♪ (heroic music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Today we're going outside the studio to New York City, where guest interviewer Roy Schwartz talks to comic legend Chris Claremont at the second annual JewCE Convention.

- This is part of the JewCE, the Jewish Comics Experience Convention at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

I'm Roy Schwartz, I'm the co-curator of the JewCE Jewish Comics Experience exhibit, co-producer of the JewCE documentary, which is screening right now in a different room, event programming consultant, and this year's awards committee chair.

And it's my pleasure to welcome Chris Claremont.

Thank you for being with us today.

(audience applauding) - And if you'll pardon me, it's my pleasure to be here.

Thank you.

- Kitty Pryde, you and John Byrne introduced her in 1980 in Uncanny X-Men 129.

She is, believe it or not, it's 1980, but she's the first recurring explicitly Jewish superhero in mainstream comics.

Why did you make her Jewish?

- Why not?

- Fair, next question.

- No, I'm... (audience laughing) John thought it would be cool, I thought it would be cool, we did it.

I mean, sometimes the audience thinks too much about what we're doing, especially when you're going back that far.

We're just throwing darts at the target.

And sometimes it's a bullseye, and sometimes less so.

We don't know how anyone's going to react to it, but what the heck?

I mean, the worst that could happen is we get yelled at by the comics code, get yelled at by the editor, next issue we erase the Star of David, we move on.

On the other hand, if we establish her as who she is, and we weave that into the book, sometimes you could end up with a moment, as in God Loves, Man Kills, the X-Men graphic novel, where the fact that she is Jewish, the fact that she is a mutant, suddenly brings the confrontation with a fellow kid in dance class to a head in a way that is relevant to the real world outside.

That's what it's all about, because as a consequence of those scenes in God Loves, Man Kills, I ended up getting that book and my name put up on, oh God.

Thank you.

The 700 Club, and being declaimed as racist and a creation of the devil.

Cool.

You can laugh, but there's a whole lot of people out there for whom that description, that show, that person is real.

Fine.

Part of the point of that story was, and what I would say at the time and still today, if you have only one X-Men ever to read in your life or anyone else's life, read that story.

Why?

Because that's the essence of what I was trying to do.

Well, then for 16 years, now for, the better part of a half century, to establish, this is not a minor confrontation.

This is racism at its core.

It doesn't matter that Kitty's Jewish.

It doesn't matter that some of these characters are gay, that some of them are black, that some of them are Asian, that some of them are indigenous.

All of them are targets.

Why?

Because they're different.

Why are they different?

Because there's a Jean that goes a little bit one way, whereas a great many people's, other people's Jeans go the other way, and that scares these other people, regardless of whether the mutants are kids, regardless of whether they're fighting to save the world, regardless of every aspect.

The mere fact that they are mutants makes them scary, and a lot of people are scared by what they perceive as scary.

And a lot of the time, I found myself writing the stories and trying to say, why?

Why don't you just take a breath, reach your hand out, and say, I'm Bill, who are you?

The second story that means a lot to me is about a kid who moves to Salem Center, and the new mutants try to be friends with him, and every other word out of his mouth is the dumbest-ass anti-mutant joke ever.

It's a prom involving all the high schools in Salem Center, and dumb-ass jokes get said.

Mutants are the target, because why?

They're different.

Well, at the end of the story, they discover this kid's a mutant.

What's his powers?

He makes beautiful light sculptures that are wonderful.

That's tough.

He's just committed suicide because he's too scared.

Someone sent him a note saying, we know you're a mutant, and we're gonna tell.

And he was scared of what would happen.

15-year-old kid, that's it.

I was trying to get people who read this book to step beyond that point and look at them as people, to look at yourselves as people, to find a way that we can all try to listen to one another, one step at a time, maybe become friends, good neighbors.

Sadly, God Loves, Man Kills is still as relevant today as it was 38 years ago when it was first published, but nobody says you can't quit trying.

- That's beautiful.

