The Claremont Climb

As threatened, I've put together a chart demonstrating the explosion in Claremont's X-output from his first gig in 1975 to the end of 1985. I've not included X-Men and the Micronauts because it was co-written, and feels predominantly like Mantlo's work, but everything else is there.

It's a pretty phenomenal growth rate. And just about 900 pages of comics in a single year? That's around 41 regular-sized issues. That's far from unheard of these days, but I wonder how many writers were managing to offer up so large an output in the days before decompression?

Updated: Top 12 Team Tenures

Update: Now with actual order based on the numbers I'm using.  D'oh!

With the arrival of Rogue, this strikes me as an opportune time to update the longest-serving X-Men, based on the amount of time that appears to have passed.  Once again, each characters's time on the team will be given in the format (years, months, weeks, days).


=11. Polaris          (1,1,3,5)

=11. Havok          (1,1,3,5)

10. Banshee          (1,1,2,0)

9.  Wolverine        (2,0,0,6) [1]

=6. Storm             (2,0,3,0)

=6. Nightcrawler   (2,0,3,0)

=6. Colossus         (2,0,3,0)

5.  Beast               (2,6,0,6)

4.  Marvel Girl      (3,7,4,1)

3. Angel               (3,8,1,4)

2.  Iceman            (3,8,2,3)

1. Cyclops           (5,3,2,6) [2]

Sprite, it transpires, is not quite a year into her time in the mansion (by "not quite", I mean "four days off"), so she's just missed out this time.

[1] I assume here that Wolverine left the team immediately after UXM #168 so as to begin the preparations for his marriage to Mariko.

[2] Assuming Cyclops left just after returning to Earth, which seems to be what happened.

Top Twelve Team Tenures

Update: Somehow I took leave of my senses and forgot Havok and Polaris when I wrote this the first time round (in my defence, Claremont wrote that they were never "officially" X-Men by this point, but that's not particularly convincing).  I've added them in now, having assumed they both joined from the first day they started living in the mansion.

Now that's Cyclops headed off under a cloud, I think it's time for a chart of the various X-Men's tenures on the team.  Jean, Beast and Angel have all quit and returned at least once already.  In the latter cases their time on the team is simply the sum of both tours of duty.  With Jean, it's tough to tell exactly when she was and wasn't a member once she became Phoenix.  There are a lot of possible permutations here, but I'd think the most sensible assumption is that she rejoined the team upon awakening in the hospital, left it when she believed all are dead, returned again when the X-Men arrive at Muir Island, and left at the point she started trying to kill her mates.

(For the purposes of this count, we assume that the origin stories for Cyclops, Iceman, Angel and Beast all take place concurrently, each one following on directly from the last).  So, from shortest to longest, and in the notation (Y, M, W, D), we have:


=11. Polaris          (1,1,3,5)

=11. Havok           (1,1,3,5)

10. Banshee          (1,1,2,0)

=6. Storm              (1,3,0,3) 

=6. Nightcrawler  (1,3,0,3)

=6. Colossus         (1,3,0,3) 

=6. Wolverine      (1,3,0,3) 

5. Beast                (2,6,0,6)

4. Marvel Girl      (3,7,4,1)

3. Angel               (3,8,1,4)

2. Iceman             (3,8,2,3)

1. Cyclops            (4,11,2,4) 

(Incidentally, Mimic and Thunderbird were both around for about a month, Changeling reached fifteenth place with a tenure of sixteen days; the four "Deadly Genesis" X-Men managed a week apiece, and good old Sunfire managed to keep a lid on his insufferable twattishness fora  whole 48 hours).