New claremont interview

Nothing much really. He talks about the current state of Marvel but doesn't really give an opinion. The only interesting answer is the very last question where he speaks, as every creator must these days, on the distribution problems of comics.

The thing that I found most interesting was the idea of him working overseas, in the European market, and I'm actually interested in learning more about Wanderers. While I think Claremont's lost his edge in regards to the X-Men, I don't think I've read anything modern he's done otherwise. I wish I could try the book out, as I love fantasy stories.

He actually sounded pretty insightful but the whole "Nothing on the stands interests me," was unnecessary. I know what he meant but he could've said it in a different way.

I think if Claremont wanted to create his own stuff he would have by now. Heck people much younger than him have done it and even Stan Lee has. I think perhaps Claremont might feel like he just doesn't want to do this anymore, at least not in his heart of hearts.

Yeah the "Nothing on the stands interests me" came off the same way to me. Just sounded sort of...I dunno arrogant. Especially when one knows how Claremont was not very good at wanting to work within the bounds of others like Peter brought up. Probabably would have come off better to just use the tried and true "Sadly I don't have time to read comics" that many creators that are out of the game or even sometimes still in the game say.

I agree, sounds like Claremont is just making a clean cut from comics now. And like BC said if he really had ideas for other characters of his own he probably would have done it by now. I think in his heart its mostly "X-Men or bust" from spending all that time with them but with it not being just Claremont running the whole X side of things on his own, it just doesn't work for him anymore. Cause that Exiles was just like Peter said, the Claremont show. And one can see the characters that he uses on a quite regular basis.

Sad that he didn't go out when on top, and had to mar memories with these last few years lol. They weren't awful awful, but they weren't great by any stretch of the definition.

That is a good point. It does indeed show just how out of touch he really is. None of it interests him cause its not his while most fans seem to be the most interested they have been in years in the X-Line right now. Where we now regularly enjoy and want different series with different voices. There are very few cases left of a single voice guiding numerous titles in a line. About the only one off the top of my head is Bendis with two and soon three Avengers books, but its not the same as Claremont's time as There are a few other books written by other writers in that Avengers umbrella so its not just the Bendis show or such.

I'd be interested in checking out his prose work just to see if perhaps it might read a little better than recent comics.

It must be hard for him really. At one point he was the XMen franchise. He wrote some of the most iconic storylines and created some of the best loved characters. And now look.....every title he writes gets cancelled due to poor readership. He's gone from king to beggar. OK I know he is still widely loved and he is still writing but reading this interview and others like it I think he should just draw a line under the XMen and move on.....and by the sounds of it he has. From what he says he doesn't read many of the current comics.....which I am not sure is a good thing or bad thing.

There are quite a few creators who aren't interested in the vast majority of what's being published right now, and they are vocal about it. Most of these people work on creator-owned projects via Image, Dark Horse, or some other third party publisher (you know, where creative risks are taken). Claremont's soap opera formula took the top of the comic book mountain for a long time, and with the help of John Byrne cemented a canon of characters. He doesn't have the commercial rights to these characters, and he didn't create them, but he took X-Men from a canceled also-ran silver age rag to the dominant intellectual property of Marvel. Almost every writer on an X title since has more or less coasted on his reputation, whether or not their run was good. He's also a fan of comics. Why should he lie and say he doesn't have time to read anything if he feels like there aren't a whole lot of good books out there? Ugh.

I would say both, and I would say his dislike of the direction of the X-Line stems from his nostalgia. Cause a lot of his post 00 stuff would return to his 'feeling' for the past or ignore things that happened to a character in another book before he had picked them up so that the character would jive more towards what the character had been like with him. If I recall he had been on record not being happy with things that had been done with some like Kitty over the years. Heck his last endeavor before leaving comics was a series that went back to recapture and move forward his work from the early 90's lol.

I miss Claremont writing X-Men related comics. I may have been the only one, but I enjoyed X-Men Forever.