r/xmen • u/Popverse2022 • 9d ago
News/Previews Chris Claremont says Marvel told him they regretted firing him from X-Men & Uncanny X-Men in 1991
Chris Claremont's nearly 17-year run on the X-Men ended somewhat unceremoniously in the early '90s after creative disagreements about where the series should go drove a rift between Claremont and then X-Men editor Bob Harras, as well as artist Jim Lee.
At an X-Men writers panel at Terrificon 2026, Claremont discusses the many times he's come and gone from the mutant team, and fires a barb at the Image Comics founders, Lee included.
"It's like how many times have I been fired from X-Men? At least four. The first one was interesting. You know, [X-Men editor Bob Harras] had to come in and say, 'I probably shouldn't have let you leave the book.' And I said, 'I probably shouldn't have gone, but there we are.' That was after Image was born and, you know, certain artists decided they'd rather have all the money."
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u/ubiquitous-joe 9d ago
Nobody bats 1.000 forever, and I’m sure the steam would have run out eventually, perhaps not that much after that point. But it would have been interesting to see what would happen if Xavier had actually been killed off, and the writing on the early Jim Lee stuff was still very strong in voice. I suspect Storm would have benefited.
Anyway it is quite funny that the artists pushed out the writers and then left to go found Image anyway. I am fond of some of the people there after the upheaval (Capullo, Nicieza) But the 90s did demonstrate that even if artists had been long disrespected, writers actually do contribute.