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This is Chandler, and this is Chris and I'm the other Chris.
And you're listening to x Reads the podcast. We made it to an episode
one hundred and we're here with none other than Chris Claremont, legendary Chris Claremont,
Welcome, Welcome, Hello. I'm just gonna say this probably on both
of our behalfs, but like, this is a dream come true just to
have you on the show, because we started this as friends several years ago
and we're just like recapping X Men issues, most of them of course yours,
because you own the body of them and you're our favorite era of X
Men. So when it comes to our episodes, most of them are by
Chris Claremont, and we would joke be like, when it be so funny
to have Chris Claremont on the show sometime Now we're here episode one hundred,
and we're so excited, so thank you so much for being here. You're
more than welcome. The joke from my end is basically started writing comics to
pay rent between acting gigs. That was my goal. I had a teacher
this is back and God help me the dawn of time when she said,
you know, the first ten years will be hard, but you have the
kind of face and sufficient more than sufficient skill to be a character actor for
the rest of your life, which, in a weird sort of way,
having seen Night Court eighty year old actors having a career again. It's very
funny. It's like realizing the number of people who are only five years older
than me running for president even but that's a whole different joke. But as
I said, the idea was, it would pay the rent an issue here,
an issue there, a mini series here, a mini series there while
I acted, And then, for reasons which are still utterly mysterious, writing
not only paid more often, but began to pay more. And then the
accident came along in that changed everything. We're so glad that you stumbled into
the X Men through your acting gigs and we're able to contribute arguably the most
iconic stories ever for them and their most iconic traits and everything, and plus
all the characters you created. I mean, most people know you by now,
obviously, and I feel like being repetitive to people that know that you're
the creator of Rogue, Jubilee, Gambit, Psylock whatever. I can just
go on and on and on. There's so many characters that are just iconic
to us that you've created and contributed to. So it is a big treat
that you decided that comics was your future and not acting The interesting thing that
occasionally drives Marvel crazy is that I think al Tolda probably created a few hundred,
if not four hundred to five hundred characters. The thing that drives Marvel
crazy is that there are at least two dozen of them that are alpha characters
you can forget about, like you know, Lieutenant so and so and Detective
so what's their name who show up in Iron would get five bucks an episode
for Iron Fist because of the two characters they show up that I created.
But you know, if you use any of the X Team from Mike Cannon,
everybody's there. It's hard to have X Men without the people that you
brought to the platform. Not to mention star Lord, who you're a co
creator of, which we just had Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three come out,
and I didn't know that. I just was so surprised to learn that.
And I saw that you attended the premiere in Hollywood to see your star
Lord on the big screen. I see. I look at it and say,
I got to meet Vin Diesel. Why my wife is so annoyed because
she had a ticket too. It's just we had conflicts and so she stayed
home. And look it it was really cool, and I hope everyone loves
the movie. Oh yes, I've seen it. I love it. Web
Never they've never used anything that I created in the movies. But that's a
whole different discussion altogether. Well, I think we're getting there obviously with the
with the Disney Fox merger. I'm sure we're going going to be seeing your
intellectual property or your creations of Grace the screen once more. But we're here
to talk about, yes, But yeah, we're here to talk about Kitty
Pride. Kitty Pride being my favorite character creation of yours, and she's had
a big evolution. So this episode is going to be off format. Normally,
Chris and I will recap a single issue of comics within the X Men
universe with our guests, but it's too wasteful to have you and just do
one issue. It's just like, no, we have to at least talk
about something much broader. So those of us that are those of you that
are listeners that are tuning in, we're not doing our normal format. We're
just talking with the Chris Claremont and we're just condensing it to Kitty Pride,
because otherwise we would be here for hours and hours and hours. There's a
million things that I want to ask, and I feel like, oh my
god, I really want to talk about you know, the Hellfire Club and
Day's a Future past and all these other things. But you know what,
Kitty Pride and we'll worriad this arc is really special, and Kitty Pride,
of course being just a true touchdowne for so many people. And I know
she's an entry level character for a lot of people. She is relatable to
a lot of people. She is the childhood crush of a lot of people.
