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Was surprised to see a documentary about Chris Claremont and the X-Men on Prime. Pretty good, but the narrative jumps a bit from "was an unpaid intern" to "was handed the X-Men," which is abrupt. Feel like there& #39;s something else there to be told.
Lots of facetime for Claremont, Ann Nocenti, Louise Simonson, and Jim Shooter. Oh, and that @louchelarue fella. SPECIAL BONUS: they make sure to point out Louise Simonson was a model for the cover of HOUSE OF SECRETS #92.
What the documentary definitely makes apparent was how much Marvel lost by depriving X-Men of a long-term singular vision and its addictive soap opera aspects. I mean, "soap opera" was still there, but now splintered among too many titles by too many hands.
Imagine watching THE GOOD PLACE, and then because it was so popular Chidi spun off into his own series, and Jason got his own series, and there was a side series about Michael and what he& #39;s up to, and so on. And THE GOOD PLACE ended and was replaced by ELEANOR IN THE GOOD PLACE.
And you had to follow all of them to keep up with the ongoing storyline, but it& #39;s no longer apparent which one is the MAIN story, the central series. You think it& #39;s the ELEANOR one, but then it stops and TAHANI& #39;S PLACE starts up and now you& #39;re not sure.
Oh, and all of them are by different creators. You think "surely the one by the original creator is the main one to follow" but he& #39;s either been forced off by the network, or his work is minimized and the "important" stories for GOOD PLACE continuity happen in series not by him.
Finally, someone realizes "hey this is too much," kills all the spinoffs, and starts THE GOOD PLACE RETURNS and *that& #39;s* going to be the main series from now on. Only the audience has departed out of frustration of not being able to follow the story threads.
So the solution is "make more GOOD PLACE spinoffs to keep the income up, oh and also show some of them twice a week" and things just continue spiraling downward from there.
Anyway, the new X-Men titles being relaunched under a creator& #39;s specific vision is a step in the right direction, but we& #39;re already at the "more spinoffs, twice a week" point. How many of these new X-titles are coming out this week?
Overloading too many brand new series in one week is going to make it very easy for readers to pick which ones they don& #39;t need to read. And if they don& #39;t buy it that first week it& #39;s out, the chance they& #39;ll EVER buy it is greatly reduced.
Don& #39;t get me wrong...I& #39;m SO glad people are excited about X-Men again. It& #39;s been a while. But I can already see the difficulty this relaunch faces.
Okay, that& #39;s enough of that. ...Maybe I should start a blog or something...? ...Nah, who& #39;d do a dumb thing like that?
Just picture if Claremont had stayed in charge of the X-Men all this time. X-Men would be on issue...whatever, and it might still be selling (relatively, by today& #39;s standards) well right now. By chasing dollars with "hot" artists, that chain was broken and we got what we have now
The old readers might have stayed on, and new readers might have come on attracted by the long history and consistent vision of a single creator guiding characters in which they could invest their interest.
OKAY I SAID I& #39;D STOP
