Yeah, this is my problem too. I like to casually catch up on the major events as I find them really entertaining, but as someone that decided to try and read Secret Wars as it's happening it's kind of a mess. It's also funny to walk in to a comic book store and see a half dozen variants of the same comic.

This is obviously off topic, but it's exactly why he left. Lee (and to a lesser extent his buddy Whilce Portacio) was given more and more creative power by the editors due to his popularity as an artist. He and Claremont fundamentally disagreed about the direction of the series. Lee was a huge X-Men fan growing up and just wanted to rehash all of the stories he loved as a kid. X-Men #1 was all about Lee bringing things back to the status quo. Xavier back from space and crippled, the original 5 back on the team, everyone living together in the rebuilt mansion, Magneto back as the enemy, etc. Claremont wanted to keep telling his ever-evolving epic. Look at the credits and you'll see that Claremont was just scripting Lee's plots by that point. After finishing the opening arc on the new series, Claremont bailed. His departure wasn't even recognized outside of a tiny little caption at the end of X-Men #3. He's mentioned in interviews that if he had known that the Image guys were all going to leave within the year, he would have just toughed it out and happily continued on his merry way. Him leaving had nothing to do with a heavier focus on short arcs. It would be another decade before that trend took hold.

As for the nose dive, I didn't really mean Lee was specifically the one responsible. Heck, it was those very comics that made me a fan. It's just that his rise and the ousting of Claremont coincided with with editorial taking over and turning a living, breathing series into a "brand" that needed protecting. Scott Lobdell gets much of the blame, but I can't imagine anyone else would have done much better working in that environment, Claremont included.

Interesting that you should mention that because I was just reading his Wiki and it said that Claremont was supposed to be one of the original creators with Hunstman drawn by Portacio. However Portacio decided to do Wetworks, which took years upon years to come out so he never became an Image founder. That was the first I had heard about that so it might just be completely made up. However I know he did go on to work with Lee again at Image on Wildcats.

Completely off topic I know but I'm a Claremont/Lee mark and I just couldn't help myself.

That's the new Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan. She has shapeshifting powers. Of course, she's not a mutant, she's an Inhuman. Oh, and she's Muslim American. I haven't read her series, but apparently it's pretty good, though I was kind of annoyed by her in the only thing I read her in, some crossover with Spider-man collected in the Spider-verse hardcover. She's also supposedly pretty awesome in Marvel Puzzle Quest.

Yeah, Claremont was supposed to be a founder at Image; I think his reunion with Lee in WildCATs actually featured the Huntsman character.

As others have said, this is just a gimmick... most of the people in these posters were changed long before this particular stunt. If it brings more attention to them and makes an easy jumping on point for new readers, then great; but for comic book store owners and even fans, so many number ones and new creative teams are daunting, and even for collections, who's going to want the relaunch titles months down the line when everything is retconned again anyway?

But as rocket1232 said, the stories are what matter. Bringing Bucky back sounds like a horrible, editorial-driven idea, and Brubaker made it awesome. Mainstream superhero comics are in a bind, because diehard fans want them to matter/be part of a bigger continuity, but the works that stand the test of time are usually standalone projects (Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, All Star Superman, for a large part Brubaker's Cap, the multiple excellent runs on Daredevil, Morrison X-men, Whedon Astonishing) which may happen in continuity but don't get bogged down by it. Sometimes I think Claremont did too good of a job building the X-men up, resulting in dozens of titles and crossovers and whatnot, to the point where he couldn't just, say, keep them in the outback as a fringe team.

I've read about a dozen issues of the current Ms. Marvel, and I think it's excellent

Also a big fan of X-23, so I think it's kind of neat to see her in the Wolverine costume.

Really? I don't recall seeing that anywhere.

As for the Bucky revival, that was something Brubaker wanted to do since he was a kid. There was an article about it on Cracked the other day.

Maybe it's because the image is supposed to be a poster, but yeah, it does look very boring.

Yeah, the industry seems like it's is on it's deathbed. That's why they constantly are doing these reboots and number #1s and keep trying to make all these random changes. Sales are pretty bad.

I really liked X-Men #1-3. It was a classic story IMO. I started reading X-Men right before adjectiveless X-Men came out. I didn't really notice it at the time, but I liked the idea that the X-Men were all back at the mansion and classic villains were getting featured.

