Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and fifty-seventh installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Scott Lobdell got the gig on Uncanny X-Men because the more established writers at Marvel were too frightened to follow Chris Claremont's run on the book.
STATUS:
False
Reader Koen C. wrote in to ask, "I have a legend I'd like you to investigate. I once saw a dvd with a documentary on the X-Men. One of the interviewed writers was Scott Lobdell, who seemed to imply that he became Chris Claremont's successor on Uncanny X-men, because all other writers of note at the time didn't want the job, because they were afraid to ruin Claremont's X-Men. It is implied that Marvel hired Lobdell, so that if he botched the job a more accomplished writer would take over to save the day. This ultimately didn't happen because Lobdell did a fine job."
You could easily see that theory making a lot of sense, Koen, but that's not how it went down.
The big issue with the X-Men is that Jim Lee joined the book as the artist and proceeded to become one of, if not THE, most popular artist in the entire comic book industry. Soon, he was co-plotting the book with Chris Claremont, something that Claremont was always happy to do with his artists if they were up to it...
The problem was that Lee and Claremont had very different ideas of where to go with the title moving forward. One of the big divides was that Lee wanted to revisit some of the classic X-Men characters and villains that he had never gotten a chance to draw before and Claremont wanted to do different things with the book. Neither was wrong or right, and there was certainly no animosity between the two guys, but there was a clear roadblock here. Editor Bob Harras "broke" the roadblock by siding with Lee. He decided that Lee would be in charge of the direction of the series now, and to signify this, they would launch a SECOND X-Men ongoing series that Lee would plot and pencil.
Lee plotted both X-Men books with Whilce Portacio, who became the artist on Uncanny X-Men with Lee launching the new series.
Claremont, though, was allowed to write the opening arc of the new series, so he would at least get a huge royalty check as a farewell "gift" (quotes because it's obviously not a gift if you do the work)...
Claremont left after X-Men #3...
So Lee was now in charge for X-Men #4...
but Lee wasn't comfortable yet with SCRIPTING the book. He wanted another writer to do the dialogue for the book.
In stepped another artist turned writer, John Byrne, who agreed to script both titles...
He had actually started on Uncanny X-Men before Claremont's X-Men stint ended...
The problem was that the pages from Lee and Portacio (Lee was doing more and more of the plotting by himself) were coming in later and later and Byrne had very little time to turn them around. Eventually, the pages on X-Men #8 were so late that Bob Harras felt he needed someone else to step in and do an emergency scripting job. He offered the rush job to Fabian Nicieza, who had filled in for Claremont on the last storyline Claremont wrote in Uncanny X-Men ("The Muir Isle Saga"), but Nicieza recommended Scott Lobdell, instead.
Lobdell turned it around in time and therefore took over from Byrne as the scripter on the two books...
The next problem, of course, was that Lee and Portacio were in the process of leaving Marvel to launch Image Comics, so suddenly Uncanny X-Men needed a new writer and since Lobdell was already scripting it, he took over full writing duties...
Nicieza was doing a fill-in arc on X-Men with #12...
so he was assigned that book, as well, at least through the next crossover, as Marvel needed to keep the trains running on time in the wake of the departure of the main guy in charge of their X-Men comics.
The X-Cutioner's Song proved to be a big hit (with Harras direction much of the story) and so at that point, why mess with success? So Lobdell and Nicieza were now on the books permanently.
So no, it had nothing to do with writers being too scared to take the book over from Claremont.
Thanks to Koen for the question!
Check out some other legends from Legends Revealed:
2. Did Johnny Carson Really Accidentally Cause a Toilet Paper Shortage in 1973?
4. Does Fred Astaire’s Will Really Stipulate That He Can Never Be Depicted in a Film?
Check back soon for part 2 of this installment's legends!
And remember, if you have a legend that you're curious about, drop me a line at either brianc@cbr.com or cronb01@aol.com!