We figured the audience would want good stories, great art, wonderful characters, people you could fall in love with that we would immediately put through hell.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of engaging storytelling and character development, even if it leads to challenging situations for the characters.
Chris Claremont's quote suggests that audiences crave compelling narratives that feature well-crafted characters and artistic expression. He recognizes that creating meaningful connections with characters often involves putting them through difficult experiences, thereby enhancing the emotional depth and richness of the story.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about character development in creative writing classes.
People try to pigeonhole comics by saying they're just for kids. So is The Odyssey. So is the Labors of Hercules, the story of Fa Mulan. The advantage of those stories over the contemporary ones is that they've had 2,000 years of editing. All the crap has been weeded out over time.
The key isn't winning -- or losing, it's making the attempt. I may never be what I ought to be, want to be -- but how will I know unless I try? Sure, it's scary, but what's the alternative? Stagnation - A safer, more terrible form of death. Not of the body, but of the spirit. An animal knows what it is, and accepts it. A man may know what he is -- but he questions. He dreams. He strives. Changes. Grows.
Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride.
X-Men has always been about finding your place in a society that doesn't want you.
My desire as a storyteller is to always catch the readers off guard; to give them something they aren't expecting, and take them in a direction that is satisfying in the here and non.
Comics deal with fundamental archetypes. We've been called the myth-makers of the modern age.
I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life.
Then I thought, Whoa. If there are no photographs, then there is no history. I'm going to get in there. I'm going to make these pictures. We need a record.
When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and skill to the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons. Charles R. Knight, most celebrated of artists in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to this day.
Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon.
You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part.
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