The Dark Phoenix Saga, arguably the most famous storyline in comic book history, featured in three of the X-Men animated shows, two of the films.

The Phoenix Bird exists in different variations in several ancient Eastern religions and folklore, including in the Midrash.

And throughout the Dark Phoenix Saga, you describe the Phoenix Force using Kabbalistic terms.

In issue 108, you compare the X-Men to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with Xavier as the crown, the Keter, Colossus as the base, the Yesod, each of the X-Men representing another sphere.

And the Phoenix is a manifestation of the heart, the Tiferet.

Please say more.

- I'll swipe from anything.

(audience laughing) Welcome to research.

I mean, bear in mind that when I wrote that, there was no internet.

Computers were the size of this room, and that's only a 250K.

You laugh now.

You should have been there then.

It's sitting down with the National Geographic.

It's sitting down, yes, with the Bible.

I still have my copy, and it's with all, you know, yellow highlighters and tape galore.

You read, you talk, you listen, most of all.

You try to find what sounds interesting, what works.

If I saw this in a book, would I wanna see what happens next?

It's a question that every writer goes through when you get to page one.

And hopefully, you're still asking it on page two, and when you get to page 300, and at the end, you've got something worth reading.

And trust me, I know editors.

You think this is hard.

But the point is, you find a story to tell.

You find characters who, in that story, that you like.

You put it all together, and what happens next?

For all that I created that element with, originally Dave Cockrum and then John Byrne, what was dancing around the back of my head was a slightly different scenario, that Phoenix's bonding with Jean wasn't an accident, that it wasn't a cheap shot, one date only.

There was more to it than that.

And as it evolved in my own head, well, you know, the Canadian likes her a whole lot.

And as Scott's not gonna live forever, but Wolverine could, leaving current continuity aside.

And Jean, as the Phoenix, will definitely live forever.

Is there a possibility with those two?

I don't know, let's see what we can get away with.

That's what you do.

And sometimes it works, and sometimes you think, eh, this isn't working, I'll try something else.

And sometimes the company steps in, and we don't think so.

But you keep trying 'til you get it right.

And there have been many interesting discussions along those lines over the last 40 years.

But that's what writing and reading and comics and storytelling is all about.

Telling stories, and then discussing the aftermath.

And sometimes it's readers discussing it amongst themselves, sometimes it's creators discussing it among themselves, sometimes it's sitting in the audience at a panel, and the creator says something that you think is totally off the charts, and discussing it among yourselves.

The point is to find, basically, okay, you have a point, I have a point, let's see what happens next issue.

Even if I didn't write it.

- I wanna open it up to the audience, I just ask that you raise your hand and wait for the microphone to reach you before asking the question so we can all hear it clearly.

- The X-Men had some pretty crazy runs and some pretty crazy stories.

I wanna ask, what was one of the stories that you had the most fun writing, or that you can't believe that it actually got published?

- That's kind of a challenge since I consider the X-Men, the first issue of the X-Men, uncanny 94 to uncanny 279, page 11.

So I would have to say God Loves, Man Kills.

That's the one that, for me, encapsulates everything good, bad, and different.

But again, that's my feeling.

Yours, for me, is far more relevant.

What do you think?

- I don't know, I was thinking about Charles Xavier, she or her girlfriend, or just a bunch of-- - Why can't he have a girlfriend who's not quite from around here?

- I mean, of course he can.

I just wanted to know, you said earlier a bit that you didn't know if the comic industry, how long it would keep going, and you were just throwing ideas at the table.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so you were just putting whatever there, and I was just wanting to know, what was an idea that you can't believe you got it away with?

- The idea I didn't get away with, which I really felt was a mistake, was making Magneto a good guy.

I think we could have had a lot more fun.

I think the book would have matured.

I think that Marvel not trusting my promise to give them a villain even scarier and more intimidating than Magneto was a mistake, but that's the real world.

