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Deus Ex, you really need to go back and reread Claremont's old stuff. You sound as though you are buying into Grant's press hype in the worst way. Are you his agent?
Certainly Morrison is using Claremont's continuity and character development - but in what way is he following Claremont's spirit?
The soap opera stuff, the structure of the storylines (one story jumps into the next one, dangling plotlines that get resolved a year or so later), the characterization, interests in similar themes.
His X-Men did nothing but sit in the mansion and wait for problems to reach them.
Say what? Cassandra Nova. The U-Men. The Imperial Guard. The Riot. The Phoenix. All of the major stories in NXM so far have come to the X-Men at their home, and the one storyline that can be considered vaguely "proactive" was mostly about them stumbling upon Fantomex and Weapon XIII. Nothing has changed. The X-Men attract trouble, problems come to them. Ideally, they are not vigilantes, so that makes perfect sense.
I never believed for a second when he was writing the comic that the X-men were really into making a safer world for mutants.
The subtext is the same - they are working to make the world safe, but there isn't much they can do. They do what they can, like anyone else. This isn't the Authority, the X-Men aren't fascists or terrorists. They have their school, they do their superhero thing. That's a lot.
All i saw were costumes freaks fighting Hellfire Club and Galactic Empires and the Brood, and thinking: 'This is all neat and fun, but what about making this a safer world for mutants? How are they gonna accomplish that fighting Empires and aliens? Isn't that why the Avengers and Fantastic Four are here for?'
Yeah, but they were there. It sounds silly to argue this, but let's pretend this is real - why would the X-Men, who are supposed to be good upstanding people say "ah, that's not our jurisdiction. We only care about mutant stuff. Tough luck." One of the points that Claremont is very fond of is that even though the X-Men are mutants, that doesn't make them different from humans or other non-mutant superheroes. They are good people, and will do anything to help anyone if they can.
I know Claremont needed material to work with, but must he stray so far from the X-men goals to tell stories?
Well, it does add some realism in a way. You can have a set of established goals, but other things are going to come up.
Morrison is telling entertaining stories and still keeping faithful to the concept behind X-Men: he doesn't need to get into metaphysical babble about Collosus' sister in a Limbo with demons. He's actually finding material by exploring concepts connected to the X-men goals, that no one else before him explored.
Oh, right. Like the Mummudrai mumbo jumbo. And the Phoenix.
Why didn't anyone else ever remember to fill the school with mutant students? It was a school after all - and it got us Beak and Angel, the Omega Gang, the Cuckoos.
Like Laurence says, the New fucking Mutants. The New Mutants were a regular presence is the Uncanny X-Men back in the early 80s in the same kind of supporting role that the current kids are. The class-size was much smaller, but it has been established that there are more and more mutants now, and the school needs to be bigger. Also, the Xavier school wasn't the only school for mutants back then - Emma's Massachusetts Academy was still going strong at the time.
Now that the X-Men have gone public, they're giving press conferences and showing the world what they're really about, instead of hiding in self-pity and doubts: they're a lot more positive and cheerful than before (perhaps because Grant got rid of Rogue) - and there are manifestations at the gates, and they're inviting humans to the school...
Claremont has always had humans working at the school, and has had non-mutants on the teams. Claremont emphasized human contact in fact, Grant emphasizes it in theory. Grant's X-Men talk very big, but they don't actually do too much. They talk about integration, but where are the human characters? In fairness to Chuck Austen, at least he has Creepy Nurse Annie. The humans in NXM are walk-ons.
Grant's X-Men seem pretty depressed to me - they aren't constantly whining in melodramatic interior monologues, but that's really just one of Claremont's annoying stylistic quirks which have developed over time. As you go further back though Chris's writing, you'll find that he didn't really do that sort of thing very often at the series best. (Which, in my opinion, is the Paul Smith and John Romita Jr. runs.)
I don't see one idea Morrison owes to Claremont.
Well, I could go on all day, but the biggest one is the Phoenix.
Please don't talk about Chris Claremont if you obviously haven't read much of it. |
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