I want to thank Chris Claremont and John Byrne!

[merrick97]

Sure, but Claremont had to write him. If I had written him, people would still think of Wolverine as that guy who fought the Hulk in the 70s.

John Byrne did plenty of writing with Claremont. He isn't always given the credit as a writer, but he did have a lot of input as to the creative direction. It was the same story with Steve Ditko who had much more story input with Spiderman than initially given credit for.

I sound like I am trashing Claremont. Im not at all saying he was bad, but I do not believe that he stands up as well on his own as John Byrne does. When I judge the quality of their work, IMO its not even close. Byrne's Fantastic Four run absolutely blows away anything that Claremont did. Uncanny X-men was pretty good, but didn't take off and become something special until Byrne arrived.

Thats my opinion.

[Talisman]

John Byrne did plenty of writing with Claremont. He isn't always given the credit as a writer, but he did have a lot of input as to the creative direction. It was the same story with Steve Ditko who had much more story input with Spiderman than initially given credit for.

I sound like I am trashing Claremont. Im not at all saying he was bad, but I do not believe that he stands up as well on his own as John Byrne does. When I judge the quality of their work, IMO its not even close. Byrne's Fantastic Four run absolutely blows away anything that Claremont did. Uncanny X-men was pretty good, but didn't take off and become something special until Byrne arrived.

Thats my opinion.

The mini series that Claremont did with Frank Miller may be the characters greatest story told thus far. And while I love Byrne's FF, I feel the work that Claremont did with the X-Men with Cockrum/Smith/Romita Jr. was as good as Byrne's FF run, imo.

[SpiderCrawler]

Whoops. Ignore this. Pretend I was never here. Carry on.

[merrick97]

The mini series that Claremont did with Frank Miller may be the characters greatest story told thus far.

That's my point:

Chris Claremont AND Frank Miller, which was when Frank Miller was at the top of his game. He always had someone else with him when he had his best stuff.

[joemauer]

Claremont got lucky, getting paired with artists who could plot as well: Marc S., JRJr, Jim Lee. Because of his lucky pairings he was able to create a sustained run that was golden. Uncanny X Men probably attracted such talented artists because it was so big at the time. Whether it was Claremont's fault his initial X Men was amazing is debatable, but it was certainly one of the best/most influential runs of all time(with or without Byrne). I'm sure it wouldn't have been as great with another writer at the time.

[Nomads1]

Star-Lord also, from around the same time.

Anybody checked out their reunion, decades later in the pages of JLA? What did you guys think? Did they still have the magic?

Peace

Hahahahahahahaha!!!

No, no... they did not.

I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Since I was the one that threw it out there, I might as well say what I think about it. I liked it. Of course, not as much as I liked their classic runs in the late 70's-early 80's, but I liked it. The story, though a little bit confusing for that reboot that no one told us was going to be a reboot, was fine, dialogue was sharp. Ordway's inks made Byrne's pencils look good. IMHO, in the last 10-15 years, Byrne's art has lost a lot of that energy it once had that made it great. It has become competent, however, trivial. Prior to this, the last work of Byrne I really found awsome was Hidden Years, and I suspect Palmer's ink and the fact that Byrne seemed actively trying to channel Neal Adams seemed to have a lot to do with it. That arc he did with Roger Stern in JLA Classified was awful, pratically phoened in. In JLA Byrne was drawing little stars around guys heads when Superman was punching them. He never had to resort to this to pass the idea of impact before. As a writer, I have to say Byrne was not among my favorites, but I also never desliked his writing. He seemed to have learned a propensity for verbosity from Claremont, and he had some great concepts and ideas (in fact, I think it was this way that he contributed the most in their partnership, not only in concepts and ideas, but also in focus), but Claremont was the master when it came to story pacing. Check out the X-Tinction Agenda TPB, you'll see how the story flows so much better in his seguements, how the fighting and the battles seem faster and more exciting. His run after Byrne seemed to loose a little of the creativity, of the great concepts and of the focus, but it was still a good read, especially when assisted by a great penciller, such as Paul Smith, Art Adams, Alan Davis, Jim Lee, etc...
All in all, I'd say Claremont deserves every bit of recognition and accolades he gets for such an incredible groudbreaking run. Would he be able to pull of such a feat nowadays? I doubt it. Not with the internet and with the ways things are run presently.

Peace

[matthewaos]

The mini series that Claremont did with Frank Miller may be the characters greatest story told thus far. And while I love Byrne's FF, I feel the work that Claremont did with the X-Men with Cockrum/Smith/Romita Jr. was as good as Byrne's FF run, imo.

Well, I don't want to be a party spoiler, but Weapon X is the character's greatest story. But that's my opinion.

[Corey W]

John Byrne did plenty of writing with Claremont. He isn't always given the credit as a writer, but he did have a lot of input as to the creative direction. It was the same story with Steve Ditko who had much more story input with Spiderman than initially given credit for.

