Is Exiles officially dead, or do you still have hope for this book?

Exiles has been dead ever since they discovered the Panoptichron.

 

I think Bedard got some good stories out of the Panoptichron. He did lose his way a bit from the central premise of the book, which was always strong and didn't need changing.

For me, Exiles died with Morph. **** Proteus, looking and sounding like Morph is not enough. That they would even do that, given how much the series had ultimately held the characters paramount, and somehow think it's perfectly okay just ruined the whole Exiles experience for me.

If the real Morph came back and someone other than Claremont were writing, I'd give Exiles another chance. But now? Nah, it's dead to me.

 

The books lives on, it's just printed in an alternate dimension.

 

An alternate dimension of suckage.

 

Bring back Mimic, then we'll see.

 

As long as Clairemont is writing it, I don't want anything to do with it.

 

D to the itto. Shame to miss Grummett's art, but we do what we must. Also, Grummet gets some points taken off for his oddly male-model-esque redesign of AoA Sabretooth. A cut-off black shirt and tight-ass jeans with a feathered hairdo? For real?

 

I used to really enjoy Exiles, I've read it since issue #26 and I always found it to be a light 'fun' read. I always appreciated that it was essentially a 'What If' 'Sliders' hybrid, but it wasn't bogged down in continuity, it didn't suffer from retcons or the big summer events and you could pick it up and without the need for too much explanation get the gist of the storyline i.e. world in peril, difficult decision, fight scene, world saved.

Until Claremont.

It has become one of the most turgid comics I read.

Obviously the possible storylines are endless and with a variety of characters and scenarios to play with it must have been a writers playground. In essence anything could happen. How Claremont has taken that and made it so woeful is beyond me.

I agree with the point made by Corp about Morph. That sucked monkey testicles and ruined the character for me. But the writing now is terrible. Issue #100 of 'Old Exiles' was so confusing and disjointed I had to check that I hadn't missed the few previous issues. And these new characters are just 'yawn'.

I won't be buying 'New Exiles' or anything that Claremont touches again.

 

Chris Claremont's style for writing for the last 10-15 years seems to consist of:

Sit down and write 10 or more unrelated characters and plotlines...

Decide on how to judiciously spread them out over the next couple of years...

Decide which ones should be introduced via sub-plots...

And then cram it all into one disjointed issue.

If there's anyone who needs an editor at Marvel more than Bendis, it is certainly Chris Claremont.

 

He's too respected by his peers, though. They grew up on his stories. Thus, they're blinded to the fact that he hasn't written a good story in years and they keep giving him work.

 

Claremont doesn't need an editor, he needs to become the editor. Seriously, how great would that be?

 

Um...

 

Uh...not great?

 

Oh, you people suck. Claremont still has some great stories in him, he just can't write them any more.

 

Because they're non-existent?

 

Because his writing isn't up to par any more. He still has some good concepts in them though. It's the execution that is lacking.

 

I'll give it a shot, but I've been wary of the change for a while. I just hope they bring the three that just left back into the fold sometime soon. The self-narrating Rogue and young Shadowcat don't do it for me (in general, neither does Sage).

 

What concept of his is worth exploring?

 

Although widely criticized, I really do think the concepts/stories he put forth during his return to the X-Men titles were pretty good. Similarly, his stories for X-Treme X-Men were nice classic X-Men tales. He also had a good thing going for a bit with his second return to Uncanny X-Men, but sadly, his writing just wasn't up to par. I'd love to see him fulfil some kind of editorial position though, considering his experience in and knowledge of the X-Men universe.

 

His favoritism among certain characters is annoying. He'll shoehorn characters like Kitty, Sage and/or Psylocke into a random story for a random reason. It gets old.

 

I can't disagree with that, which is why Claremont needs to be tempered by others. As an editor, he doesn't exercise full control over the writers, but can still deliver his stories.

 

What do you mean, the Exiles didn't find any bugs, there was no mention of the crystal palace...the Timebroker is still an unknown.

Right?
Right?

 

I think you're a little confused. As an editor, it would be his job to stifle the ideas of others, while mandating his own crazy story ideas on the poor fool who has to write under him.

 

Maybe back in the old days, but an editor's job now is to sit down, shut up, and let the hot shot writer do whatever he wants.