Just how editorially-controlled are the X-Books?

[Kurt Busiek]

I wonder when Busiek wanted to write a x-men book? When Shooter or Harras was the editor?

I wanted to write X-MEN long before I broke in to comics. For a long time I'd have told you it was my dream book, but that had mostly changed by the time I broke in.

I never did talk to them about writing one of the main books, but I did have some talks about doing some kind of ongoing spinoff series -- one when Suzanne Gaffney was an assistant editor (so that was in the Harras era) and one when Joe Quesada was EIC, but neither of them went very far. I was offered mini-series a few times, but they were always projects where they needed someone to write a pre-set story, and I just don't find that sort of thing fun, so I didn't take them up on it.