Grant Morrison is evil, and so is Mark Millar

[Richmond Clements]

It is however very different from the other comics that were coming out of the House of Ideas at the time and hugely influential

Perhaps, but his racial stereotypes are utterly appalling. I'd even go as far as to say offensive.

[Bico]

His opinions on women don't bear close scrutiny, either.

[eggonlegs]

im not an expert but she talking through her arse - morrisons run on the xmen was ******* excelent - artists as well

[Floyd-the-k]

are those guys particularly aristocratic, or is it just that all English people are aristos to her?

yours struggling to remember anything distinctive about the Claremont stories he read years ago

[Leigh S]

Somebody send her a copy of
Big Dave...

[Tordelbach]

Claremont's 80's 'X-Men' (and more particularly 'New Mutants') was my first experience of Marvel comics (beyond a few brushes with Marvel UK reprints), and thus I feel able to comment on its dubious appeal.  As far as my young self was concerned, Claremont had three things going for him that seemed absent in other superhero comics of the day:

(1).  Teen soap opera.  Plots in the X-Men/New Mutants often seemed to be just backdrops for the love lives and personal development crises of the characters.  Very appealing to the insecure teenager who might otherwise have had to consult the problem pages in 'Just 17'.  A sort of 'Breakfast Club' effect, and no less cringe-worthy in hindsight, but building on the Spiderman principle by just playing with a larger cast of characters.

(2).  Character Torture.  Claremont's characters were very vulnerable to both emotional and physical hurt, and he subjected them to lashings of both.  The idea of persecution of difference was usually at the heart of this abuse, and again, a subject very close to the hearts of disaffected nerdly teenagers...  

(3).  Foreshadowing.  No Claremont issue was complete without some wildly incongruous opening or closing page featuring goings on at a crashed Hive spaceship or a shadowy figure assassinating Morlocks in a sewer (said hooded figure would later turn out to be the wife or brother of an X-Man, long believed dead but in fact enslaved by Apocalypse, Mr. X or someone even sillier), events that had nothing to do with what was going on in the rest of the book, and occasionally not even referred to for the next 12 issues.  

This was Claremont setting up some 'astonishing' future development, and believe it or not, it was 'cool'.  Unfortunately, Claremont often changed his mind about what this event might be, and the 'single page' teasers seldom had any real connection with how things eventually played out.  Still, it gave the impression that the book had a firm direction and hinted at a plot complexity that (it later turned out) really didn't exist.  

Sadly (in the Rolf Harris sense), none of these elements bear up to much modern scrutiny, in an era of so-called 'sophisticated' TV teen dramas, post-Dark Knight superheroics where brutalisation of the anti/hero is standard, and complex long-running TV SF plot-arcs with tidbits of foreshadowing spread over several years (B5/X-Files I'm looking at you...).  It's just rather clumsy old hat, and very hollow when read retrospectively - for this kind of tugging of heartstrings to work, characters have to actually *change*.  

It's a bit annoying to watch Sam Guthrie overcome the same issues of family responsibility over and over again, without ever appearing to grow-up; it's a bit annoying to watch Scott grieve for Jean only to have her repeatedly come back to life or be revealed as an imposter/ a clone/an alien force/her twin sister over and over again.  If the reboot button keeps getting hit, soap opera antics become totally worthless.

Basically, in the narrow world of superheroes (obviously far more exciting things were happening in Eisnerland and elsewhere), Claremont's writing seemed more personal and involving than contemporary fare.  In the long run, it was shown not to be, and nowadays all of his signature devices seem worse than cliches.  

But lest this rant seem totally negative, I have to confess that for a year or three, I really enjoyed Chris Claremont's work.  Actually, that reminds me that there is a fourth reason why Claremont seemed so good:

(4).  He was succeeded by Louise Simonson.

On another note, Mrs. Cockrum's blog really is quite disturbing - issues of continuity aside (and that's where they're best left, as far as the X-Men go), how is it appreciably more 'Anti-semitic' to have Logan IN a concentration camp than it is to have him liberating one (and are the two actually exclusive, since there were far too many such camps)?  Searching for historical accuracy in a world where no-one has aged since the 1960's (inlcuding their offspring), and characters vascillate between being young teenagers and adults on an almost yearly cycle (witness: Kitty Pryde) is surely madness.

Ah X-books, gone from my life these past twenty years, but clearly not forotten...

[Wils]

Somebody send her a copy of...

...this thread! ;)

[Floyd-the-k]

there's a Rolf Harris sense of 'sadly'?

ps, an impressive piece there, thank you.

[Art]

SO if you don't write Magneto as a good guy at all times you're an anti-semite? WTF?

[Tordelbach]

"there's a Rolf Harris sense of 'sadly'? "

From his interminable tenure as presenter on 'Animal Hospital', a nadir for (like him or loathe him) an astonishingly versatile (and apparently immortal) entertainer.  

As in: "Sadly, poor Fluffy's cough worsened during the night and a few minutes ago he [pauses to wipes away manly tear] passed away in the loving arms of Julie [choke], the veterinary nurse".

I occasionally muck in at the local animal shelter where my better half works, and to this day DoAs and other obvious lost causes are referred to as "sadlies".  E.g.:  "Lady at Reception looking for a lost Jacker".  "Uh-oh - think that might have been one of yesterday's sadlies".

[Quirkafleeg]

So if you make your villian (who actually acts evily... rather than being simply misunderstood) jewish your are anti-semetic... right. So I suppose you can only have WASP bad guys (or Englishmen)

[GermanAndy]

Wow, just when you thought comic-rants couldn?t get stranger.

This conspiracy nonsense is laughable.Yes, the x-books were so much better in the past. Of course when Claremont got fired back then (or quit) all went downhill. :-) This discussion will never end - instead of Claremonts never resolved plots you got Lobdells or whoever was scripting never resolved plots.

It is true that Claremonts efforts to make Magneto a hero was bold at the time and a good piece of writing. To transform an one-dimensional character - and Magento was an uninteresting nutcase even in the Claremont/Byrne years - and make him interesting is no small feat. And it was a shame that no writer or editor after him could work with that. So they made him a stupid villian again. Business as usual.

To accuse Morrison of the dirty deed is plain untrue. As is constructing an agenda behind it.

On the other hand this piece is interesting. It illustrates the mechanisms of american comics franchises. We can?t sell the characters because the writers are doing their jobs and try make a tired, 45 old character at least halfway interesting. Even is this were true - and every sales-chart tells differently because the stuff sells less and less every year, so the 50 to 100000 people who are buying the x-books don?t even make a dent at the box-office, the writers could change Magneto to an brazillian transvestite and it still wouldn?t matter in the big picture - it says that the suits are so shackled to the past that no halfway "innovative" storyline is worth a damn. They want the storyline from 1966.

I bought the x-books again because Morrison wrote it, and I love some of his stuff. Don?t know how often I read his Doom Patrol. His x-stuff left me rather cold. Yes, it was clever and had some good ideas, but it never grabbed me. My problem. At least it had an ending which is more than you can say about 90 % of american comics. That it got retconned on the day he left is the nature of the beast. Seems now they are busy to haul the x-books back in the past.

Which is kind of good. Money saved for 2000 A.D. :-)

[DavidXBrunt]

And now the guilt kicks in as a mate of mine has pointed out that Dave Cockram has very recently died and Paty has admitted to having health problems that impact on her judgement. Still, crazy photo.

[Byron Virgo]

Which strangely does look reminiscent of a Nazi Death Camp Commandant from some 1950's war film directed by Sam Fuller or John Sturges.

[DavidXBrunt]

Anti Semite!