The fact that it featured Apocalypse when he was still cool, and not a servant of the Celestials, works in its favor as well. It’s this emotional core, the depths that a parent will go to save their child, which provides the story with such a strong sense of purpose. In it, he explores Scott Summers, not as a superhero or a member of a persecuted minority, but as a father. Despite only serving as scripter, Claremont proved a boon to this story for his soapy and dramatic style of writing. Synopsis: Although the story originated as an editorial mandate for X-Factor to ditch Cyclops’ infant son so that they could rejoin the X-Men, “Endgame” is a story that succeeds more than it has any right to. (Caution: 16 years’ worth of X-Men spoilers abide.) Although some of these stories exist outside of the Uncanny X-Men title, they were all written between 1975-1991 and feature the X-Men as the main heroes, so they still count as X-Men stories. Here is a list of the 15 best stories that Claremont wrote during his initial 16 year run…because none of his stories during his later tenures were all that good. What makes his run so impressive, quite frankly, is that it was so great for the vast majority of the time. Basically, the only things that he didn’t create were the original X-Men and Professor Xavier, Magneto, and the Sentinels. Sinister, Shadowcat, the Reavers, Dark Phoenix, Gambit, Mystique, the Morlocks, the fucking Shi’ar, these were all created by Claremont during his initial run. Easily the most ambitious, and arguably the most influential and important run in all of North American comics, Claremont’s tenure as writer of Uncanny X-Men rivaled Stan Lee’s run on Fantastic Four in terms of sheer creative output, while also grounding the franchise in a concrete sense of realism that was unparalleled at the time.

The language is always the same “Sales on (insert comic book title) rivaled Uncanny X-Men”. During this run, which lasted from 1975-1991, Claremont took what was originally considered a second-rate Fantastic Four knock-off and turned it into the gold standard to which all other series were measured against.Įven when other seminal runs were lauded with acclaim, be it Frank Miller’s Daredevil, John Byrne’s Fantastic Four, or Todd Macfarlane’s Amazing Spider-Man, they were all compared against Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men. He took a comic book that had been cancelled for five years, made it a monthly series, and then turned it into the highest selling comic book on the market. Like some mad alchemist, frenetically creating mystery elixirs and potions in search of forming something out of nothing, Chris Claremont singlehandedly forged the modern day X-Men universe from almost nothing at all during his initial 16 year run as writer on Uncanny X-Men.

X-Men (1991-2001) #1 by Chris Claremont