Quotes from Chris Claremont

I was not creating icons when I wrote the 'The X-Men' and the 'The New Mutants.' I was creating people.

The most basic excitement was the opportunity to work with Dave Cockrum. He was an artist I'd admired for years and our imaginations were ridiculously simpatico.

When you're given the assignment to write, for example, 'Spider-Man,' the concept, characters and environment are all laid out for you. Everything is pre-established, and your sole responsibility as a creator is to craft an exciting, entertaining, hopefully original adventure, to add layers and colors to a canon that already exists.

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate, and infinitely better looking.

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.

I think it would be cool if Hugh Jackman showed up in 'Avengers: Infinity War,' even if just for a tryout.

The first rule is you have to create a reality that makes the reader want to come back and see what happens next. The way I tried to do it, I'd create characters that the reader could instantly recognize, and hopefully bond with, and put them through situations that keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

The interesting thing I realized writing the 'X-Men' is I always had a sense of where I was going.

No matter how good of a ball player you were, you can't keep going forever. You're not going to be able to hit .300 when you're 60. You still look around and you think, 'This is weird. Have I missed something?' Well, yeah, you have.

I think there's a yin and a yang to everything.

In L.A., you have to drive; in New York, you can do it on foot. The variety, the potential, of people is in your face. Like any good creator, you want to steal everything.

My problem with both iterations of 'Dark Phoenix' onscreen, the original by Brett Ratner and the newer version by Simon Kinberg, is, I don't think you can do it effectively in 90 minutes.

For me, one of the things that makes the X-Men so crucial is they are relatively small in number but they have the potential to have a tremendous impact on the society around them.

I guess you go back to the old writer's adage that when they do your stuff in Hollywood, you smile sweetly upon your credit - if there is one - and enjoy the show.

I will say there is only one caveat as far as 'Logan' goes: I got to the end and went, 'OK, what happens next?' To me, as an audience member, damn. If you can get to the end of the third act of a trilogy and your reaction is 'what the hell happens next,' someone did their job incredibly.

It is very hard for me to think of Logan without thinking of Hugh Jackman and I have no idea who out there could take over from him if they moved ahead. It's like thinking of anyone other than Harrison Ford playing Han Solo or Indiana Jones.

When you're spending $100-plus million dollars, you need to give the audience what they want.

The one immutable reality of film is, no matter how wonderful the actors and the performances are, every year the actors age and grow older - Sophie Turner's Jean Grey was wonderful!

I'd rather have Ben Affleck feeling something than twenty minutes of punching CGI Zod. You want moments that resonate with your audience.

Comics deal with fundamental archetypes. We've been called the myth-makers of the modern age.

The success of 'X-Men' paved the way, I have to presume, for Sony to make Sam Raimi's 'Spider-Man.'

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 think the biggest challenge is going to be finding a place that sells comics. Ideally, you want someone to come out of a movie theater, look across the street, see a newsstand, walk in and find a copy of the 'X-Men' sitting there. But that's not what's going to happen.

Look at 'Avatar:' the foreign ticket sales were over twice the domestic returns. The mind boggles at those kinds of numbers, but that's what you get when you effectively reach out to a global audience. If that kind of thing came to comics, it would undoubtedly change how people perceive the mainstream industry.