Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Chris Claremont on Evolving the X-Men, Part Two
Pictures: Seth Kushner
In 1982, Claremont teamed up with Frank Miller for the ultimate Wolverine story, a four-issue mini-series that placed the enigmatic X-Man smack in the middle of a war with ninjas and the Yakuza. It had a hard-boiled feel to it that the regular X-Men comics couldn’t allow and was a successful marriage of the creators’ respectable sensibilities. Claremont first came in touch with Miller in 1978, on the artist’s second job for Marvel: John Carter, Warlord of Mars #18.
“The Assistant Editor of the book was Jo Duffy, who brought him in and gave him his first hit, and I gave him his second,” Chris says. “I remember looking at his work and going ‘Holy cow!’
“In a lot of places in the John Carter story, Frank gets overwhelmed by the inker, but overall you see all the hallmarks that you recognize from Frank since then come into play. He sat down and worked out a four-handed fighting style, so he can choreograph the fight scene. The script just said ‘Tars Tarkas fights with guy,’ and I tossed into my suggestions, because this wasn’t a script but a plot. He figured out how it would work, how you could present both the action of the figure and the way the panel was shot, in where you place the camera and set the figures in the background and foreground. How do you make it work? The cool part was watching all the pieces come together and then trying to figure out ‘If he’s going to challenge me this way, then I have to find the way to be the equal of that.’”
Monday, June 20, 2011
Christopher talks to Jerry Robinson!
He created two pop culture icons in The Joker and Robin. He drew countless comic strips, wrote the definitive book on the history of American newspaper comics, and also stood up for Superman's creators. And that's just the tip of the iceberg that is Jerry Robinson's career.
Christopher will be conducting an interview panel with Jerry on Wednesday, June 29 at the Barnes and Noble on 82nd and Broadway in Manhattan, starting at 7:00. Done in conjunction with our friends and Dark Horse Comics (who have printed a new edition of The Comics and two editions of Robinson's sci-fi masterpiece comic Jet Scott), we'll have an hour to cover as much of Robinson's varied career. In the meantime, check out Mr. Robinson's new website, and tell 'em Graphic NYC sent you.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Chris Claremont on Evolving the X-Men, Part One
Words: Christopher Irving
Pictures: Seth Kushner
“You may have noticed (as a parenthetical aside),” Chris Claremont says in the middle of a thought. “I talk as I write, which is by the word.”
Sitting in his Brooklyn home, Claremont is affable with a dry sense of humor tinged with a bit of self-deprecation. Claremont is synonymous with his blockbuster comic book work as writer of the X-Men for near two decades, serving as architect to a series that helped keep the comic book industry afloat during its worse days, and increased visibility on the best. But Claremont’s influential career didn’t start with X-Men: it started, innocently enough, with Mad Magazine Fold-In mastermind Al Jaffee.
“He had been good friends with my parents since we moved to Long Island, which was a half-century ago,” Claremont reveals. “Al was, in many respects, the reason I’m working for Marvel. The official story: I went to Bard College and, in those days, Bard had what was called a field period, where they shut down for Christmas break and didn’t open for spring semester until the middle of March. Since upstate was intense in the winter (and we actually had a lot of snow) and Bard was a small college and not well-endowed; I suspect the practical side of things was that it saved on heating.
“The idea was that you were expected to go out and get an internship or job in a field associated with your interests or major, and build up a balance of experience, so that when you actually graduated, you would have some practical knowledge to go with the academics you learned in class. My freshman year, my majors were Political Theory and Acting, and there wasn’t much going on in New York theater in January. I was writing at the time and asked Al if Mad had interns.
“As it turned out, he went to my parents and said ‘There is no way in hell I’m going to recommend your son for an intern—Do you know what we do? Do you know what happens when we get together? You’d never forgive me!’
“He said ‘I’m friends with Stan Lee. Would you be willing to work for Marvel?’ and I said ‘Hell, yes.’”
“So, Al called Stan, Stan called me, and I told him I’d work for free. Stan, and Marvel, were never one to turn down a free lunch in those days, and he said ‘Come in and be a gopher for two months.’”
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