Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: ageism, Bill Sienkiewicz, chris claremont, marvel, new mutants, x-men

Chris Claremont Has an "Infinite Score" of X-Men Stories to Tell… If Only Marvel Would Let Him

Published Sat, 28 Sep 2019 16:00:26 -0500

Legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont reunited with Bill Sienkiewicz for New Mutants: War Children, a Marvel 80th-anniversary one-shot released last Wednesday. But why doesn't Claremont, who is paid to remain a Marvel-exclusive writer, contribute more than the occasional one-shot or short story to the franchise which he played a bigger role than anyone else in building? That's a question for which we've never been able to find a logical answer, but one thing for certain is it's not because Claremont isn't interested.

Claremont was interviewed by Newarama's George R. R. Marston this week, and he revealed that even New Mutants: War Childen could have been longer if Marvel allowed it.

Marvel called up and said "We want to reunite you and Bill for this aspect of the 80th anniversary celebration. We'd like you to do a 30-page New Mutants story."

So I said, "I'm cool, ask Bill." They asked Bill and Bill was cool. Then my son came up with the next question, which was, can we have a hundred pages?

Sadly, Claremont and Sienkiewicz did not get a hundred pages for their one-shot. But when it comes to the New Mutants or the X-Men, Claremont seems just as primed to write their stories as the day he started.

It's the same reaction I still have to the X-Men. I look at these characters I've known for, heaven help me, the better part of a half-century, and they're still young and fresh and dynamic. I have an infinite score of stories I want to tell about them.

Unfortunately, it's not up to Claremont or even to X-Men fans, who certainly seem to respond to any article with the creator's name in it here on Bleeding Cool with plenty of interest. That's up to Marvel.

For me, I look at these characters and I look at the way they're presented, and even after all this time, my gut reaction is, what the heck happens next? But whether I get to tell those stories is up to the folks making the decisions.

So why doesn't Marvel make the decision to have Claremont write X-Men stories more regularly? It seems we may never find out.