Chris Claremont Teases More X-Men Stories for the Future

You can't keep veteran comic book writer Chris Claremont away from the X-Men for too long. Claremont, who wrote the longest and most critically-acclaimed run on the series (from 1975 until 1991), recently returned to Marvel for some work on the publisher's 80th anniversary proceedings. Now, apparently, he has plans to make more X-Men comics in the near future. With an already legendary career (Claremont wrote classic stories like "Days of Future Past" and "The Dark Phoenix Saga" during his time on the X-titles) and a documentary about his first go-'round with the X-Men, anytime Claremont decides to revisit Marvel's merry mutants, it's big news.

Specifically, it seems to be The New Mutants that Claremont wants to revisit again. He's about to release his first new New Mutants work with artist Bill Sienkiewicz in decades, and says that he would have liked even more space to explore the characters again.

"The irony is that Bill's and my first reaction when we got the invitation...was to immediately ask for more pages," Claremont told Marvel.com. "From my perspective as a writer, and from Bill's perspective as an artist, we could have slammed this out of the park two or three different ways, but for me, if you have a visual talent like Bill and a serious concept such as the New Mutants, I would say you hit for the fences."

The writer reflected on the legacy of his work with Sienkiewicz on New Mutants.

"When you're working with a visual creator as gifted and as outrageous as Bill is, it's hard to pick a specific moment and say 'That's it,'" Claremont said. "Because I can guarantee that the next panel, the next page will come up with a moment that's even more enticing but in a totally different direction. The Demon Bear trilogy was spectacular and it was marvelous, but from my perspective, it kicked off another year's worth of stories. It enticed Bill, and he had so much fun doing it, and I had so much fun doing it with him, that neither of us wanted it to end. So we just kept going. And in really weird directions! Who would have expected [us] to end up doing a chunk of issues with Cloak and Dagger? That in turn led to Charlie and Dani telepathically exploring Legion's head."

New Mutants: War Children #1 written by Chris Claremont with art by Bill Sienkiewicz, is on sale now online and at your local comic shop.