angelophile | Bristol International Comic Expo Report

The first of my panel reports (which turned out wordier than I expected, so I decided to do individual ones), on Saturday I attended the panel listed as:

Chris Claremont - Of Mutants, Marvel and Marada

All this and much, much more is discussed when famed X-meister Chris Claremont sits down with Mike Conroy to chew the fat not only about his long and wide-ranging career but also what he’s got lined up for the future.

An interesting panel in a number of ways. Claremont was entertaining and often amusing, although the relaxed atmosphere of the expo appeared to have got to him. Five minutes before the panel I passed him, apparently fast asleep, in the hotel bar. He was still a little... lethargic when it came to the panel and occasionally his responses and thoughts moved with a glacial pace. Journalist Mike Conroy was able to keep the panel on track, steering Claremont towards answers when things stalled, but for the most part, Claremont came across well, poking fun at his own work on occasion and certainly nicely cynical about certain characters and developments within the main X-men universe.

I've no doubt forgotten many of the questions and discussions, but the panel kicked off with Mike Conroy asking how naturally Claremont had come on the idea of emphasizing the idea of mutants as being a cipher for minorities.

Claremont talked about how it seemed a natural progression of what Stan Lee had set up and then went on to talk about is first day at school in Tampa, where he got dressed in his smart uniform and turned up to get, in his words, "the living shit kicked out of me". He said that it was that experience, of being in an unfamiliar country, where he didn't quite fit, that made it easier for him to identify with being an "outsider".

Asked about his relationships with the characters and whether he thought about them as "real people" Claremont talked about how he's had a relationship with many of these characters for 20... 30... 40 years. Longer than many relationships that people have. And how, as a writer, you have to think of them as real for them to feel natural when you're writing them. He was then asked about the shared universe and whether, when others are writing the characters, there's still that feeling.

No, said Claremont. When you're writing them they feel real to you. When someone else is writing the characters, it's like reading stories with characters who look the same and have the same names, but act differently. He brought up Modesty Blaise and the fact that creator Peter O'Donnell, who recently died, requested, when he retired that no-one else write further Modesty Blaise stories because the character was such a part of him and obviously felt real when he wrote her. If only, Claremont said, good-naturedly, he'd kept the rights of the characters he created.

Asked about his prose work, he mentioned that he's working on a couple of novels. Asked for details he said he'd rather not divulge because it jinxes things.

Creator owned work was mentioned, along with DC, and why he'd focused on and got so associated with Marvel and Claremont simply noted that "Marvel pays better". The problem too, which was also echoed in the Creator Owned panel later in the day, was that when you're a writer only, you're reliant on an artist as well. Marvel's Icon print is only interested in publishing complete projects - something that's valuable - but you pitch to them with a complete project in mind, which means, in the case of artists particularly, often months working for nothing on a book that may not even sell.

There was talk about the X-men: Forever title and how it came about and Claremont stated, self-depreciatingly, that it was simply that he had two and a half years left on his contract and Marvel had to find something for him to do. With the storylines for the X-men titles planned out for two years by the editorial team and the creative teams set, the idea of giving Claremont his own universe to play with came up, which they ran with. The industry has changed so that the entire X-men line and its spin offs are planned out carefully, with 5 issue arcs being the standard, ready for trade paperbacks. Claremont briefly touched on sales, noting that individual issues seem to be treated as loss leaders now, with the profit coming from book stores rather than the direct market.

After the floor was thrown open to questions, Claremont was asked about how much input an artist has on story telling. Ideally, Claremont said, from his point of view, he'd deliver a script and the artist would then make it real. However, the amount of detail a script can hold can vary dependent on how intuitive the artist is. He talked about working with Frank Miller on the Wolverine mini-series and how the script for his first issue was about 21 pages for a 22 page comics. The art for the last issue was produced after a phone call to Miller and a 3/4 page story outline. Claremont went on to talk about Alan Moore's script for Watchmen, which was a page in 8 point type for each panel, stating that reading the script made his eyes hurt, to much laughter.

I managed to jump in with a question at the point, about how Claremont's first action in the X-men Forever universe had been to kill Wolverine and what was his thinking behind that. He said a lot of people in the room would probably hate him for it - something that didn't seem to be the case. In fact, my thanking him for killing Wolverine off got much murmured approval. When asked if he'd done it "because he could", Claremont said that, yes, it was partly that. But mentioned other reasons too. For one, he thought that Wolverine's healing factor had become overblown and came out with a number of increasingly ridiculous scenarios to much laughter ("Just had a nuclear bomb dropped on him? "Grrr, I'm fine, bub."") and said that killing him and having him /not/ recover was a big motivation. Secondly, the character had become unkillabe in terms of plot too - if you pick up an X-men book you know he's never going to die, he's a permanent fixture. Wolverine was killed to demonstrate that in the X-men Forever universe no-one is safe right from the first issue. And also, partially, just because Jean Grey can never catch a break.

The discussion then turned to sales, briefly, and skipped over the mention that an X-men book without Wolverine is a hard sell, and the current direction of the X-men. Claremont stated that in his title he set up the burnout idea and the core team of X-men continuing to fight on, while others have stepped down from active duty to concentrate on trying to find a solution to the problem. But the active X-men would be continuing to act like heroes and have impact on the rest of the Forever universe, something that will be seen in upcoming issues, rather than being isolated on one tiny island, fighting purely for mutant rights, a direction that Claremont was clearly, but amusingly, unimpressed by.

As the panel wound up, Chris snuck in a story about the death of Superman story and how, whatever control writers have, above them there's editors and above them others who are seeking to protect their brands. He told the story about how the then editor in chief of DC had approved the Death of Superman story and when it made the news, she was called by the head of Time Warner, who subjected her to a half hour rant demanding to know who had signed off in it - no matter what artistic freedom writers and even editors think they have, somewhere there's going to be someone bigger and more important thinking, not about the stories, but their brands.