Lemire: Writing X-Men was a 'Nightmare'

[Fokken]

But retconning in needless child abuse and completely missing the point of the character's tragic journey from farm lad to traumatized fighter? Yeah, that's fine.

Also, don't bother making any of those changes interesting or in-character (see grimdark!Nightcrawler).

I don't doubt Lemire felt hemmed in and wasn't working at his usual level. But you can't blame everything on editorial.

omg LOL I blocked that out.
I really ought not comment I suppose. I only followed along very adjacently via CBR after the first arc.
My bad. My blunders. That was hogwash.

[salarta]

Like others have already said, a balance between editorial oversight and creative flights of fancy is needed.

The real value of good editorial work is catching ideas or scenes that have major problems, and making sure things fit what's already been established. It's entirely possible for an editor to have the wrong idea about something and force bad directions on writers, a good example being Dick Giordano's attitude about Batgirl and Supergirl. He badmouthed and looked down on both characters for being female heroes within the mythos of Batman and Superman, to the point where he had Supergirl killed off and Batgirl paralyzed to remove both of them from their respective franchises.

On the other hand, writers without real oversight can really ruin franchises and characters to pursue their flights of fancy. I've seen so many video games where the writer/director screwed up royally in ways that could've been avoided if they had someone above them to put the brakes down. Motomu Toriyama is an example of this. For Final Fantasy VII, he wanted to take the Honeybee Inn in directions considered so extreme that it had tons of dummied out content. This was back when Hironobu Sakaguchi was still there, and Toriyama was a complete newcomer. Once Sakaguchi wasn't there to rein in Toriyama's worst tendencies, we got things like implied incestuous urges (Brother repeatedly trying to get with his cousin Yuna) in FFX-2 that the character never showed in FFX, and literally everything wrong with the script of 3rd Birthday (including a notably creepy scene where Maeda talks about wanting to taste Aya's tears).

The right balance is difficult but important for both parties and end readers/players/watchers.

[Calaigah]

Ehh, I feel Cullen Bunn is in a similar situation with the O5, and you can tell that he doesn't like writing Emma as a villain solely because editorial has decided she's psycho. Yet, that book is good considering all the limitations it has.

[Anduinel]

omg LOL I blocked that out.
I really ought not comment I suppose. I only followed along very adjacently via CBR after the first arc.
My bad. My blunders. That was hogwash.

Sorry, I meant that as a general "you" (though mostly aimed at Lemire).

[Maestroneto]

Ehh, I feel Cullen Bunn is in a similar situation with the O5, and you can tell that he doesn't like writing Emma as a villain solely because editorial has decided she's psycho. Yet, that book is good considering all the limitations it has.

Spencer and Zub wrote Emma just fine as a morally grey character who puts mutantkind first and foremost. It's 100% Bunn's decision to turn her into an insane Bastion ally who tried to mindrape a teenager into having sex with her.

[Wolverine12]

I am not really surprised to read this about his X-Books. His OML run was really good, but EXM just had that vibe that he was being forced to go down a certain path. Really speaks to the whole "CompleX" that many (including myself) have thought to be happening at Marvel over the years.

[NewMutant]

1) I thought Extraordinary was a brilliant and fitting adjective that unfortunately will not be used again due to the epic fail of this title.

2) This team line up was the most promising line up since the recent Amazing X-Men and beyond disappointing that literally no character development happened.

3) Ramos art and design (aside from Iceman and Colossus beard) were awful.

4) I completely believe JF as IvX was a nightmare and the plot (not the full on script) were the worst parts. This isn't the worse X-Men have been but one of the times I've been most disappointed. This could felt like a creative was going to recuse the the X-Men from the directionless mess that started with AvX, helmed by Bendis, and hopefully ended with IvX.

5) This era will be known as Marvel V X-Men: The Inhumanly B0re5.

[FUBAR007]

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.

IMO, the key thing is someone--either a writer or an editor--with a consistent vision. A "plotmaster" who sits atop the franchise, sets the themes, drives the overarching narrative, and is sufficiently empowered to enforce their vision on subordinate contributors. For over a decade, from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, it was Claremont. In the 90s, it was Bob Harras. It's not clear to me that anyone has truly fulfilled that role since 2001.

