Did Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Bob Harris ruin the X-Men?

According to Marvel: The Untold Story...

[QUOTE]First, Louise Simonson (New Mutants) quit due to conflict with Bob Harras and Rob Liefeld.

Editor Bob Harras was not liking the direction Claremont was taking it, and he was agreeing with Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio's plotting. Harras gave plotting to Portacio and Lee; Claremont was reduced to writing the dialogue for their plotting and art.

Jim Lee was sending the artwork to Claremont so late that occasionally Claremont would have to write the script overnight.

"As they approached the big launch of X-Men, Claremont said, the battle with Harras became 'an outright knock-down drag-out fight.' Harras wanted to bring Professor X back into the stories; Claremont wanted to kill Wolverine and complete Magneto's transformation from villain to hero." (p. 328)

"Claremont and Harras began communicating exclusively via fax machine so that there would be a paper trail of the increasingly tense exchanges."

"After Claremont's wife reminded him that they had a mortgage to pay, he negotiated to write the first three issues of the new X-Men; this would be, in effect, his severance pay."

Claremont said, "What you have is a corporate disagreement between an employee and his supervisor. And in that light, the course of action becomes as clear as it is inevitable: the corporation instinctively supports its supervisors."[/QUOTE]

The great shame is that the sales, Harras will say, prove him right. The dramatic decline from the consistency of Claremont's run and prominence of editorial interference to the detriment of story quality proves him wrong in the long term.

But I also think another shame was that the X-Men animated series hit exactly when it did. Had it come a year earlier, we'd likely have seen the Cockrum and Byrne designs; something more classic. But that cartoon lionizes Jim Lee as well as Rob Liefeld and due to that, we have an entire generation of fans that think that era as well as characters like Stryfe and Onslaught are the height of the franchise. The X-Men hit the height of it's popularity when it's quality began a steep decline.

Not to mention this sounds like it would have been better than X-Tinction Agenda, Fatal Attractions, Age of Apocalypse, etc: [url]https://nerdsonearth.com/2017/05/chris-claremont-the-mutant-wars/[/url]

No, Jim Lee helped propel X-Men to heights they'll never see again. If I could blame the current state of X-Men on anybody, I personally put it all on Bryan Singer.

[QUOTE=Sin Nick;5210472]No, Jim Lee helped propel X-Men to heights they'll never see again. If I could blame the current state of X-Men on anybody, I personally put it all on Bryan Singer.[/QUOTE]

But the X-Men comics were bad for years before Singer's first movies. "Age of Apocalypse", "X-Cutioner's Song", "Onslaught" .... Scott Lobdell.

[QUOTE=Voices From the Eyrie;5210491]But the X-Men comics were bad for years before Singer's first movies. "Age of Apocalypse", "X-Cutioner's Song", "Onslaught" .... Scott Lobdell.[/QUOTE]

All those storylines except for Onslaught are some of my faves and I thought Scott Lobdell's writing was fine.

If you thought X-tinction Agenda and Age of Apocalypse were bad events, I have no words. It was Jim Lee’s art and Claremont’s writing in Uncanny #248 that got me interested in the X-men and comics. So no. Would it have been an interesting storyline? Maybe. But we got the mutant war with X-men, New Mutants and X-factor in X-tinction Agenda against Genosha.

[QUOTE=Voices From the Eyrie;5210450]But that cartoon lionizes Jim Lee as well as Rob Liefeld and due to that, we have an entire generation of fans that think that era as well as characters like Stryfe and Onslaught are the height of the franchise. The X-Men hit the height of it's popularity when it's quality began a steep decline.[/QUOTE]

Everyone thinks the era they got into something was the height of the franchise in question. If Claremont had been left to do what he wanted, it would've been something else that '90s kids would praise to high heaven.

[QUOTE=Voices From the Eyrie;5210491]But the X-Men comics were bad for years before Singer's first movies. "Age of Apocalypse", "X-Cutioner's Song", "Onslaught" .... Scott Lobdell.[/QUOTE]

While I’m very hit or miss with Lobdell, I very much liked his X-Men and thought he, and especially Fabian Nicieza, had a good run. While Lobdell’s run started to weaken towards the end, I don’t think the X-Books started to fall off a cliff until after Uncanny 350.

Without Lee [B]AND[/B] Liefeld the X-Men would not be the mega team that they are.

Lee is and forever will be one of the biggest reasons X-Men is popular, you can argue till you're blue in the face that it is the writing that matters; but his character designs and costume work is so iconic that it will forever be mimicked. His style is seen in the Animated series, his art is in the Capcom Versus Series, he made the X-Men relevant to young kids who had no idea of who Claremont was.

And people like to bash Liefeld, but he [B][U]WAS[/U][/B] the superstar artist that carried Marvel for a long time his art maybe bad for our current times, but back then he was the best in the business because that is what 90's aesthetic was

I just want their styles to go away. Enough already. Time move on, the world spins, nothing is forever, and all that.

The X-Men sold well before Lee even got on-board, yes he did help to produce on the highest selling comics of all time, but the X-Men actually gained their popularity with CC during the 80s.

As far as these three involvement in the franchise, I wouldn't necessarily blame them, as the comic industry on a whole tanked due to bad market practices but they certainly didn't do much to move the franchise forward. The stories during that time were very forgettable outside of AoA.

[QUOTE=Voices From the Eyrie;5210450]According to Marvel: The Untold Story...



The great shame is that the sales, Harras will say, prove him right. The dramatic decline from the consistency of Claremont's run and prominence of editorial interference to the detriment of story quality proves him wrong in the long term.

But I also think another shame was that the X-Men animated series hit exactly when it did. Had it come a year earlier, we'd likely have seen the Cockrum and Byrne designs; something more classic. But that cartoon lionizes Jim Lee as well as Rob Liefeld and due to that, we have an entire generation of fans that think that era as well as characters like Stryfe and Onslaught are the height of the franchise. The X-Men hit the height of it's popularity when it's quality began a steep decline.

Not to mention this sounds like it would have been better than X-Tinction Agenda, Fatal Attractions, Age of Apocalypse, etc: [url]https://nerdsonearth.com/2017/05/chris-claremont-the-mutant-wars/[/url][/QUOTE]

I would say it depends on perspective and who you ask. If the X-men had certain limitations on them because other venues were being explored then i can't say i blame any writer for coming in and doing "What they could" in a franchise that you couldn't do too much because...

Claremont was already showing signs of slipping when he left and the stuff he's done since only further supports the fact that he was loosing it. Replacing a fading star with THE hot new thing isn't exactly a problem.

if you want people to blame for ruining the X-men, I'd say Morrioson, Quesada, and maybe Bendis are who really through the series in the mud.

Nah. It was the creators that came after them that irreparably ruined the x-titles.

[IMG]https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tenor.com%2Fimages%2Fefe9820283341c2abf4712ec75558b95%2Ftenor.gif&f=1&nofb=1[/IMG]

Of course they did. It's even more messed up since Jim and Co left just a few months later to found WildStorm/Image. Chris gave them 16 years of hits, and they threw him under the bus for like, 6 issues. I like Jim's art, but Lord Claremont made the franchise what it is. They are still milking his creative input, decades later. It's a shame.

I'm not that into the X-Men comics of the 90s, but the image that brings me childhood memories about the franchise is Lee's design, because of the animated series and the Super Nintendo games.

Anyway, if the eXtreme of Lee and Liefeld avoided Forever being canon, I would say that we got the best outcome.