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Chris Claremont isn't sharing his X-Men: From the Ashes pitch because he still has hopes to do it someday (and some way)
Although Marvel turned down Chris Claremont's recent X-Men relaunch pitch after the Krakoan Age, he still hopes to write it someday
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Claremont is writing the X-Men characters, but not the main X-Men books. For the past few years, he has completed a series of limited series focusing on a smaller group of characters dedicated to unseen stories from the past - specifically, past moments in his run on the Uncanny X-Men series. According to Claremont he's having fun, but there's an unrequited desire to write the main X-Men one last time.
"I always have fun with these characters. I mean, that’s the whole point: if you're not having fun, why are you writing them in the first place?" Claremont tells Popverse's Dave Buesing as part of a longer interview. "The thing is when I wrote the Fantastic Four back before the turn of the century, Stan [Lee] had been off, stopped writing the book 30 years earlier. And I wasn't hanging around the office, looking over people's shoulders, and I had no desire or intent to do anything that would hurt his feelings."
"So I was just there to have fun. I would mess up the team, but I'd put it back together again when the story was over," the writer continues. "I would love to just have a chance to fool around with the X-Men."
Back in 2023, Marvel began an overhaul of the X-Men with the announcement that Marvel's executive editor Tom Brevoort was taking over the X-Men line, and with it closing out the Krakoan era storylines in favor of a more 'back to basics' approach that was later dubbed From The Ashes. Immediately after the announcement of this shift, Claremont publicly said he pitched a plan to relaunch the X-Men with Marvel but he ultimately didn't get the job - with Brevoort later giving a public reason why.
"... I don’t know that I see a world in which he’s situated on a series at the center of the line again," wrote Brevoort. "And that’s really a reflection of how long Chris wrote the series and how much time has passed."
Here now in 2025, Claremont says this idea still might happen - but may not be the X-Men anymore. When asked about what the storyline would've been, he's furtive - and a proud freelancer.
"[My idea would have been ] a different one," Claremont says. "I mean, forgive me, I consider my ideas, well, my ideas. And, I rarely talk about them, especially if they've been passed on. Because I figure I can use them somewhere else."
Claremont did write an incidental story in the final issue of the Krakoan era in 2024's X-Men #700, and we did ask him what he would've done if he had continued writing in that era. He gave us a nuanced answer:
"I think if you're going to have all these interesting characters in the series, if you're gonna have this island, which has all sorts of fascinating aspects, why not play with them? Why not have fun with them?" says Claremont. "There are all these parts of it that I never saw played with. If, let's say, you'd started the series with the evolution in process, not saying everybody's on Krakoa. How did you get there? Are there mutants who don't, who disagree with the concept? Who wants to find their own path, or who wants to stay where they are?"
Claremont points out that decades before the Krakoan era, he created a similar mutant-centric community, back in 2002's X-Treme X-Men run.
"I mean, I created this whole city, Valle Soleada, in California. But those mutants had families, they had relationships, they had relatives who were not mutants," the writer explains. "What would it have been like for them if you've got a situation where all the other countries in the world throw out their mutants that you must go to or whatever. Basically, throw in a different twist to it. See how the audience reacts to that. Does it work? Does it not work? You should never have everything locked in the same. You should always provide variety."Join Popverse in our own little X-Mansion as we cover just about everything you need to know about the X-Men. Learn how Marvel's mighty mutants are classified by power, or why the Krakoan Age of comics is coming to an end. And once you're done with those, keep up with the characters' big screen outings via Popverse's X-men movie watch order.
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