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.
But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.
I am interested in the physicality of light itself.
I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.
To me, art is the capacity to experience one's innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable._x000D_ The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it's going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it's more likely to happen.
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.