Chris Claremont

In terms of the 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' movie, Bryan Singer has been a part of the X-Men family from the first movie. He knows about the comics canon and how it relates to his work as a filmmaker. He's more well versed in the canon than most, as are the people that are working with him.

The one thing I have never been comfortable with in the modern presentation of character - and it may have changed, this is some years ago - is their total isolation from the rest of the world. It's all about superheroes interacting with superheroes. There's no normal life. No normal people.

The advantage of being the creator of the character is I know them better than anybody, I like to think. But the reality one has to deal with in a serial collaborative medium like comics is that you're not the only one who writes the character.

The first challenge that every writer or creator of material faces is getting through the crowd so that the person you're trying to sell it to hears the pitch and is able to respond to it.

My view of Magneto is that he's the terrorist who might someday evolve into a statesman.

If you're going to create a character, the tools you use to make that character 'real' are the lives you see around you. The people you listen to on the street. The emotions you see on faces and bodies while you're sitting... in a Starbucks, watching the world go by.

I always had a sense of where I was going with 'Dark Phoenix.' Jean had the greatest power imaginable... and, how's she going to deal with that?

The weird thing for me is I'm sitting there in the '80s writing about the Mutant Control Act and here we are in the second decade of the 21st century with the Patriot Act, listening to presidential candidates talk about building walls to keep people out: who's acceptable and who isn't. It's very creepy.

I'd love to do writing for Hollywood.

The wonder, especially about the 'New Mutants' is, they're all kids. They're all growing. They're changing, literally, from page to page in terms of character and approach, past, present, and future. As a writer, that's the most delicious thing to play with.

I want to talk about what I'm doing now... I'm not interested in what I've done, I'm interested in what I'm about to do.

The more stories I told, the more I found I wanted to tell. There was always something left unsaid. I got hooked by my own impulse of 'Well, what's gonna happen next?'

The key thing if you're a writer is to visualize the scene and convey it to the penciller and turn the penciller loose.

I was an actor in New York, dude.

One of the fun things in the old days about writing with Frank Miller was that every issue of 'Daredevil' was a challenge to every issue of 'X-Men.'

Every significant book at Marvel had its key antagonist. 'The Fantastic Four' had Doctor Doom; 'Spider-Man' had Doc Ock, among others; Thor had Loki, if not Surtur. Without Magneto, the X-Men had nobody.

I'm contractually not allowed to work in comics in the United States other than for Marvel.

I never talk about work in progress because once I talk about it I don't do it anymore.

All things are possible, especially in the realm of superheroes.

One of the seminal moments I remember as a young punk is, when Roy Thomas was doing an editorial read-through of a book before it went to press, and being so gob-smacked by it, he just canceled it right there.