Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: chris claremont, marvel, x-men

Chris Claremont Explains Difference Between Cyclops and Wolverine

Legendary comic book writer Chris Claremont recently appeared on Reddit's /r/comicbooks community for an AMA. He answered questions from X-Men fans and, in doing so, inadvertently provided Bleeding Cool with essentially our entire Thanksgiving weekend's worth of comic book clickbait. To be honest, we're not sure why we love Chris Claremont more: because he created the single greatest comic book run of all time that has brought joy to our life for decades… or because he made it so we could take it easy on Turkey Day and not worry about writing comic book news articles. It's really a tough choice.

Claremont answered a question from a Cyclops fan who wanted him to explain why Scott is better than Wolverine, but he didn't give that reader exactly what they wanted. "Logan is cool; Scott is not," said Claremont. "My problem is I thought Scott was a wonderful character until the moment he walked out on Madelyne and went back to Jean—and that was dishonorable and destroyed him as a character. Logan wouldn't do that. He'd kill you, but he'd do it for the right reasons."

Claremont went on to revisit an old beef: "Scott was the base, the foundation of the team. He's the core around which everything orbits, which is why with Madelyne, it meant so much to me to give him a happy ending to resolve the whole Jean conundrum. To get that death out of his system and get on with real life. And for me, for Scott, it was all about real life."

"I was just reading the issue with the fight between Scott and Ororo," Claremont continued. "And the whole point is, Scott thinks, 'I have to stay with the X-Men, they need me to lead them.' But he's got [a] wife and a kid now. Maybe it's time to grow up. There aren't that many families in the superhero universe, like the FF. Scott is not Reed Richards. Give yourself a break. Give your family a break."

"And for Scott, it's coming up to a point where he has to rewrite the patterning of his life, which occasionally is what happens when you grow hit your 20s," he said. "And it's very, very hard. Falling in love, making the commitment of "I do" is awesome. Finding yourself with a baby is the scariest, most wonderful thing that can possibly happen. And again, as a writer, I was selfishly looking forward to dealing with that over the years with Scott, as I tried to do in X-Men. What's it like for him to be a father? How does he relate to things? How does he deal with being married? There was all sorts of stuff there on both a real-world and a superhero perspective. And then it all got thrown away. And that's why it took Louise Simonson two years if not longer, to figure out how to resolve it. To get to get them all as people back on track, so that we could resolve it."

"But, you know, for me, it was just a moment that you could not go back from—because it took away the opportunity for Scott to be a father, and it just remade him as tropes," Claremont concluded. "And they deserve better than that. And yes, It's been 30 years, and I still bear a grudge. Sorry about that."

We still bear a grudge too. So how about Marvel gives Chris Claremont the reigns of an ongoing X-Men comic again? That legends thing is a good start, but we want more, dammit!

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