee's X-Men was a tad directionless after Claremont and then he left and his Wildcats was average. Jim Lee is my favourite artist in comics ever, but a writer he is not.
From what I've read, what finally drove Chris off is when Bob Harras made the decision to take plotting away from him and only let him do the scripts. Claremont was not okay with that.
It's never been stated by anyone that I know of, I get the feeling that Harras wanted to be the one writing the X-Men. But since he was the group editor he settled for creative control. I remember early on after Chris left that X-Men were really more of an editorially driven comic, rather than a creator driven. Which, I'm sure, was news to Claremont.
The last Claremont that I "read" was Extreme X-Men #24. I was 5 pages in, pure dialogue, no action or excitement or intrigue, when I decided to flip to see how much more was left before the good bits started. There were no good bits, it was pure prose laid over pretty stagnant panels. I miss the Claremont my child self grew up reading.
One of my all time favorite writers. His books were always a treat to follow.
I loved Claremont's X-men. I think that Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza did pretty well after he left though. X-Cutioner's Song, Fatal Attractions, and Age of Apocalypse were all great moments in the series. Claremont set them up for success though.
Good video as always perch. I think Lee is full of it when he says that he didn’t ask for more power on the X-books. Also hopefully Marvel doesn’t bring back Bob Harris because I can’t see him working well with Hickman.
Video suggestion: Chris Claremont vs John Byrne.
Great video Perch!
Claremont got handed the Extreme X-.men book that was a fun read. But his return to Uncanny X-Men run beginning in the in the late 440 issues up to the 480,s or 490,s was really good. Very underrated run because there was no consistent art team. Art duties were split between 3 or 4 artists st the time. That run read and felt like his X-men stuff from the 80,s.
Chris Claremont 's X-men work is great, but I think his 1970's run on Marvel Team-up with John Byrne is worth reading.
I have an interview from the early 90s where Chris simply mentioned that he was not allowed to write his own stories. He also mentioned how he had a different story in mind for Weapon X, but it was decided to leave the artist, B.W. Smith, write the story himself. For sure Harras played a big role in his decision to leave and it is a pity that we never got to see how Chris intricate plots would develop.
I wonder if Harras was just the hatchet man, and that the driving force was ultimately a business consideration: that from the business side of things the X-men property could be so much more profitable without a hefty writer's salary attached to it. Now I'm speculating here. I don't know how much Claremont was being paid but I'm factoring in 17 years of raises and maybe some lucrative contract renewals. We all know the prevailing philosophy at Marvel at the time was that the characters and properties ultimately sold the books and not the creators. So I'm thinking a case started to build internally for why Marvel didn't need an expensive writer on the Flagship X-book(s) anymore. So did Marvel just do what corporations always do and Harras just did what company men always do when they are handed the hatchet...?
I met Claremont in 1985 at a comic con. He was nice and chatty at first. I then politely asked Claremont about the rumored "creative differences" between him and John Byrne. Suddenly he flew off the handle, before gathering himself. Obviously we all now know about the rocky relationship between Claremont and Byrne, which included the infamous Doom Bots diss by Byrne. I can only imagine the relationship between Claremont and Jim Lee, the golden child. And you are correct, that's clearly when artists were the shinning stars at Marvel.
That question was rather intrusive on your behalf. I could see how he would not take kind to it. Maybe it was not the place, forum or person to be asking that.
@@corderoismael23 What was I supposed to ask him, what’s his favorite color? Many other fans and journalists have asked him the same exact question throughout the years at comic cons. That’s why people pay money to go to these things in the first place.
Very good how you explain it.
Great video! I gotta say, would you be interested in giving your thoughts about Dark Horse and the state they're in? It looks like they're starting to fade. Why it happened and possible future?
Great vid, thanks!
Look what was done to Kirby. Hey, look at Shuster & Siegel. Superhero comics companies from the beginning ran things on Pirates of the Carribean lines - "Steal everything you can. Give nothing back."
I always thought Claremont and Byrne got along (although I've heard from a lot of people that Byrne is difficult). What happened between them?
Power struggles over the stories remember the infamous storyline involving wolverine killing the savage land guard in x-men#116? Claremont felt Byrne and editor roger stern did that behind his back and tried to spin/alter it in classic x-men....
Fun fact: Claremont actually went to dc comics. But damm, forgetablee
Only thing I remember him doing for DC was a justice league story arc in the 2000s. I think it was like 10 issues but it wasn’t that good.
@Nameless Who cares Sovereign Seven was interesting both for the story and Claremont's arrangement with DC. The book interacted with the DCU and even had Power Girl as a team member, but it was a creator-owned book. In hindsight, that limited the characters' use in the broader DCU and kept their profile lower and marginalized them. On paper it was a good setup for Claremont, but in the end, it surely hurt the book.