That said, after Byrne's storyline with Omega Red, I stopped buying X-Men. Scott Lobdell was scripting Lee's plots right? The next few stories with Ghost Rider and Longshot didn't look that good.

It gets confusing around that time. I think Byrne "scripts" Uncanny #281 and X-Men #4 and #5. Uncanny goes back and forth between listing him as writer or just scripter for the next few issues with Portacio plotting and sometimes Lee along with Portacio or just Lee. Byrne is out as of X-Men #6 with Lee plotting and Lobdell scripting.

Hmm... the Claremont stuff might be an urban legend, I can't find concrete evidence. It's mentioned in wikipedia with a reference to a Wizard interview with Claremont, but I can't find the interview. Someone else mentioned that he was mentioned as a founder in the New York Times, but also no proof. It did seem odd to me when I first heard it, because I was also under the impression that he didn't really like that Lee had or wanted more control over the story, and while they obviously were fine working together after that, Image was basically all artists who wanted to write their own stuff.

Yeah, it was basically Brubaker's idea, the point was that even something like that which seems really lame can be made awesome in the right hands.

One thing I find interesting is that this seems all about Marvel moving on, even temporarily, giving mantles up to a new set of heroes (not all, but even the new Hulk is supposedly not Bruce). DC basically obliterated their "next gen" heroes, preferring to deage their icons and keep them around (although some, like Barbara Gordon, are basically and inexplicably brand new characters)

Lee's art had just driven X-Men #1 to the heights of being the biggest-selling comic of all time. I really can't blame Marvel at the time that they wanted to keep their superstar artist happy.

That's why Todd McFarlane was given his own Spider-man title to draw and write. I'm assuming Jim Lee just wanted to have more creative control, but he never was one to write. I think all the old WildCATs comics were written by Brandon Choi.

McFarlane wasn't that good of a writer. I thought Torment was a nice little horror themed story till I read the story it was emulating (Kraven's Last Hunt).

The adjectiveless titles started off promising but ended up being very shallow reads.

My understanding is that Claremont was interested in doing a Huntsman series at Image by was unable to nail down an artist. Claremont's mentioned in interviews in recent years that it's much more difficult for a writer to go the creator owned route than it is an artist. In retrospect that's obvious, but I had never really considered it before I heard him say it.

I don't think he ever had a problem with Lee personally. The problem as I understand it was that Bob Harras basically gave Lee the power to do whatever he wanted. He also didn't keep him accountable to deadlines. As the artist, Lee pretty much had full creative control since by the time the art came in, there was no time for anything other than Claremont filling in the script as best he could. That was also the reason Byrne left after only a couple of issues as well.

Whether it was justified or not doesn't change the fact that it happened or that it was indicative of a change in the creative culture at Marvel. Of course ultimately Marvel was only willing to go so far. When it came to giving the artists a cut of all of the merchandising their art was helping to sell, that's where they drew the line.

What's interesting to me is that things have seemed to swing in the other direction now. In recent years it's been a handful of writers who basically call all the shots at Marvel. It seems to me that you've got guys like Brian Bendis and Mark Millar and whomever else (I don't know who the current 'hot' writers are) doing what they want and everyone else is sort of expected to fill in the gaps. It's the same way at DC with guys like Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, etc. I don't think either scenario is great for business and I hope there can come a day where each series is once again more or less it's own thing and can sink or swim on it's own quality rather than having to fit into some "master plan" concocted by some all-powerful inner circle.

That's true, but almost unfair - Marvel and DC have barely even tried to launch new characters in the past decade. So there's barely been a test.

Creatively, very very few WHOLLY original characters have debuted in the last thirty years at the big two - but a fair few associated ones hav stuck in the last twenty-odd: new Batwoman, Bane, Azrael, Cassandra Cain, even Stephanie Brown are all newISH characters in the Bat universe; Kon El, Steel, Doomsday and Cyborg Superman stuck around after the expiration of their limited intended/expected life, too.

Is Punisher still the most recent high profile new-and-unattached character..?

Aside from Image and Dark Horse and Icon and the rest, of course.

I've seen an interview where he said he was planning on doing a Huntsman book right after the WildCATs story (which really ended up going nowhere) but the artist wanted to do his own thing. Not sure about right when Image started, though the rumor (which was stated before) is that it was Portacio that wanted to do Wetworks instead, but who knows? He certainly would have been the odd one out of that bunch.