You know, she's just completely delightful. And as Chris and I are
more you know, we're born in the eighties, we were introduced to the
nineties team, so she wasn't a part of that. You know, she
was often Excalibur. So she's a late addition to my awareness as far as
I didn't have that influence of her when I was younger, but then her
coming into my awareness at a later date, I just completely fell in love
with her. And I just think she is hilarious and resourceful and you know,
and she is she's you obviously, you are the creator and you're the
writer of most of her stories in that era and it's just like she's a
joy like Chris and I, Christopher and I. You know, on our
show, we love the Katy Pride centric ones. We love the fairy tale
episode or the issue. We love the one where she's in the mansion being
chased by the demon and stuff like that. Like the centric ones where it's
all about her. I mean we love them. Oh yeah, Professor Xavier
is a jerk. And find me a thirteen year old middle schooler who doesn't
feel that way about the principle completely, especially if he steps on her toes.
Well, Katy Pride has been drawn by so many artists over the years.
You know, We've got John Burne, Dave Cockrum, Paul Smith,
you name it. Is there iteration of Kitty Pride that you prefer the most?
Or is there an outfit that you prefer the most? No, it's
all an evolution. I think it's very interesting because again John establisher, John
Byrne establisher and then disagree fundamentally with all the decisions I may after that regarding
her. But for me, the key is that she's a smart, a
girl from Chicago. That basically sums her up. You know, don't mess
with her She has the disadvantage of being one of those smart Alec kids who
always knows better than everyone around her, but is also fundamentally shy and because
of her faith, always feels like an outcast, which is why she and
Logan end bonding, but by the same extension, she and Magneto end up
bounding. You know, I think one of the more primal moments I guess
that I felt was good to write was when she and he go to the
opening of the Holocaust Museum in DC, and as people did there, you
go up at onto the dais and say the names of people you're trying to
find some contact with, and Magneto, by everyone's surprise, meets friends who
are very surprised at how well he's dealt with the years. But the subtext
of Kitties what she says is that she doesn't know anything about her relatives in
Poland except that there's a ninety nine percent chance that they no longer exist.
But there's all so the New Mutants story that got me my only fan letter
from Paul levits we were only fooling, which is where a young kid comes
to Salem Center, gets involved with the Mutants and is terrified of being outed
because he's a mutant, and he knows that if he gets outed, awful
things will happen. Well, someone does threatened out him. We know what
you are. We're going to tell everyone, and he takes his life out
of fear. The last two pages is Kitty getting up there at his memorial
and giving a speech where she says the most offensive words in the lexicon,
one of which we were allowed to use then but is no longer considered appropriate
the same word I used in God Loves Man kills. And what's running through
her head as she's giving this speech is that by doing so, she's also
revealing herself to herself as a coward, because if she had courage, she
would say, I'm Kitty Pride, I'm a mutant, screw you all.
Her rationalization for not doing it, her Russian al for not doing it,
is that she's perfectly willing to out herself, but she can't out the rest
of the new mutants. It's not her right prerogative for me. That's that
was is The firm part of writing and writing these characters is that they all
come to unexpected choices, and you can understand why they make these choices they
make the choices they make. But as with everybody in quote unquote reality,
you have a should I could? I Is this right? And sometimes the
answer is maybe not. Then you do it anyway because and it's always because
that from our writer and ideally a reader you relate to, you bring up
a key point that I'm sure you've heard so many times as the allegory of
x Men and Mutantdom with people of color, queer community, all the people
that feel underrepresented, because we find solace in the x Men in Mutantdom and
the stories that are being told there. Obviously, I feel like I'm preaching
to the choir because everybody kind of feels this way because we are an x
Men fan podcast. But to those that are not familiar with x Men or
x Men comics specifically, I feel like it's a learning curve for them.
They have to kind of come to understand because I have definitely interacted with people
on the Internet who don't quite understand that allegory at all and they think something
completely different. It's been an amazing experience, of course, to be a
fan and go through this and fine community through these books. When I wrote
God Loves Man kills. It was a very specific book at a very specific
time, about a very specific thing. I had no imagination that forty odd
years later the conflict would be far more pertinent, and that Dryker would actually
be gaining in popularity. Because the feeling is he's speaking for the downtrodden,
normal folks against all these outliers that are trying to stand on everybody's toes,
and yet every day there is evidence of anti minority sentiments, laws, positions.