And as Archie Goodwin, who is one of the best editors ever, as well as being one of the best writers ever, said it best.

You screw up, you got 30 days to fix it.

Don't complain, get to work.

- The artwork in your X-Men run, the artists seem to perform at their top level, put more into it, and comics is an art, is comics an artist's medium, and how did you get the best out of your collaborators?

Were you writing for the specific artists in some way?

- How did I get the best out of my collaborators?

I'm really, really good.

I mean, how could, I've worked with some of the finest artists in this business.

I mean, I don't know.

I just, I'm too ridiculously lucky for words.

If Paul Smith had stuck around for another year, we'd have owned the industry.

The X-Men would have.

Maybe him and me together would have owned it.

The sales were rocketing skyward.

The stories he was telling, I mean, the looks of the stories were just wonderful.

I should have smashed his motorcycle, I swear.

Dave Cochran was wonderful, John was wonderful, until we had a parting of the ways, let us say.

You know, you get two alphas in a room together and, on the other hand, his FF were wonderful.

On the other hand, I find myself thinking, gosh, what if Jim Shooter had sided with John and I'd gone off the book and written the FF?

John had done his X-Men.

Might have been a whole lot more fun.

Maybe not sell as much, but it would have been fun.

It's, you play the hand you get.

You play the hand you get, and my hand was lucky enough to be tied up with some of the best artists, and this is 20th and 21st century.

The work that Salva La Roca and I did on both FF and Extreme, I'm sorry, I, my Marvel's second, biggest mistake for me of the 21st century was not just turning me and Salva loose.

Who cares about the rest of it?

We're just gonna kick ass.

But, you know, doesn't always go the way you want, so you take the next set of cards and see if you can bluff the editor and the audience into thinking, this is really good, and so they'll keep coming back for more, that's all I want, really.

You guys keep coming back for more, and me, writing stories that justify your interest and your investment, mind you.

10 cents is a lot easier to take a risk than 4.99, but.

- There are those who say that as a metaphor for marginalized people, the X-Men are kind of imperfect in that respect, that you can't really compare them because of the things they can do, actually, as opposed to things that people in the real world believe about marginalized people.

So I was curious if you agreed with that assessment or not, and how you chose to navigate it in your work.

- I don't know, sitting in a coffee shop in Salt Lake City talking to young Mormons who left the church and their families because they were gay, and embraced the book because it was speaking to them in terms that they related to.

I don't, it's, I'm not presumptuous enough, I hope, to say the book speaks to them, but if they feel that the book speaks to them, that's their privilege.

That's, it's not whether or not I think it's valid.

It is if I have written stories, if I am crafting characters that inspire this response, then my response in turn has to do better next issue.

It has, that's it.

That's what, to me, that's my job.

If it reaches you or it reaches people here on that level, then that's what I have to do.

If it doesn't, well, then I have to do better and see if I can do it next time.

- As a writer, you've had to deal with editors, and obviously the stories that sometimes you wanted to write were either altered or changed or told that that won't be something that young readers may or may not want to do.

Were there any changes that the editors let's say forced on you that actually turned out to be much better than you anticipated or you expected?

Was there something, 'cause usually we hear the writer came up with idea A or B and that worked out.

- Are you saying you wanted Jean Grey to stay alive at the end of Days of Future Past?

- No, but-- - There's a comic about that, you know.

- When I, right, so when I was introduced to your comic books, it was towards the middle of your run.

So by that point, reading back, and at that time I was reading that there was issues with the editors that they wanted a younger audience, which is why Kitty Pryde was introduced, if I'm not mistaken, that's what I read at the time.

And I read at a time that there was a lot of pushback from both you and John Byrne, that you guys didn't really wanna do that.

I'm just curious if looking back at it, it turned out to be any better or any worse?

- No, I mean, Louise Simonson and I heard that someone else was talking about doing a book of student mutants, and we both figured, no, we have the school, if you're gonna create kid mutants, we're gonna create 'em first.