He also started writing scifi and fantasy novels (including co-writing some with George Lucas) around this era, starting in 1987. The ones I've read were truly dreadful, and the reviews on the early ones were very mixed.
@Nameless Who cares I've only read the scifi ones, starting with First Flight. Absolutely terrible, although I believe it was his first effort at prose writing. Man's good at comics, no criticism there, but really doesn't do well with novels. His short fiction in the Wild Cards books was better - but that's also a shared-world series in a sort-of-realistic supers universe, so more familiar ground.
The Willow books may be partially co-author Lucas' fault - the SW prequel films make me question his writing skills as well.
@Nameless Who cares I don't know, his later comic work hasn't been terrible, he's just not a good novelist. Nothing all that rare about a creator having one work of genius that they struggle to duplicate for the rest of their career - as any one-hit wonder band will tell you, as well as countless artists and authors since the dawn of time.
Bob Harras because Bob decided to make the wrong choice between Chris & Jim without a guarantee Jim would stay for another decade like Chris would have. There wasn't animosity or hatred. But they both wanted to go in different directions. Chris wanted to move into new stuff. Jim wanted to revisit a lot of greatest hits stuff.
If he had stayed I doubt the expansion of X titles would have been as prominent as the early 90s
this was a good video to give a more complete look at why Claremont left the X-men. In the past it seemed it boiled down to Marvel siding with Jim lee over him but I don't think it is or was that simple. It sounds more like a bunch of things happening all at once making clarement feel like he wasn't respected or heard or wanted and he left before he should have and the X-men have suffered for it.
I never heard this story. Interesting.
4:40 Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane were not slow artists. You can see Jim Lee layout a page and detail it within 6 hours on his RUclips channel. When they went to Image they slowed down because they were seeing a full return on their efforts. Jim Lee was also mentoring upcoming artists at his studio which cut into his drawing time for his own book. Todd was just busy building an empire not just a comicbook, that's why he hired Capullo to takeover full time on Spawn as penciller.
I know you're not a fan of Jim Shooter but Harris' usual malarkey would not have been tolerated under his reign. It's surprising that Harris' ineptitude was overlooked for so long in the comics industry & through 3 different companies to boot.
I don’t mind Shooter; I think he did a ton right. I don’t think he is the be-all, end-all... that’s all. He was miles and miles better than Harris.
Don’t forget John Byrne
The X-Men title has never recovered/ rebounded since. Closest was Morrison / Quitley run. But Claremont run untouchable
That run is bad though. Good starting story then downhill. Rather like Morrison's JLA. Morrison is to much of a shock writer, and he writes concepts and stunts not characters
In the Kayfabe interview Claremont said that Marvel want keep pushing for immediate impact rather than histories that keep the book selling in the long run, what probably was part of litigation. What is most fascinate is how nothing from Claremont was good since he left. Even when he come back to write X-Men was awful. Claremont style need to keep running or is lost forever. And only work with one X-Men team and fixed characters, slowing changing over time. Not this shit show where everyone is X-Men.
Perch trolls the internet for interviews of Claremont
People forget Stan Lee’s biggest contributions to superhero comics: give them feet of clay and dress in civilian clothes. Readers loved the first and hated the second. Lee kept the first and changed the second. Lesson: give the readers what they PURCHASE.
Going by this video i would say it is a combination of lee and harras. lee is at fault for not realising how important good writing will be for his art(see divine right for details) and harras for not keeping the staff in order. even when the worst case scenario of all their best artists leaving, as long as the guys who make the stories stay onboard then they can always replace the artist which can be for the better or worse. hard to say if all involved learned their lessons from what would follow in the industry down the line. hopefully chris can bring that old school vibe back on this legends project and perhaps even get some more mutant work after that. with all due respect, the Hick-men just hasn't got it right.
Every single X-Men comic I've ever read since I was a child to my mid twenties was written by Chris Claremont..
They should launch an alternate X-Men ongoing and make it digital like dc has with man of steel and Gotham knight online ongoing.
There’s a bigger context here of Marvel at the time moving more and more away from story driven content to those flashy, big issues with multiple covers aimed to capitalise on the burgeoning collector/speculator market. In hindsight, you can see that it was shortsighted of them and the collapse of that whole fad nearly proved the undoing of the entire company.
Whatever the specifics, it was clear that writers like Claremont were becoming out of fashion in favour of the posturing 90s ‘mature content’, action heavy, all style and no substance storytelling.
Whatever the specifics, in retrospect it seemed eventually inevitable he would leave.
Fortunately, time has been kinder to Claremont whose work is now rightly remembered as classic, genre defining material, whilst the so called ‘superstar’ artists of the era are seen as more and more limited and of their time.
