INTERVIEW OF CHRIS CLAREMONT
By Noisybear • Published on Mighty!
Before talking about the X-Men, I'd like to come back to a period that is not often mentioned: when you had to quit writing the X-Men in 1991. It was very odd for us and I can't imagine how hard it was for you. However, I'd like to know, after writing such characters for 16 years…
For 17 years almost, yes.
Yes… For almost 17 years… after creating most of them, after giving voices to all of them, how did you manage your career as a writer afterwards, did you try to create your own X-Men? Or, at the contrary, did you want to take your distance and try to make something very different?
I wanted to do stuff, I wanted to do stories that were mine. I had the chance at DC Comics with Sovereign Seven. Regrettably, the Industry crashed three months after we started. So… It didn't work as well as we had hoped. I wrote novels. I pitched sold a number of concepts to publishers in Europe each of which went bankrupt soon after I did it. So, I think, it was an interesting time. And then Marvel hired me back.
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You tried to create something new with novels but it’s a totally other media, something new… So, after you had to quit – I guess we can say that – you children, the X-Men., how did you manage that transition?
Well, I think the difference is writing comics is like writing for a newspaper : you're always on a deadline, you are always working as fast as you can, you're always thinking about the story that you're doing today, but the story that will happen tomorrow and the story that will happen next week. Whereas a novel and… Sorry ! You're always integrating with the artist and the editor. So, it’s indeed a team synergy.
With a novel, a writer, basically, sits in a room, stares at a piece of paper in front of him until the words come. And, then you start writing… because I do my first drafts in pencil and pen and ink. That takes much longer and there's no one really to talk to about it except myself. And, it's much harder in a way. I am incredibly envious of those writers who can slam out a novel in weeks or months. But that's not the way I work. Add to that though the necessity of living a life, paying the mortgage, raising the children, so there are decisions that become mandatory; each step of the way, some of which will take me down the good path, some of which will not.
It's always a challenge from that perspective, writing comics is easy because I've been doing it my whole life. Writing novels, writing screenplays, writing poems, that's hard. More satisfying perhaps. But also more frustrating because it's suddenly going from publishing area where I am at the top of my craft into one where I am not, and what we would call in America a newbie. I'm a young punk. And, tastes of editors changed. All the editors I knew when I started have retired. The editors I'm working for at Marvel today, two of them weren't born until three years after I got fired the first time. So, that's to them I am this weird legend who's still hanging around, and I bring a lot of history and baggage with me that working with newer “fresher talent” doesn't have.
So, it's a challenge all the way across the board. From my perspective, I don't care. All I want to do is find a publisher, find a story I want to tell, and a publisher who will help me bring it to life, whether it is as bande dessinée, or novels.
You talked about the collaboration with the artists you work with. I always felt that you were very close to them, you were aware of their expectations, of what they expect with your stories. I think that Paul Smith influenced you in your stories, I felt the same with Mark Silvestri for example, or Rick Leonardi, or Alan Davis. Why do you integrate the artists with you in the stories the way you do? Not much writers do the same, I think.
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You could just as well ask why John Lennon and Paul McCartney integrated. No, I mean, when you were working with an Alan Davis, for example, or Rick Leonardi, they are both extraordinarily gifted storytellers. As Stan Lee was with Jack Kirby, Jack Kirby was with Stan Lee. Why would I be stupid enough to restrict their ability by writing a script?
For example, Marvel has just published a New Mutants story by myself and Bill Sienkiewicz. Bill Sienkiewicz is one of the most radical and extraordinary storytellers in modern comics. Why for heaven's sake would I limit him to my visual, my vision of what this story should be when I, as a reader, I'm a lot more curious about what his vision is.
Now, yes, if you look at the first three pages, that's structured as I wrote it because that is necessary to get a story underway… which he did! But, as soon as we got past that moment, things went crazy in the best imaginable way. That's the synergy. That's what makes the Marvel style so much fun! If you can find the right artist and the right writer, magic can happen.
And, I think the frustration for me as a writer is when I came and tried to present stories to the European market place, to European publishers. The style of storytelling over here is far more structured, and far more, for one of a better term, conservative than it is in America.
So, I'm writing stories. YES! It’s full scripts, for Rick Leonardi or John Byrne or Alan Davis… As with Dave Cockrum, if I said I want a double spread of a binary star system with two giant space fleets battling it out in front of bodies flying everywhere through the void, five days later I get the picture. Because Dave and I are simpatico. If I say that over here, it is interesting, it is a different conceptual approach for the visual storytellers on this side of the pond. And, a lot of them, a lot of people over here seem to be far more structured far more, if you'll pardon the phrase, down-to-earth.
Whereas, I'm looking at things the way Stan and Jack showed them to me: seventy millimeter wide screen… [we are informed that this is the end of the interview] (…) So, I keep trying till I get it right.
Thank you very much.
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