It's very disconcerting, but from that perspective, from my perspective, it
makes It seems to me anyway, it makes the my era of X Men
all the more relevant, because the whole essence of that was, we're trying
to find a way, as Igor Corday did in the Valley Salada stories of
Extreme this is a place where we used to live happily together with non mutants,
and then suddenly it all went to hell, creating a circumstance where you
could perhaps understand why they all want to run away to their island distrail and
live happily ever after. To me, my challenge to a decision like that
would be as a reader and as a certainly as a creator, I think
it would have been a more balanced equation if some of them had said,
no, we're going to stay here because this is our home. I mean,
that's why kitties from Chicago. She's both a smartass and a fighter.
People in Chicago don't step back from struggles. It's all tied in with her
being from Chicago, going to the University of Chicago, eventually in again in
my timeline, becoming a counsel, becoming the mayor, becoming the governor,
becoming the president. She is the exemplar of the positive hopes of the X
Men, And of course the punchline is days a future passed where in the
last year of her second term the sentinels show up and we all go back
to basics. That's comics. It is melodrama in the very best sense of
the word. That it's a primal struggle with the heroes fully committed to victory
because they have no other alternative. It's win or die, and the adversaries
being pun Dockers. Kitty was introduced in Unkinny X Men one twenty nine alongside
the White Queen, Emma Frost, and they've had a relationship, so to
speak, for decades. Now for us for how long in comic book time.
Who knows. I just want to talk about that I'm as a big
character for a lot of people. Chris here loves Emma Frost. Yes,
Emma Frost my all time favorite X Men. She is amazing. The interesting
thing about Emma is that the first time she encounters the X Team and Charlie
is the only time in her life in comics she has ever worn anything other
than white, which is maybe why they didn't recognize her. Or maybe everybody
was staring at Jean, who's suddenly wearing dark colors and an utterly non neutral
presentation. You know, suddenly she's gone from being the nice girl to being
something. So everyone's looking at Jeane, no one's looking at Emma. And
let's face it, Emma's alone with Kitty for however long she was there before
Charlie got there, and the first time we see Kitty, she's got this
real headache. And maybe it has nothing to do with the manifestation of her
power. You put her with her potential, in the same room as a
telepath who is easily arrival for Charlie. The only person who ever really got
a good hit at her was Gene, and let's face it, the Phoenix
again in my conception, bombs with Gene, and that puts Gane like one
very small step below the Almighty. That's a much longer discussion as a podcast
all by itself, the point being that who knows what subconscious, masked discussions
she and Kitty had before Charlie got there. Well, and they've had a
very tried relationship over time because in New Mutants, of course, they interacted
a lot with the Massachusetts Academy, in the Hellian and whatnot. And I've
always admired how now in current days they've become more close friends because they've had
such a relationship even though they were rivals or enemies or she was scared of
That's true, but again it all depends. It actually all depends on who's
writing the current stuff can define things by that one aspect of Kitty's life,
where she's now channeling the pirate. On the other hand, the question I
always asked was, so why is she drinking? Is she at the same
time absorbing an essence of logan? One never knows the other side of the
coin, of course, is that within the context of my timelines for the
X men, Logan has known all about her from the moment they met in
nineteen thirty five, so assuming, especially given the current timeline. When Logan
in those days, Logan had natural clause, not adamantia, so perhaps that
held true when he was in Vietnam fighting alongside Charlie and fighting alongside Carmen Pride,
who flew the helo that they use when they went out and rescue missions.
So maybe he's there to keep an eye on Carmen, to make sure
Carmen survives, to make sure Kitty survives. I mean, they're all sorts
of wheel For me, as a writer who started out writing science fiction,
there's all sorts of games to play. Let's jump into the Kitty Pride Wolverine
miniseries because it is transformative for her for everybody that's reading, it's fantastic.
And what I love is that you've taken her from a dancer, a genius,
a superhero, and now she's a deadly ninja assassin. So what can't
Katie Pride do? I think that's the limited approach. She's gone from being
a superhero, a kid who helped save the world, a kid who helped
save the omniverse, in the Paul Smith issues, and yet here she is
something's happening with her father, So she does the impetuous, dumbass kid thing,
unaware that the X Men have been bounced off to Secret Wars except for
Logan, and goes to see how she can help. But the one thing
that is primal after all these positive elements in her life, what this reveals
is how easily she can become a victim. And then what do you do?
