Used to worship Chris Claremont like he could do no wrong

For years I thought his X-Men run was untouchable, but last month I went back and read the Muir Island Saga and man, that pacing is a mess. The dialogue is so bloated it reads like a soap opera. Has anyone else revisited a classic run and been totally let down by what you used to love?

3 comments

3 Comments

parker_price1mo ago

I tried rereading Fantastic Four from Byrne's run and remembered why I stopped collecting.

adamk951mo ago

Yeah that's fair honestly. Claremont's stuff really drags once you get past the Dark Phoenix Saga and the classic stuff. Muir Island is rough, I tried rereading it last year and gave up halfway through. His characters talk way too much, like nobody shuts up for a single page.

val_williams1mo ago

Yeah, "nobody shuts up for a single page" is spot on. But I gotta push back a little - Muir Island isn't that late in his run. That's like late 1991, which is a good 16 years after he started. He wrote Uncanny X-Men for 17 years total. So there's a lot of rough stuff before and after Muir Island, but that one's pretty close to the end. The real drag for me is around the late 80s, when the plot just gets tangled up in the Brood and the space stuff.