Claremont's second and third return to the X-Franchise

[Uncanny X-Man]

What bugged me about that was that cable didn’t stick atound too long.

I LOVED how Claremont wrote Nathan and Jean together. Definitely one of the highlights of that run.

[sage]

Of Claremont’s returns, X-Treme was the peak.

[Shadowcat]

Of Claremont’s returns, X-Treme was the peak.

X-Treme made me love Sage

[Sam Robards, Comic Fan]

Of Claremont’s returns, X-Treme was the peak.

Agreed. While I enjoyed most of his work afterward, that first half of X-Treme was the peak. Starting with God Loves, Man Kills 2, it started losing its appeal.

But still, a lesser Claremont is still better than almost everything that came after him (Mike Carey and Kieron Gillen excepted).

[Askani's Flame]

It depends on the characters he wrote honestly. I loved how he wrote Nathan and Jean together, I always enjoyed the drama and interpersonal dynamics he brought to the teams/X-Men, but as mentioned above he peaked during the first portion of X-treme. It felt like his heart wasn't really in the remainder of the book until his Rachel reveal (but the art for me was just terrible then). XSE had potetntial but he regressed and destroyed any character development he gave Rachel when he brought her back, which has perpetuated in her handling with most writers since, and with his sudden health decline and departure it left a lot of the plots he had going ending with no satisfactory conclusion.

[WhiteQueenEmmaFrost]

it was awful and contrived.

He demanded a 6 month gap instead of going through a natural progression of stories with major changes to characters. He ignored characterization that came before his run and tried to shoehorn elements from Morrison's run into his own.

He revealed in Xtreme Xmen that Cassandra Nova was Xavier's sister from the Destiny Diaries. Honestly he couldn't let that play out in New Xmen. The reveal came I think a month before it was in NX. It was petty and stupid.

He killed Psylocke for shock value for a villain that wasn't even a threat.

It was a bunch of nonsensical stories that have since been forgotten about in cannon.

[Triniking1234]

His third run was X-Men Forever, X-Treme X-Men and Exiles with Psylocke, right?

What did he do for his second run? Wasn't that during the movie release?

[Havok83]

His third run was X-Men Forever, X-Treme X-Men and Exiles with Psylocke, right?

What did he do for his second run? Wasn't that during the movie release?

that was all his second run. His third run was Nightcrawler. When he returned in 2000 to write Uncanny and X-men, he had a continuous run across multiple titles up through 2010's X-men Forever v2. Thats when he left the franchise only to return in 2014 to write Nightcrawler's solo

[Ricochet Rita]

While his style was extremely verbose (which was typical for older writers), I do sometimes miss all the narrative boxes and thought bubbles he used. It allowed the reader to get insight into multiple characters in a single issue. I liked knowing what was going on inside the heads of each characters because how a character acts can often be different than what they're thinking. Usually nonverbal cues are another way you can convey that, but's it's a lot harder to do that in a couple panels of a comic book than in TV/movies. I feel like the change in narrative style for modern comics has relegated a lot more characters to background/wallpaper status if they're not A-list.

I endorse each word of yours. Bravo.

[Captain Nash]

Obviously all of what I'm going to say does not take into account his first run, which is without a doubt the most influential and solid run in X-Men history, if not the gold standard for all of Marvel and possible even all of comic history. But the question for the thread is about subsequent runs.

I know i"m in the minority but I liked his second run, as well as X-treme, for the most part. I did not like some story arcs in the second half of X-Treme, but everything up through GLMK II was great. I did think his third run on Uncanny was superior to both of these though. Even the "on ice" storyline...which was probably the weakest story of that run. By that time though his favoritism on characters and overuse of tropes were becoming even more obvious than ever. Still, I thought it was his second best run in books.

Something happened after that run though. I feel like he lost his touch. his time on Exiles and his New Exiles was awful. I dropped the title after the New Exiles couple of first issues it was so bad. I think his X-Men Forever was around the same time? late 00's? It was okay as a what if story but it wasn't by any means his best work and when it got to its second "season" it too had lost something. I did enjoy the Nightcrawler ongoing, but I think that's one of his core characters he really writes well, along with Psylocke, his obvious favorite, and Storm, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Rachel and Rogue. Actually now that i think about it, he never really wrote the original X-Men well excepting the Jean/Phoenix stuff, nor Havok, Polaris, and any character introduced after Psylocke. Though Dazzler, Longshot, Jubilee and Gambit were written alright.

[NewMutant]

X-Treme was brilliant. The Morrison New X-Men and Claremont X-Treme are my blue and gold teams of choice. Morrison was the driving the universe but Claremont was giving it that classic feel. And I for one loved that Claremont checked with Morrison's run to make the universe feel more connected.