With the X-Men franchise, Marvel needs to make up its mind: do they want to continue the ongoing novel that Claremont started? Or, do they want to publish episodic, continuity-light, generic superhero stories? Since Harras got fired, they've been trying to have it both ways, leaning back and forth, and making a hash of things half the time.

I tend to think the ongoing novel approach makes for richer, better stories, but it is an order of magnitude more work. It requires a commitment to consistency and, yes, continuity. It means creating and sticking to a "series bible": what the series is about, what the core themes are, who the characters are--and even more importantly--who the characters aren't. It also means telling subordinate contributors what to do and QCing their work. However, if plotmaster and subordinates aren't on the same page, aren't communicating, or just plain don't get along, it won't work.

For my part, if Marvel isn't willing to do the ongoing novel approach right, I'd rather they not do it at all. If they just want to do episodic superhero stories, they should cut the crap, drop the continuity bomb, and start over.

[donpricetag]

Spencer and Zub wrote Emma just fine as a morally grey character who puts mutantkind first and foremost. It's 100% Bunn's decision to turn her into an insane Bastion ally who tried to mindrape a teenager into having sex with her.

That's kind of an absolute approach to something we know every little about despite him saying he had little actual control or even freedom. He didn't just have a road map, they gave him notes on top of it. I think it's best to give him the benefit of the doubt rather than say "whelp you still wrote it". It's hard to write someone's else's work along someone else's rules. I'm sure.

[RAWRlrus]

Spencer and Zub wrote Emma just fine as a morally grey character who puts mutantkind first and foremost. It's 100% Bunn's decision to turn her into an insane Bastion ally who tried to mindrape a teenager into having sex with her.

Like the situation with Lemire, it's a little of both i think. I don't know about Zub, but I sincerely doubt that Spencer was beholden to this awful editorial in charge of the X-books. I wouldn't be surprised if this X-office wasn't forcing Bunn to use and write Emma as a villain. But yeah, he isn't doing himself any favors with how awful his writing has been in Blue.

[ButterRum]

No surprise the X-editors micromanage the writers. The editors should let the writers be creative. Some of the best stuff was created because the editors didn't micromanage the writers -- e.g. Chris Claremont's, Grant Morrison's, Joss Whedon's, and the Immonen's runs.

[Zero Hunter]

I think Lemire was always going have difficulty writing Extraordinary because of his issues with writing team books, but the added editorial influence and mandates, which we all pretty much guessed were a factor, didn't help either.

I agree with this. Team books are just not his strength at all. He is amazing on solo characters but his team books just never come together. With that said Marvel editorial across the board (not just the X-books) has just been a dumpster fire for a decade at least.

[Fokken]

1)

3) Ramos art and design (aside from Iceman and Colossus beard) were awful.

.

omg Yuuuuus. Dat BEARD!
Yana's bangs were sacrificed, in favor of Beardlosuss, but that Beard WAS exquisite.

[salarta]

No surprise the X-editors micromanage the writers. The editors should let the writers be creative. Some of the best stuff was created because the editors didn't micromanage the writers -- e.g. Chris Claremont's, Grant Morrison's, Joss Whedon's, and the Immonen's runs.

To not go too deep into anything, there were parts of some of those runs that could have really, really used editorial intervention.

[WhiteQueenEmmaFrost]

No surprise the X-editors micromanage the writers. The editors should let the writers be creative. Some of the best stuff was created because the editors didn't micromanage the writers -- e.g. Chris Claremont's, Grant Morrison's, Joss Whedon's, and the Immonen's runs.

Joss tried too hard....His Astonishing run would've been fine without Cassandra Nova & him shoehorning his idea as to how/why Emma has a 2nd mutation. The book was consistently late and the stories were ok...just replace Kitty with Buffy. Claremont's 1st run was great...his 2nd run...he ignored everything he didn't like about the characters and what they had gone through.