I sound like I am trashing Claremont. Im not at all saying he was bad, but I do not believe that he stands up as well on his own as John Byrne does. When I judge the quality of their work, IMO its not even close. Byrne's Fantastic Four run absolutely blows away anything that Claremont did. Uncanny X-men was pretty good, but didn't take off and become something special until Byrne arrived.

Thats my opinion.

I would never disagree with someone who says that Byrne is one of the best creators of all time. His FF run was monumental, his Hulk work was great; his X-Men run with Claremont game changing for the X-Men. That ignores his other excellent Marvel, DC, and independent work.

My point, which in retrospect may not have been worth making, was only that 17 years is a long time to have a high quality run with so many moving pieces. For a long time Claremont was the X-Universe and the X-Universe was Marvel.

Do I think his X-Men run was of higher quality than the Stan/Jack FF run. Of course not. But it was twice as long and had as many high points. I can't think of any other run of remotely similar length and quality.

There have not been very many 10 year runs in Marvel. This nearly doubled that and was epic.

[ShaunN]

I'm a bit sentimental about this, because I really started getting into comics with the Byrne/Claremont X-Men. I do think that the X-Men absolutely took off when Byrne joined the team. Dave Cockrum was good, but his pencils could not compare to Byrne, and Byrne's contribution in the writing dept probably made the difference between good and great. I don't know if the Byrne/Claremont run was the best X-Men run ever - quite frankly, I'm grown incredibly annoyed with all the X titles and I don't follow any of them anymore - but I'd be very surprised if anyone surpassed it. This being said, I do think that Claremont's actual writing has aged badly. He was far too wordy and did not have much sense for writing good dialogue.

[Chiasm]

I think this is without the most hyperbolic overstatement ever made at CBR.

The following would like a word with you:
Walter Simonson's Thor run
Gruenwald's Captain America run

I didn't read Thor but as to Gruenwald I have two words: Cap-Wolf.

[Chiasm]

As I said earlier, Claremont is why I read comics. I'd read comics off and on for five or six years before I discovered Uncanny but it was mostly GI Joe, Star Wars, or other licensed properties from Marvel. Then one day on a whim I tried out Uncanny #210 and something about it just drew me in. It was the issue before Mutant Massacre and was largely exposition and confusing as hell since I was an utter noob to all things X yet I was hooked. Within a few months I'd blown all my allowance and savings ordering back issues that took me all the way back to #141. And I had the benefit of Classic X-men starting around then doing reprints of everything from Giant Size #1 on. That was officially when I got hooked on the X-crack.

I'm not going to say everything by CC was great, he did write X-baby stuff after all, but mostly it was good if not outstanding. He really knew how to tell a story rather than rely on multiple splash pages per issue to keep him from coming up with new plot *cough* most writers of today *cough*.

I think CC's problem when he came back to Marvel was that like many creators he was a victim of his own past success and kept trying to recapture old glory instead of doing something new. That doesn't change the fact though that his initial run was stellar and every writer since him has just been recycling his old plots. Look no further than the big event of this year which is just a badly done recycle of his Phoenix stories.

[Corey W]

I didn't read Thor but as to Gruenwald I have two words: Cap-Wolf.

Simonson had Frog-Thor, but don't let that fool you. He was awesome and it is still one of the great all time runs.

Cap Wolf was a miss.

[theflyingfrogunderdog]

I still have my run of X-Men #138-143 that they did. Issue #138 was sort of my introduction to the classic run. That was when i started reading X-Men every month. Really liked Wolverine's new costume that Byrne came up with...thought the colors were more befitting of a character with the name "Wolverine". I thought Marvel made a big mistake when they changed Wolvie back to the yellow and blue costume, in the early 90's, after he had worn the brown and tan costume for so many years. Now, it's more like gold and blue (i think it's kinda ugly).

[Frank]

Claremont's X-Men run is without a doubt the greatest sustained run on a superhero comic in history. It is so far above everything else that I can't even think of what might be second.

Claremont/Byrne was the highlight of that run and for years they made a lot of really great comics together. And both did very fine stuff after.

Claremont had a decade on X-Men after Byrne left, including as people have pointed out the very fine work with Jim Lee and the classic God Loves, Man Kills. Byrne had FF, Superman, Alpha Flight and more.

Two really great creators.

Exactly, sir!

[Frank]

Claremont got lucky, getting paired with artists who could plot as well: Marc S., JRJr, Jim Lee. Because of his lucky pairings he was able to create a sustained run that was golden. Uncanny X Men probably attracted such talented artists because it was so big at the time. Whether it was Claremont's fault his initial X Men was amazing is debatable, but it was certainly one of the best/most influential runs of all time(with or without Byrne). I'm sure it wouldn't have been as great with another writer at the time.

Claremont handpicked most of the artists he worked with, it's part of what made those comics great sure. But it's like saying well the GM has no credit because he was lucky he picked great players. Making a comic is an ensemble.