Chris Claremont came to town today as a favor to Chuck at Mile High Comics. On the personal Mount Rushmore of comic book heroes, Claremont holds a spot (along with Walt Simonson, Jim Lee, and Marc Silvestri). An influential writer who basically saved the X-men from dying way back in their infancy, he built a series that today is a bloated mess (but that is another tale). Looking at his bibliography, I was taken back by how much he wrote. I got into comics around 1985 and at that time Claremont was mostly doing X-Comics. Hard to believe he guided those Merry Mutants from issue #94 - 279. In fact I asked him what his favorite arc was and he basically said his entire run which lasted from 1975 - 1991! At 20 years old when he finished his run, I was barely keeping abreast of the comic world. Following the history it is eye opening to see how his run ended on X-men was brutal. In this blog post you can understand his anguish. During my brief signing, I also asked who his favorite X-man was...not wanting to tip his hand...he immediately asked me who was mine. No question it is Cyke. Which Claremont sneakily then says, "I'll go with that." He then turns to my son and asks him...thankfully he came up with an X-man in Wolverine. This then set off Claremont on a long riff of the the overuse of the character. Starting in the movie and expressing how he loved the opening scene when Rogue asks Wolverine if it hurts when is claws come out. Wolverine responds by saying yes every time. Claremont shows his love for character first in that the essence of Wolverine is what he does best hurts every time and Claremont hates all the character is always in fight mode thus essentially marginalizing the character. A very generous man. I was glad to have shaken his hand and have a brief flashback to the my high school days (that would have been issues 217 through 245).
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| Best Selling Comic Ever (Gate Fold) Signed by Claremont and Lee) |
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