See, Johns had GL and Flash (and then Aquaman) and Morrison had Batman, but otherwise it was the nebulous editorial powers that be that were ticking off the rest of the creators in DC (note that this was also a huge problem pre new 52, see James Robinson's run on JLA). However, stuff like Batgirl and Gotham Academy, and now stuff like Prez and Doomsday show that they're willing to give the creators some leeway now. Bendis was basically doing all the big crossovers, but guys like Peter David (X-Factor), Brubaker (Captain America), and the like turned in great runs; in fact I feel like Marvel in general is more writer/creative team driven, and it's resulted in some great stuff. It doesn't feel like a small group of writers controls everything, though there are obviously still all encompassing crossovers. Some writers (and properties) have more leeway than others, of course.

Deadpool, Gambit, John Constantine and Lobo all are all newer than Punisher, but the first two art attached to the X books, so that might not count.

Deadpool and Cable are the "new" characters that come to mind from the past two decades that have become popular at some point. Marvel and DC seem completely uninterested in introducing new characters not tied to their existing intellectual property. I think it all comes down to money and the potential for litigation by creators.

You know Marvel must hate they have to keep paying Rob Liefeld royalties on Deadpool. I am sure Disney has a team of lawyers looking for any possible loophole in that contract.

Revamping obsolete legacy characters like Groot or Rocket Racoon can be really interesting...Even then Deadpool first appeared in 1991 so is going on his 25th anniversary.

Deadpool's a good one, but surely he must pre-date Image, so even he's 22+ years. Constantine's grounded in Swamp Thing and has the Vertigo/Moore-tification stamp of being both within and without the core universe. Lobo... I like Lobo, but he's never really taken off, has he?

Quite. There are plenty of new characters - popular ones even - every year, but they're in Vertigo-as-was, Icon, (particularly) Image, and dozens of smaller companies.

Especially as - last I read up on it - they still don't pay royalties or residuals to the writers and artists of pre-1993(ish) stories they reprint. DC tries to track down heirs for Golden Age reprints (what few there are); Marvel historically avoids it as much as possible...

Yeah we had a thread about the most popular hero introduced in the last 20 or so years and it was slim pickings, but I kept it to a decade in my comment here to be safe.

Let's say x-men and other teams are fair game as long as they aren't a direct derivation like X 23 (who was introduced 11 years ago already) or Daken, and extend it to 15 years (2000). Who do you have? The Runaways? Daisy Johnson because of Agents of Shield? Sentry? Jessica Jones? I dunno. They come up with new characters every once in a while but nobody buys the books without some kind of familiar name attached to it.

The story I remember reading years ago was that Claremont had planned to kill off Wolverine at the end of the opening arc of the new X-Men series, and have him be dead for a bit before being resurrected as the Hand's master assassin and running around the Marvel universe as a bad guy. The X-office shot that down telling him that Wolverine had to appear in 10 other books each month, as well as his own series, and what was Larry Hama supposed to do with a dead title character each month. Claremont wasn't happy and decided to leave.

Byrne has said that he thought Lee & Portacio were already secretly preoccupied with Image stuff when he signed on and were sending him gibberish to script. He complained to editorial that they needed to get on a schedule and Marvel took him off the X-books and gave them to Lobdell to script.

In fairness, their Image stuff was mostly gibberish, too.

I almost wish they had spent more time on their Image stuff, because they couldn't get books out to save their life.

According to Marvel Comcis: the Untold Story by Sean Howe adjectiveless X-Men was given to John Bryne after Claremont left. He was planning on staying on the title but he was having problems doing the dialogue because Jim Lee was so late in getting the artwork done and sending it to him. Byrne complained to Bob Harras about this. At some point Harras asked Byrne to do a an entire script overnight. He said no, and Harras asked other people who also said no. Then Scott Lobdell showed up and said he could do it and that is how Lobdell got the gig.

Is Lobdell's willingness to rush out an entire story overnight possibly one of the reasons why his early X-Men run is criticized? I never stuck around past the first issue of his and Art Thibert's run because the interiors looked like a poor man's Jim Lee.

It's not just the early Lobdell run that was criticized. He got worse as time went by. He was just so bland but it's possible that editorial was really writing X-Men by then.