Lemire: Writing X-Men was a 'Nightmare'

[cc008]

the X-Men stuff was… Kind of a nightmare, to the honest. Really difficult. I came into [it] and they already had storylines in place I had to use that I probably wouldn’t come up with myself, and I felt editorial was very restricting in what they wanted. And too many notes. And then you start second-guessing yourself. It’s just not a good situation. That wasn’t a great experience, but on the flip side, doing Moon Knight was really fun.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/11...e-jeff-lemire/

For the most part, I've enjoyed everything he's written. Descender is my favorite Image title. And as much hate as Extraordinary gets, it wasn't the worst ever. Would have liked to read the X-Men book where he got to do what he wanted instead of trying to clean up the messes that came before.

[Beaubier]

My guess is Soule felt the same and that’s why they both wrote IVX like they couldn’t care less

[DurararaFTW]

I hope he enjoys Moon Knight, we'll keep looking for a better future.

[MarvelMaster616]

Very revealing. I think it says a lot about the X-books at the time Lemire took over. I also think that it reinforces the idea that Lemire was not responsible for the sad state of the X-men after Secret Wars. A lot of that was imposed by editors and higher ups. As an aspiring writer myself, I can appreciate how hard that must be, having someone dictate most of the story and having little room to do much else with it. I hope he gets a better gig now. I also hope that X-men fans and comic fans in general will think twice about solely blaming a writer for a situation. While some writers have more clout than others, like Bendis often did, others have their stories handed down to them. They don't deserve the blame for the sad state of affairs. If anything, they have even more reason to be upset than fans.

[Knives]

He had the misfortune of catching one of the worst times to be an X-mens writer. What does not absolve him of all the mistakes though most of it is the editors' fault.

But that makes me wonder what the point of writing stories is if you are forced to follow a plan without power to show your own ideas?

Writing on the X-mens should be a dream of many writers but not in these conditions.

[lurkerforyears]

I think Extraordinary and IvX were absolute crap, but I wouldnt know how much to blame Soule or Lemire because much of the stuff that had to happen in those books was not decided by them.

[Dthirds3]

This summarises all the failing of the extrodnary era. I wonder what would have changed if he had the freedom to do what he wanted. Giving moon kinght and his OML run it would have been greate

[Beaubier]

You can only blame so much on editorial, though. Extraordinary had a lot of problems and not every single one was editorial’s fault I’m sure.

[Maestroneto]

You can only blame so much on editorial, though. Extraordinary had a lot of problems and not every single one was editorial’s fault I’m sure.

Yeah, he couldn't write the characters for **** either.

[Ambaryerno]

It's a two-edged sword. Too much editorial oversight can stifle a writer, however not enough and you get Bendis.

[WhiteQueenEmmaFrost]

It's a two-edged sword. Too much editorial oversight can stifle a writer, however not enough and you get Bendis.

or Claremont.

Editorial needs to be a good balance between artistic freedom and "hey pay attention to what's come before and what's going on around you"

[El Capitan]

This makes complete sense. I think if you read anything else by Lemire you could see that this screamed cookie cutter and vanilla. Sure the characters lacked a little depth but what the hell do you expect if you have to fit them into pre-determined story beats?

[Narasinha]

It's a two-edged sword. Too much editorial oversight can stifle a writer, however not enough and you get Bendis.

Not really: Editorial should provide a framework and quality control. It shouldn't impose the content of the stories. From the begining of EXM, many people said that Lemire probably didn't had any choice about the whole situation (and specialy about the whole stuff with Scott).

Edit: As they wrote in the article "At least he didn’t have to take the X-Men to a different planet anymore." lol That was such a mess...

[Gray Lensman]

or Claremont.

Editorial needs to be a good balance between artistic freedom and "hey pay attention to what's come before and what's going on around you"

I agree. The attention that should be paid to continuity also needs to be between Bendis' 'continuity doesn't matter' and some fans counting easter egg background panels as set in stone. Both takes make for bad stories - the former because it makes the narrative to hard to read, the latter because it makes it too hard to write.

[Weather]

That for me was already obvious. The Inhuman/mists story, "Cyclops is a monster and in the end did nothing" and the Apocalypse Wars one were clearly editorial mandate. The only plot he could work that I think was his own was the Sapna one.

I read again the Extraordinary X-men run these days, and it really reads better when you know that the Inhuman thing is going to have an end very quickly and that the X-men will not be thrown under the bus for the Inhumans. Lemire did great with the voices of the characters and his pace was at least nice. Every character had their moments, even though his team was bigger then the one of X-men Gold, where we know whats happens. I wish we could have seen a story that the writer wanted to tell with the help from the editors then the opposite. I was one of those who really complained about Lemire on Extraordinary, but now I can see that he was not the one to be hitted for all the bad things during that era.