I mean, bearing in mind she's only thirteen, The stuff she goes
through, the things she confronts, I mean, Ogan takes her apart top
to bottom, inside and out, and rebuilds her in his image. And
even though she she and Logan win the arc, as she discovers in the
latest Extreme X Men arc I just that just finished last month, it's not
getting free is not as easy as she thinks. Doesn't mean she can't fight
back, doesn't mean in fighting back she won't win, But there are always
consequences. And the thing with the miniseries that she realizes at the end is
not that she fought Ogan. It's that she faced a series of choices in
those last issues, And this goes back to what she and Logan are running
through the snow brought about by the Ultimate Winter, but they're running barefoot because
this is her And each time she sort of triumphs, Logan tears her down
and points out, no, Ogan triumphed in you. This is about you,
not about him. And it finally at the end comes down to the
moment where she has the chance to kill him Ogan, I mean, And
only after she turns her back and says no, does she relies that Logan
was right there ready to kill her if she made the wrong choice. And
even after that, when Ogan comes to takes a last shot at Logan,
So that was dumb? Would be Ogan? Logan? Everybody's got the same
phonomic name. She's in the middle as he tries to stab Logan and Logan
kills him. The consequences the things she endures in that art are very primal
and very cruel, which is sort of like why the ten page story that
Salvi and I did, which is what happens on the drive back to Tokyo,
where you learn some primal things about Logan's is the most primal and important
thing you learn is he makes really good ramen and teaches her. It is
very much a mentor pupil relationship. But the things he's trying to teach her
have nothing to do with fighting. They have to do with growing up and
into a woman who can again. Who was always meant my vision of the
X Men to be the core of the next generation. That's why my original
concept for Gambit joining the team was a focused, purposed event, and it
was to seduce and corrupt and destroy the next leader of that team, which
was Kitty. I mean, the whole point with me was that Remy and
Kitty were the core relationship. Rogue had nothing to do with it. But
that was so twentieth century ages ago, you know, And of course people
listening probably couldn't even imagine Gambit and Rogue not together. But I never really
latched onto Gambit as a character. Probably maybe maybe because his original attentions never
were fulfilled that he became something different over time. Remy's a thief. Gambit's
a thief, and what he loves feeling most our hearts and he's not gonna
do anything mean with him. But to see him is to love him.
It's literally the core idea for me was he walks into a Roman, everybody
looks at him and all the ladies are going, oh my god, and
probably a third or more of the men are saying oh my god. Two
and half of them are blushing because it never dreamed they had this impulse.
It's just that it's remy. I actually love Gambit. I think he provides
a lot of comedic lines. He is a fun character design. The thing
I like with characters when I put them on stage, they conceive of them,
design them put them on the stage, is that they function on more
than one level. Yes, Kitty has a moment where she fights a demon
in the X Men, smashed as a good chunk of the mansion, and
at the end she gets her wish. Her parents show up for Hanakkah,
and you know that the next morning she and Charles will have words over what
the heck has happened to the mansion in the meantime, and she has a
perfectly rational excuse, wasn't my fault. I didn't do this. I was
just trying to keep myself from being roasted alive by the demon. It's watching
her grow up, I mean. The thing that made my head explode back
in the day was that another writer who was writing Excalibur wanted her to have
a relationship. And this is a story I've told more times than anyone cares
to remember. He wanted her to have a physical relationship with Pete Wisdom until
it was pointed out that Kitty is fifteen years old, which even in the
United Kingdom is illegal, So then no problem she was twenty one, except,
as I keep pointing out, this isn't the DC universe, this is
the Marvel universe, and you can't have her jump six years to be legal
and not have an impact on Franklin and everybody else. They've all jumped six
years or should jump six years. But see that's me coming out of stands
dictum, which is you write a book for as long as you're on it,
but when you're done, you put the characters back on the wall the
way you found them, so the next writer will have a free shot at
whatever he or she wants to do with him. My way around that was
not aiming on not ever getting to the point where I had to put them
back on the shelf. You know, I figured I'd stick around for twenty
years, twenty five, oh what the hell? Thirty the very least.
