What do you like/dislike about the Claremont writing style?

[Bl00dwerK]

Likes: Everything. Dislikes: Nothing...

[DDD]

What I don't like about the style is that by explaining everything, Claremont and his imitators removed all the possibility of subtext.

I disagree. Claremont's work is filled with subtext eluding many readers. Even when he spells it out clear as rain.

[Iron Fist]

His dialogue is rather speechy. In the same way Shonda Rhimes writes speeches/monologues on Scandal. But I'm not sure if Claremont's writing style for dialogue is just a product of the time.

My only other issue is how many disposable stories there, there are some great archs but so many issues that just feel like filler, and most of them seem to have a circus theme :P

[DDD]

His dialogue is rather speechy. In the same way Shonda Rhimes writes speeches/monologues on Scandal. But I'm not sure if Claremont's writing style for dialogue is just a product of the time.

My only other issue is how many disposable stories there, there are some great archs but so many issues that just feel like filler, and most of them seem to have a circus theme :P

Not post UXM 150. If you're talking about the first few years and annuals, I'd agree. Those were dreck and he was still learning.

[Ricochet Rita]

Don't forget Paul Smith; he was so in tune with Smith that for the first time ever he sometimes let Smith's action scenes stand as they were, with no dialogue or captions added at all.

Absolutely right (with Miller and JRJR too). That was something quite unknown in comic-books then.

I very much loved how everybody had a different voice (contrast todays writers, who write Storm and Emma and Kitty as remarkably similar, with almost interchangeable dialogue, since half the time they are just saying dismissive and / or judgmental crap about their teammates), and many (if not all!) of the X-Men had admirable qualities.

Absolutely right, again ('interchangeable' is what I'm denouncing every day). In the other hand, have you ever realized how many different names uses CC depending on who's talking?

LOGAN: Chuck, Bub/Elf, Slim/Cyke, Kiddo, 'Ro, Petey
KURT: Professor, Logan, Scott, Kätzchen, Ororo, Piotr
ORORO: Charles, Kurt, Logan, Scott, Kitten, Piotr
KITTY: Professor, Fuzzy Elf, Logan, Scott, Ororo, Peter

...and so on.

Well, more or less all of it has been said already, so:

DISLIKES - Repetitive tag lines.

LIKES - His deep deep love for the characters, which is straightaway passed on to us, readers.

[Sutekh]

In the other hand, have you ever realized how many different names uses CC depending on who's talking?
LOGAN: Chuck, Bub/Elf, Slim/Cyke, Kiddo, 'Ro, Petey
KURT: Professor, Logan, Scott, Kätzchen, Ororo, Piotr
ORORO: Charles, Kurt, Logan, Scott, Kitten, Piotr
KITTY: Professor, Fuzzy Elf, Logan, Scott, Ororo, Peter

He even played with that. (From memory, probably crazy wrong)

Wolverine: "Whatever you say, Charley."
Professor X: "Wolverine, you can call me Professor Xavier, or just Professor, or, if you must, Charles, but not 'Charley.'"
Wolverine: "Sure thing, Chuck."
Professor X: ....

And of course those less lovable names Kitty had for people: Creep! Jerk! X-babies!

[Cerridwen]

mind control

[ExodusCloak]

Like: when he said he wrote Storm as a hypocrite and Cyclops a cad that one time. X-Men Companion

[Moondoggie]

Likes: Claremont took a comic that was failing and turned it into a best seller. The characters he created and stories he wrote are some of the most memorable and beloved in the series he also created the family feel especially in New Mutants my personal favourite comic he wrote. The kids felt together and they did things as a group that were fun as well as worked as a team. There was none of this cloak and dagger crap we have now training kids to assassinate members of SHIELD or whatever else. The X Men were a bunch of mutants coming to terms with who they are and trying to master their powers to do some good. You felt like you knew the characters and why they do what they do.

Dislikes: His going off on weird nonsensical tangents with stories that usually involved some sort of wizard from the 23rd dimension who traps them in a time bubble and brainwashes them or something. Character dialogue he writes has a tendency to ramble, Taking out his weird bondage fantasies on characters.

[Goddess]

He made X-Men not only a superhero book. Real relationships, real struggle, real tragedy. When good things happened in-story, it was to be cherished due to the incessant hardships the characters faced. And let's not forget about his Claremazons aka the greatest characters in the history of comics.

I only disliked his alt. world stuff like X-Men Forever as essentially it was a "let the imagination run wild" take on the comics rather than a well thought-out experience like his more noteworthy work.

[Slicknickshady]

Hope he gets the next volume of Uncanny X Men.

[adam67]

I would love it if he got the next vol UX sadly I doubt it will happen though.

[Anduinel]

Dislikes:

1) The foreign words he just tosses into a character's speech just to remind us the character is a foreigner.

2) The constant need to remind us of a character's power.

This part I forgive because the assumption back then was that any issue could be a reader's first, likely picked up from a newsstand where there wasn't likely to be much in the way of back issues. It was also expected that there would be fairly regular reader turnover as the audience grew out of comics. So the fairly frequent re-introductions were just a way to bring the presumed new readers up to speed quickly. No arguing that it was a bit clunky, but there was a practical reason behind it.

[baltiroo]

I got into comics during Claremont's first run. I like his writing very much and while he did a lot of repeating of powers and names it was a product of the time and forgivable. I had heard that writers are paid by word so it kinda makes sense that he wrote a lot in the issues. His work on X-Men Forever wasn't great, but I really enjoyed his run on Nightcrawler.

[DDD]

This part I forgive because the assumption back then was that any issue could be a reader's first, likely picked up from a newsstand where there wasn't likely to be much in the way of back issues. It was also expected that there would be fairly regular reader turnover as the audience grew out of comics. So the fairly frequent re-introductions were just a way to bring the presumed new readers up to speed quickly. No arguing that it was a bit clunky, but there was a practical reason behind it.

I'm rereading UXM in chunks of several issues at a time and it does not bother me at all.