[Triniking1234]

that was all his second run. His third run was Nightcrawler. When he returned in 2000 to write Uncanny and X-men, he had a continuous run across multiple titles up through 2010's X-men Forever v2. Thats when he left the franchise only to return in 2014 to write Nightcrawler's solo

Oh I forgot about the Nightcrawler solo. Also I missed out on his Uncanny run. All I picked up were the X-23 issues.

[Havok83]

Oh I forgot about the Nightcrawler solo. Also I missed out on his Uncanny run. All I picked up were the X-23 issues.

Not great if you are a Rachel fan. The run wasnt bad, but rather mediocore. It was good if you were a fan of Excalibur as he inserted alot of that into it and Alan Davis even returned to draw

[FUBAR007]

Claremont is for good or for ill the most influential writer for the franchise as a whole, almost every modern portrayal is based to an extent on his work, he was kicked out of the books in the 90s, but eventually came back in a couple of occasions. So as the title say, what do you think about his returns, both during the Revolution era in the early 2000s (if i remember the name correctly) or when he came back to the main book on 2004 to 2006. You can also include his runs on X-Xtreme-X-Men, Excalibur and Exiles (X-Men Forever is valid too, if you want).

IMO, his "Revolution" return in 2000, X-Treme X-Men, the Genoshan Excalibur series, and his 3rd run on Uncanny after Chuck Austen form one, long run. One could even argue it continued into New Excalibur. The plot threads, and several key characters, tended to move from one title into the next. His brief Nightcrawler series around 2014-2015 served as a kind of post-script, too.

Anyway, to answer your question: while it had his moments, Claremont's 2000s return to the franchise wasn't nearly as good as his original run. I think that's largely because, unlike before, Claremont was no longer "plotmaster" of the franchise. He wasn't steering the ship anymore; he was just another work-for-hire writer. Also, I don't get the sense he was able to develop the kind of creative partnership with the editors that he had back in the day with Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti.

Revolution was a misfire. An ambitious failure. The Neo were an interesting concept, but it was clear he hadn't completely worked out exactly what they were yet. I loved Kubert and Yu's art, but the new costumes were way, way overdesigned. The only one I liked was Jean's. Claremont introduced too many characters too fast--the Neo, the Crimson Pirates, and so on--so the plots felt overstuffed. Once he slowed down after the initial arcs, it got better. I love the back to back issues of Uncanny where the team rescues Lee Forrester and the Maximum Security crossover where the team fights the last surviving D'Bari who's trying to kill Jean.

X-Treme X-Men was all over the place. And, yes, the title was and still is absurd. The Destiny's Diaries plotline had potential, but like with the Neo, it didn't seem as if Claremont had worked it out where it was going. So, it mainly functioned as a "macguffin" to drive the action until the editors had him drop it. The Khan arc was overlong and padded, but pretty to look at. Salvador Larroca's art was gorgeous throughout. The writing got better a couple of years in when Claremont started writing it as a parallel title to Morrison's run.

His 3rd run on Uncanny was...okay. To me, it read less like an X-Men book and more like a solo title alternating between Rachel and Psylocke. On that level, it was fine. End of Greys was shocking, and I'm curious to know if Claremont had follow-on plans or if it was his attempt at a deck-clearing exercise and that was it.

He did X-Men: The End during this period. I liked it, but it was way, way too busy and overstuffed. I did find it a mostly satisfying bookend to the Morrison-Whedon version of the X-Men, though, even if I had to read it three times to follow all the plotlines.

X-Men Forever, which he did a few years later, I found to be much more on-point and enjoyable. It wasn't truly great, but it felt like classic X-Men. Most importantly, he got Cyclops right. Claremont is, IMO, the definitive Cyclops writer, and he's one of the few who can do BoyScott right i.e. not writing him as a caricature or a self-parody. The arc with the Marauders and Claremont's original vision for Sinister was a lot of fun. I especially liked the idea of Corsair retiring to Alaska and parking the Starjammer--which, remember, is literally the size of Manhattan--in the ocean off the Alaskan coast.

All in all, I think Claremont's return to the franchise was mixed in terms of quality. There was good, there was bad, but he didn't have the clarity of vision for the characters and the mythos nor quite the same passion he had the first time around. The X-Men weren't his anymore so he was bouncing off what other writers were doing. Stylistically similar, but lacking the richness and granularity of his classic stuff.

What I wonder is how it would've gone if editorial had given him full creative control or he'd been able to develop a long-running creative partnership with an editor.

[Uncanny X-Man]

I also wanted to add that Claremont's "verbose" style, with his captions and thought baloons would probably be a breath of fresh air nowadays when stories move at a glacial pace and offer hardly any meat around that bone. I know I for one I'm sick of seeing pages and pages wasted to create "mood" and very much miss knowing what's going on in a character's head.