If someone wants to read a structured continuity. I've got sixteen big volumes worth
of material on your shelf. It's not where you come in read three years
worth. And then the next person invalidates it all. I figure Stan and
Jack stayed on the f for a one hundred issues. What the hell?
Kitty Pride, of course, becomes shadow Cat through this. Yes, so
we finally a halfway's decent name. Yes, exactly, it's a no more
aerial, no more sprite. No, you know, we have shadow Cat,
which to me is her favorite code name and my favorite costume, probably
the blue kind of outfit and the mask and everything. Again, Kitty evolves
there in mind. This is the young lady who's skated into Charles command center
of the Danger Room in the most awe inspiring Dave Cock from Tasteless thirteen year
old What do you think? And her period in Excalibur, not the least
being that when Alan and I did the Barsoom two parter. The essence of
it is Rachel has no problem walking around and next to nothing. She's a
telepath. It's the same with Emma. My theory with Emma is she's never
worn corsets. It's just that everybody thinks she wears corsets. Then the flip
side of that coin is, as Aurora pointed out, Emma sitting there saying,
hey, I'm Diamond, now you can't hurt me, and and Aroa's
going, really do you really think that? I mean, I have this
little twig here, I can make this twig hit you at mock speeds.
How many twigs do you need before I find the flaw on the diamond?
Oops? And Emma's realizing, ah, because she's spent her whole professional life
on the presumption that Storm is not going to kill you, because that's not
storm, except that is storm. She very much storm. Well, it's
she will do no, she will mourn the fact that she had to take
alife. It will have an impact on her. But again, going back
to the Barsoom story with Kitty, you know, you have this the evil
lady about to have all the X Men eaten by the giant whatever it is
in her basement, and she's about to kill an innocent person, and Kitty
just nails her and kills her, stabs her in the back. Because this
is post ogun and there is a part of Kitty that is in every sense
of the word, a samurai, as is Logan. She will do what
must be done, which is why, in a weird sort of way,
what I was doing X Men Forever. She and Logan merge for Swiss second
phoenix m for a split second, and they come apart. But when she
comes apart, she comes away with a claw and a fraction of his attitude,
And as the series progresses, she gets more and more fierce. Part
of that ferocity is her anger at you know, you had to leave a
couple of souvenirs. What part of me is me? What part of me
is now you? But again going back to true friends. In a way,
she was always destined to be, at least in my iteration, as
much a part of him as a part of her parents. The difference being
that when she was working at Bells of Hell and the Giant Sentinel fried all
of Genosha, she found that fractional piece of video where her father was one
of the victims. She saw her father die. Logan will not die.
They will be again. In my iteration of it, she was working late
one night at the Bells. There was a figure masked by shadows, who
kept making her an offer that he didn't want her to refuse, and finally
just she was so tired, and so, oh hell, all right,
fine, this is a fraternity event, right, I'll become the guardian of
forever. Satisfied now? And then Highest Authority nodded and said, yep,
you're it. And Kitty realized that when Highest Authorities makes you an offer,
you normally can't refuse. You're stuck with it. So she and Rachel are
the guardians of Forever. So my way of thinking about it is the cannon
we're reading now is her fourth time around the box, you get the end
of creation. Everything's died. Logan's been sitting on a rock for billion years
waiting for the last star to die. And Kitty comes out every so often
because she lives in a tests erect with her family, because even after three
complete circles of creation, a tests erect has a diameter of a quarter billion
miles. It'll take a lot of people. They have dinner, they talk,
she goes back, and finally the stars about to go out, a
dot of light appears next to it absorbs the light that comes gane again.
The phoenix comes down and she and Logan pick up where they left off.
The lights go out, and then next creation is reborn. See, it's
all part of a pattern. That's why in the Bilson Kevis story that he
and I did a year ago, Hella makes the same kind of offer to
to Danny Moonstar. Because Danny is a valkyrie. She is the blend of
two realities mutants and as guardian. But the fact is death has many faces,
and one of them is dark Phoenix. She isn't there for as a
metaphor. She's there as the real thing. But my vision of the reality
is that the Shadow King is not a mutant. Shadow King is the enemy
of life. His goal is, like Thanos, to just expunge everything from
creation except him. He's happy with that. And Hella's point is, what's
the point of death if there is no life? So Danny's job is to
protect life. She's there basically to fight the Shadow King in the name of
death, because if there is no life, there can be no death.