"I don't know if it's completely fair..."
Then by all means, present a book or series/arc of X-books (or any other Marvel title) that in any way compares positively to the best between 80ish and the Claremont/Image departure. To date, no one yet has. There is no Dark Phoenix. There is no Inferno There is no God Loves Man Kills. The art objectively is sub par and the writing has been mediocre. One forgettable and meaningless 'event' after another beginning with AOA.
The 'proof' of that assertion is in the fact that there HAS BEEN NO DOFP/Dark Phx et all. So yes. It's completely fair.
The counter argument people have used is that financially there have been more profitable runs. However, that argument is a bit sketchy since those high numbers in the 90s stand on the shoulders of work Claremont did for decades.
@@ComicsPerch I look at it this way. There have also been more profitable runs in romance novels than Plato's "Republic" or Dante's Inferno. But none of them are remembered much less classics recognized outside their genre. So if thats the counter argument people are using, it's sp weak as to not be worth making.
Things would've been much better if they'd just have let Byrne be sole writer and penciler of Uncanny while Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell worked on the other book. Or have left Claremont on Uncanny with Portacio and have given Byrne X-Men.
John Byrne's writing has always been childish and simplistic. The FF was an embarassment.
@@markshulusky6680 We'll agree to disagree.
@Amritansh Mishra Plot isn't script. That's why, as the law states, "you can't copyright an idea, only your expression of the idea". It's the writing that's hard.
Did you watch the documentary that is on Amazon Prime? www.amazon.com/Chris-Claremonts-X-Men-Claremont/dp/B079J6V7CZ
Harras wanted X-men to be stuck in the past. But as GI Joe editor, he pushed it into nonsense. Man didn’t know what he was doing at any given time.
He did everything he could for the X-Men. People can say he left because of this or that, but I guess he left because he was done.
There was nothing more he could do with the team. Proof of that is that when he returned a decade later his work was subpar at best.
1975-1991 will forever be X-Men golden age though.
Erik larson was big at that time too
When Clairemont returned to X-men in 2000 he got sabataged by Harras again
Its pronounced "WIll-chay" Portacio
Good for Claremont leaving a toxic work environment
Different take than I always heard
whenever chris claremont is discussed, everyone seems to default to Jim Lee....& complete skip over Marc Silvestri, who was one of the longest running artists alongside Claremont during his reign over the #xmen (after John Byrne, of course). chris claremont & marc silvestri seemed to have perfect synergy in what they combined to put out in the books. but even before watching this vid, I've long heard that Jim Lee & Bob Harass basically teamed up to push Claremont out of the #xmen. IDC what anybody says, we have CLAREMONT to thank for the xmen, as we know them today. He revived them in 1975, after they were CXL'ed.
Harras got Clairemont back to Marvel and Xmen in 2000 and screwed him again
His first run together with Cockrum and especially Joh Byrne were classic, but after Byrne left Chris's writing was never the same. As the years passed he got worse and worse. Even his efforts at DC and indie stuff was a dud. By the time he was paired with Jim Lee, Jim Lee was the attraction like you said. Those stories were nothing compared to the Byrne era. And I agree the X-Men suffered bad writing after bad writing. They've had brief bliss with Morrison and Whedon but that was it. Now with Hickman I'm a fan again, just the Hickman stuff.
A lot of people try and make Harras to be the bad guy in all of this, but I don't think its that simple. As far as Harras was concerned Claremont's writing wasn't as good as it used to be.
The Mutant Massacre was a perfect example:
What are Mr Sinister powers? Unknown
What was Mr Sinister's origin? Unknown
Why did Sinister want the Morlocks dead? Unknown
Harras thought that maybe Claremont needed to take a break away from the X-men. They also had disagreements like the dark Wolverine story Claremont wanted to do(which Mark Millar would later on bastardise).
So Harras did end up taking Jim Lee side and I think history would end up being on Harras's side.
Sovereign Seven was unreadable.
Claremont clearly did not understand the Fantastic Four
All of his x stuff when he returned to Marvel was sub par
And then we have X-Men Forever, which was the stories that Claremont planned to do if he stayed on the X-Men and it was terrible
I disagree. The Mr Sinister and Mutant massacre stuff was like 7 years previously.
Claremont was writing great stuff when he left. That X-Factor story when Cyclopes loses his son was the best X-Factor story up to that point. His X-men stuff at that time was consistently great. Sure he lost it when he came back years later, but the quality of of his writing late 80s and early 90s was still at the top. Jim Lee, great artist eh is, never wrote a good story.
Bob Harris the worst thing that happened to Marvel and DC.
I know one moment to piss me off or send any things when they killed warlock off in the pages of new mutants with pretty much zero fanfare, or thought put behind it. I know Chris would’ve never handled it like that.