So the new mutants came in.

But again, you find a way to take the challenge and turn it to your advantage.

- If the challenge with the original X-Men was you had five white guys, well, four white guys and a white gal.

I'm sorry, this is 1963.

Everybody's American.

Shame on you.

(audience laughing) That was 1968.

That's different from 1963.

(audience laughing) And how many lines did Uhura get compared to-- - But the introduction of other people did, over the years at least, pay off to both the X-Men and Star Trek and other shows that are around as opposed to other stories that are really not.

- I don't know, I mean, forgive me, but for the most part, I don't.

The cool thing I always felt about the X-Canon was by creating people, and again, this is pre-computers, by creating people from different cultures, you can throw aspects of their lives into the reader's perceptions that might allow the readers to think about what they're doing, what they're saying, where they are, where they're going.

I was not happy to discover that Bobby DaCosta in New Mutants, the film, was this gorgeous, tall, really nice white guy, because to me, that destroyed the whole purpose of Bobby's existence, which is he's black.

His dad's a billionaire, but he's black.

Black people are not, at least when I was writing the book back 30 years ago, were not considered, they were not welcome in Brazilian upper society.

But the producers of the films, but Chris, he's Brazilian, we actually cast a Brazilian.

Yeah, but he's the wrong Brazilian.

But he tested out well.

(audience member speaks faintly) You know, everybody has their own perceptions, their own prejudices, their own needs that they need to fill.

The idea, from my perspective, was how many darts can we throw at the board, and how many bullseyes can we achieve along the way?

The fact that Danny Moonstar was an indigenous, an indigenous person who basically hated the people who conquered her land and devastated her people, the fact that Sam Guthrie was from Appalachia, and trust me, 1969, 1973, Appalachia was not a good place.

We're, you take, you're trying to create, for want of a better term, metaphors in these single people.

And no, you can't fit 300 mutants on the page, much as you would love to, much as you would pare it down to finites.

But by the same token, you need them to be people that the audience can relate to, that they can look at and say, oh, I met that person, or I saw someone that was like that person, or I'm working next to someone who's like that person.

Where do you go from there?

Because that way you're making it as relevant to the audience as you can.

If it works, great, if it doesn't work, you slide the character off, out of the panel, and you bring in a new one.

But the essence was the X-Men were not appropriate for a school for gifted youngsters, because they're all either in their basic 20s, or in Aurora's case, she's in her 30s, and she's running the team, which she should.

So they're not kids, Wolverine's definitely not.

And we even did a scene in it where Charlie's yelling at him in the danger room, and Logan bursts out saying, between the panels is using language that's inappropriate in a code book, but, and Scott's realizing, oh, I saw this coming, and didn't tell him, and he's trying to tell Charlie, you can't yell at the team the way you yelled at us, because they're grownups, we are grownups, we're not kids, and Charlie doesn't hear a word of it.

You have three demerits, Scott, they have seven demerits, and it's like, I'm reading this, and I wrote it, and I'm thinking, what an asshole.

(audience laughing) But it is the school for gifted youngsters, so we created gifted youngsters, and we put them in a position where they're all socially, physically in conflict, because none of them belong where they are.

We've got a kid from a Roman, a city of Roman refugees at the top of the Amazon, where the heck did that come from, Claremont?

A kid from Brazil, a kid from the Rockies, a kid from Scotland, who's a deeply Catholic, a deeply, sorry, religious young lady, who turns into a wolf.

How the heck does she deal with that?

Again, you stitch them all together, and you see what happens next.

That's storytelling, that's what all of us want to do.

That's the reason why, if you look at all seven or nine Harry Potters, it's the same cast of kids.

You're watching them grow up, and watching them grow up, you see them evolve and change.

Welcome to creation, that's what we do, and hopefully that's what you love to read.

- That's a perfect ending, so thank you so much.

(audience applauding) - That's all the time we have for this episode of Comic Culture.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you again soon.

(Heroic music)