Death is a primal force as his life. They all have their place at
the essence of creation. You've got Rachel Old, You've got Kitty, and
you've got Danny. You can only do Danny if she's drawn by Bill.
We've had Bill sen Kevitch on this show actually for our fiftieth episode, so
it just seems so kiss meant that you're our hundredth bill. I'm a more
mature person, I guess, so I've got ten years on him, so
there. Yeah, he came in and talked to us about New Mutants and
his joys of being a part of that era of the comic books and everything,
and yeah, he does incredible work. He's one of my favorite artists.
You know what. We actually talk about you a lot, like with
other people, like we've got Annisentio. I'm envious she got to do the
mini series. She gets to do Wheezy. They just announced she's doing a
mini series set on in the Krokoa reality. I am so envious because I
would like to do something in the current iteration, but I'm apparently locked into
my own little world. I would be very curious about your take on current
Cracko and era storylines and everything. I just kind of see what you would
contribute, and you don't have to pitch us, but you know, because
I know writers like to keep their stories to themselves so that nobody can take
them. But I would It's a big island about which we know next to
nothing. I mean, there are so many characters, there's so many realities
there. How, there's lots of reasons to play. Like anything else,
it is a tapestry waiting for little bits and pieces to be added to it.
That's comics at its essence. That's the Marvel Universe at its essence.
Here's Peter Parker, Here's Aunt May, Here's Gwen Stacey. Have fun.
Oh wait, here's Mary Jane Watson. Okay, you plant the seeds and
let the people who come after play with it. With me. It's like
Grant Morrison's run on New X Men. I disagree with most of the mistakes
he made, and yet I read every issue because it was really really good.
Darn it it was. And the most frustrating thing for a writer is
suddenly reading a story and say, damn it, I should have thought of
that. That's the nature of work. We are all challenged by the people
around us. And you know, when Frank was doing Daredevil and I was
doing X Not, It's like one month Frank would be number one, I'd
be number two. Then I'd be number one and he'd be number two.
It's competition in the best sense of the word. Not because one feels arrogant,
although that probably is a chunk of it for some people like me,
is having fun and seeing what kind of reaction you can get from the audience.
I mean, my point with X Men one was, and it sounds
silly to phrase it like this, but what the heck? Okay, the
first issue sold eight million copies, will be the challenge will be to get
to issue twelve and still keep the book in seven figures, not because of
gimmicks, but because I was trying to create, was creating stories and characters
that the readers bonded it. The most awesome moment of my career is discovering
that on the third Thursday of every month, when the X Men came out,
people would actually queue up outside the comic bookstore a half hour before it
opened to get the issue. I mean, how cool is that. I
saw the first release of Star Wars the first show in New York. I
got there an hour early. Theater was empty, It's kind of filled up
by the time the show the film started, But when I came out two
and a half hours later, the line was one all the way around a
New York City block, and by the end of the day it was three
lines deep and it didn't go away for a month. That's extraordinary. That
is the primal challenge to me is to do work that is so enticing,
so irresistible, that everybody tells their friends, and everybody comes in and buys
it, and you keep building on that foundation. The frustration, of course
with the twenty first centuries that the market has changed so much. Everyone loves
to go to convention and not so many seemed to love buying comic books.
And my desire, my goal, would be to try and get more people
in the door to buy those comic books by telling stories that they would find
irresistible. Far easier said than done. The challenge of writing a challenge,
especially of writing comics, because it provides a visual template as well as a
literal template if one reads a book, and this has always been the interesting
dichotomy. When we did the Heroes the Memorial from nine to eleven, writer
was supposed to contribute, the artists supposed to contribute, and Salvador la Rocca
did the most magnificent of pages. I was signing it for someone and they
said, where's your contribution? You know, because many of the other pages
you have writers writing their words. You had artists drawing their visions, and
I said, it's right in front of you. What do you mean,
what did you write about twenty six hundred words give or take? What do
you mean? It's right in front of you. All I did was tell
Salva this is the image, and he brought it to life. I didn't
need to write any more than that and write anything to add to it,
because it wouldn't It would have detracted from the power of the visual. The
paradox of comic books is the writer's job is to convey the visual to the
artist. The artist's job is to then bring it to life. In some
issues like Jokasada did the I challenge you all to do as comic without words,
and of course, being me, I figured, oh, this is
personal, isn't it. You know, because I have a I am notorious
for writing a lot of words. So I did as story of Remy saving
people. It's not hard. You just have to think in terms of a
storyboard and have an artist like Salba who can bring it to life with remarkable
efficiency. But that's also why if the original Wolverine mini series plot I sent
Frank was Frank Miller was twenty pages for a twenty page story. The last
plot for the fourth issue. He and I talked on the phone for twenty
minutes and I wrote a third of a page of notes typed him up to
set him off. All of the stuff in the first issue was setting description,
character description, emotional content, throwaway bits of dialogue. If I had
an inspiration, it was everything, not just from him, but for me,
so I knew what was going on. By the time we got to
the fourth issue, I knew everything. He knew everything that was relevant.
All we needed to do was structure out the visuals by the same token.
Frank knows my rep for writing, so he left me all this blank space.
The way he arranged the panels, there were empty blocks of background,
or not even background, just the panel was floating against a long white space.
My response was, there's no way I'm going to cover that up.
It's beautiful. So I just leaned down the text the dialogue to the Barras
essentials. Again, it's a synergy. You find a way to balance A
and B and have fun. Hope that you do it in a way that
the reader responds. That worked through the Kitty Wolverine story. There are certain
moments where description or thought was required. There are certain places, like the
conditioning moment where Ogan rebrands Kitty to his side of the equation, where al
Milgram could brought it to life without the need for excessive copy. Everything is
unique. Unto that moment, and unto that artist, and unto that story,
you find the balance. For me, it's what happens between the panels.
In a comic, you'll see a shot of someone walking up through the
door, and then you'll see them what's happening inside. But the space between
the two panels is where the audience's imagination comes into it. Ryan Reynolds walks
up to the door or the mansion, but there was only budget to open
the door and see Colossus on the other side. But what was going around
the corner, Well you get a glimpse of it, but that's it.
You find a way to play. You find a way to put the reader
on the edge of their seat, either in a comic book or a novel
or a movie, and gather them up and chase them down the block,
or have them chase after you down the block and see where it leads,
or see where you can lead them. The challenge is always not so much
the school, but what happens in the bits that you don't see. What
do they do on their off time? Okay, they play baseball, but
then pours. Sam's up there trying to do a finish a term paper and
his computer goes. Each moment, each place is a way of bonding.
What's on the table that you're reading to the imagination and the heart of the
person reading it. It's not that it's Xavier's school, it's what about this
school reminds me of my school. It's like why in the New I always
wanted to try and do more stories set around a mixer in the high schools
where middle schools in Salem Center get together and they have, as I said,
a mixer. It's the team getting involved on the beach, Chitty Panema,
going to Asgarden finding out that not everybody wants to go home. I
had a pitch through to Marvel three years ago where I established a team of
X men who are going to defend YadA, YadA, YadA blah blah blah.
The leader was the root Queen Rue. Queen's point was what are you
looking at me like this? For yes, I come down from heaven what
do you think that we're all evil? No, I'm the defender of my
people. I clim as much a hero to them as you are to yours.
It's just we happen to eat yours. Whales are just as sentient and
just as advanced as you are. You just kill them for their tusks.
Who makes you the good guys? It's perception. The thing about the school
for me is that it shouldn't be. It's not like living on an island
in the middle of the ocean. The school is in a community. The
whole point of the X Men is finding a way for them to be part
of that community, regardless of the fact that they're being chased through the danger
room by giant monsters, despite the fact that Charlie is actually a brute queen
in disguise, despite the fact that they find themselves against adversaries who could very
easily kill them. It's fine trying to find the things that bind us to
the reader. It's like, oh my gosh, Bruce and Clark's mom is
named Martha. Wow, that's scary. But okay, it's probably careless in
terms of editing or writing. But okay, you know, I'm quietly and
move on. You know, it's it makes for a little giggle for me.
Comic books. A point of comics and celebrating comics and being at a
convention about comics is that at its bedrock, comics should be fun, and
if they're not fun, why would anyone want to read them? It's a
seduction of the innocent. Yes, Wortham have that one right. I want
to button up this Kitty Pride episode and thank you so much for being a
part of it. I think it was really great to hear your perspective and
insight, especially in your mind of continuation of character, because I just personally
find that fascinating. I'm really appreciative of what you've given to us through Katy
Pride in her evolution. You know, she still continues to be one of
my favorites. Of course, again, in terms of Kitty, I've never
I mean I had her take a puff of Logan cigar and she calls out
her lungs. The thing I forgot was secondhand smoke. So it's like,
just because he's immune a smoke is probably doing wonders for everybody's lungs around him.
But the key thing for me is the implication that she's working at Dells
of Hell even though she's underage. Kind of we just I just decided I
would blur that metaphor. But why, Well, here's a bar that within
a couple of blocks, You've got a central receiving hospital, a cop house,
a firehouse, oh and the University of Chicago. And Kitty is behind
the bar. What does she do behind the bar? Aside from serving really
good drinks? She listens. She really likes listening and occasionally responding because people
come in here, they've had a hard shift thing it's not been the best
day, or they've had a great day they want to talk about and because
for her it's a way of re establishing the bonds she had in Salem Center.
Except these people go out and risk their lives on a totally different level
than the X Men did. The X Men do the uber save the world.
They do the little save the world. And I think one of the
things I would love to play with more is the implication from the Extreme mini
series that I just did. Then Chicago is the only city in the United
States that actively employs mutants. You know, there's a Coastguard mutant whose specialty
is airca rescue because she's a shape shifter. There's a fire department mutant who
absorbs flame. There's a cop who goes out and helps solve crimes. For
me, the idea was to create a reality where the positives of mutants on
earth. It's not that these are monsters with superpowers who will supplant us.
It's like somebody's a Mozart. Someone else flies faster than a speeding bullet.
It is for the benefit of us all. Why don't try we try playing
with that aspect of reality instead of being afraid? Why not use Charlie's Institute
as a benchmark of bringing everyone a couple of steps closer together, rather than
its walls driving people apart. Because it all comes down to fear. We're
afraid of the unknown. We're afraid of things that are different. We're afraid
that our kids might look at a box and say, oh wait, I
can be one of twenty three different genders. I'll choose this one from column
why Why why not? Yes, it is a metaphor, and sometimes metaphors
are necessary, and hopefully metaphors have a positive outcome. The key here is
why should we be afraid? Why should we think the representatives of these metaphors,
the embodiments of these metaphors are evil. Why not just nod your head
and look at these people and judge them for who they are and what they
do, and figure if one could look at this from a theological standpoint and
say, if we are the creation of an almighty some of us will end
up looking like Kurt. The choice that he made was Okay, I looked
like this wasn't my idea? Well maybe it was. But if I am
created to look like this, then maybe my job is to be the best
person who looks like this that is humanly possible. I have some thought on
the side. None of this needs to be something to be afraid of.
None of this needs to be something to hate or even dislike. We should
maybe try to embrace the side of us that wants to trust, that wants
to live happily ever after. And by implication, if I live happily ever
after, you can do it too, or maybe even do it better.
Bravo. That shouldn't be so hard, And for me, that's what comics
are here to do. Help walk down that path, see where it leads,
and maybe reach out a hand to help someone else as well, and
if you're really lucky, you reach out of hand, they'll reach back.
And you're cute. You two well beautiful romantic. What can I say anti
English as that may seem, you know, but that's what to me is
what the X Men, among other things I write, but the x mellment
is all about should be all about not hiding but embodying hope, embodying the
positives, embodying the If I have this talent, if I have this ability,
I will use it to help other people, because you know, it's
easy to be an a hole. Let's try for something better. It's been
really fun to get your insight and also I think you know, you speak
to a lot of important social issues of course, all in the comics.
We really do appreciate you being on the show and celebrating our hundredth episode.
It's been such a journey to kind of go through the X Men history of
comics and recap them and then be able to talk to yourself about Kitty Pride
and hear all of your perspective, which is just you know, it's really
great. I mean, Chris, don't you think so? Are you having
a good time? Oh my gosh, this was amazing What a Drink from
True to Talk to You, and What a Milestone. One hundred episode x
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