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[GHERU]

Levitz on LoSH, Roy Thomas on All-Star Squadron, Wolfman on New Teen Titans, Simonson on Thor ... need more? On goings have for decades completed plotlines and not hurt transitions in the past. As I said, a set up is one thing, but when a writer goes for 15 years on a title and leaves stuff laying about for years is just lazy. It's soap opera writing.

Ok then
what did he leave lying around?

[Cat-Scratch]

Ok then
what did he leave lying around?

He left, off the top of my head..

Nightcrawler and Mystique's relationship.
The cop and nurse in New Mutants.

The rest was either more minor or I've forgotten them over the years but those are tow that have stuck out for me. Anything else was lost in his dragged out plots and either dealt with off handedly or by someone else later.

[GHERU]

He left, off the top of my head..

Nightcrawler and Mystique's relationship.
The cop and nurse in New Mutants.

The rest was either more minor or I've forgotten them over the years but those are tow that have stuck out for me. Anything else was lost in his dragged out plots and either dealt with off handedly or by someone else later.

never read his NM so don't know that
as to Nightcrawler and Mystique's relationship, maybe its just me, but I hate when every question is answered (I hate knowing Rouge and Domino's names) and with Nightcrawler and Mystique I enjoyed the mystery and the different takes (Draco not withstanding). Who do you blame for not knowing Wolverine's origin till 5 years ago (ish)?

I am not collecting for a quick payoff, or even one 12 months down the line, I want my 20+ years of X-men comics to tell me one big story, and sometimes that means picking something up from 10 years ago, much like in real life things that happened a while back come back and matter.

Infinite stories should, IMO, have loose plot threads, because withouth them the stories are a collection of stories rather than one big one

as to

Levitz on LoSH, Roy Thomas on All-Star Squadron, Wolfman on New Teen Titans, Simonson on Thor ... need more? On goings have for decades completed plotlines and not hurt transitions in the past. As I said, a set up is one thing, but when a writer goes for 15 years on a title and leaves stuff laying about for years is just lazy. It's soap opera writing.

the only one I am familiar with is Simonson (up to Vissionaries #3) but if you try to tell me that his run was close ended I would argue that he often refers to stories that happened before his run, plots left open, and his run could not have existed with out them. I do not know how ends yet, but I would bet money that some of his threads survived his run.

[Cat-Scratch]

never read his NM so don't know that
as to Nightcrawler and Mystique's relationship, maybe its just me, but I hate when every question is answered (I hate knowing Rouge and Domino's names) and with Nightcrawler and Mystique I enjoyed the mystery and the different takes (Draco not withstanding). Who do you blame for not knowing Wolverine's origin till 5 years ago (ish)?

I am not collecting for a quick payoff, or even one 12 months down the line, I want my 20+ years of X-men comics to tell me one big story, and sometimes that means picking something up from 10 years ago, much like in real life things that happened a while back come back and matter.

Infinite stories should, IMO, have loose plot threads, because with out them the stories are a collection of stories rather than one big one

as to

New Mutants by Claremont, I highly recommend that to you if you like his work or X-Men or some of the cream of the crop of 80s comics that came out of DC or Marvel. I think it's his best work outside of Uncanny X-Men with Byrne. I found it at times to be better then his Uncanny X-Men being published at the same time.

Addition: You'll find that there, Claremont shows he can writer male characters just as well as female and develop them. It was one of the first series to be more character driven with it's stories then plot, which is in my thoughts where Claremont's strengths lay more.

Yes, well that's where concepts come in. I'm the same way as you, but the thing is, there's a set up for questions not to be answered and not to be. With Nightcrawler and Mystique's relationship, it was posed more as a concept but because of the way they did, it went into being a plot thread. If Claremont had ignored it and moved on or made an off the cuff dialog moment of Mystique saying that she was messing with his head, it would have worked. But the thing is, he didn't and keep teasing at it from time to time, thus making it into a plot thread and one that from the get go, fans wanted solved. He never bothered. This is where Claremont fails for me and shows that he's a dialoger and not so much of a plotter. He mis-stepped and made it into a plot. He started doing that a good deal with taking what could otherwise be a concept for a character or a character's aspect but would present too much of it. He'd also over focus on characters, like that cop and nurse in New Mutants, resulting in a plot thread being left since he never bothered to attempt closure. To me that's lazy writing. Wolverine having no origin was a better state for the character then not. Just a preference. Like Nighcrawler it had been so long that it was more a detriment then and addition to the character. With Claremont and Nightcrawler, he fumbled it and should have created a closure with some sort of answer. He never did so...

I collect comics, but to read them and enjoy them, not to literal collect them. Pay-off has nothing to do with it, I want a complete story that at best makes some sense and closure. Much like Sandman Mystery Theatre, each plot had closure with the plot threads being dealt with, but an over all theme, describable as a plot as well was achieved and still had closure when the series was ended due to low sales. The over all concepts - Wessley deals with his demons, he and Diane get together and grow as a couple plus we see a different take on the start of mystery men in DC Comics.
Any title that lasts 20+ years has an over all plot to tell, it's the story of the character(s). Claremont was not pulling a Dave Sim and plotting out everything to be tied together as it should be within 20 years. There was no end point like that. He was just being lazy or ignorant of those plot threads he created. Same with many writers to day. Also, this is not real life, if it was, nearly all of them should be dead. This is paid for fiction and as such, I the reader, as any reader, deserves to get the whole story and not fragments. Revisiting old plots or concepts and adding to them, playing with them is one thing. But if they have to be resolved... poor lazy writing.

We differ in what a good story is. If you like soap operas you've got what you want. A bunch of plots that'll get dumped when the writer can't complete them or gets an urge to do some other plot and forget about the one already in progress. Meanwhile, you always got that sort as each and every series was the story of the characters, not the plots.

the only one I am familiar with is Simonson (up to Vissionaries #3) but if you try to tell me that his run was close ended I would argue that he often refers to stories that happened before his run, plots left open, and his run could not have existed with out them. I do not know how ends yet, but I would bet money that some of his threads survived his run.

He referred to a few at the beginning and little else, He focused on bringing in his Beta Ray Bill story, the concepts connected and finishing them. He didn't leave anything dangling. Referring to completed plots is not finishing them. Also, note the difference between finishing a plot and using a concept, such as Norse mythos and Ragnarok (a tremendously over used one in Thor comics). As for the concept here... If not for Len Wein, John Byrne, Dave Cockrum, Neal Adams, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Larry Leiber and others, Claremont would have had nothing to work with. It's the concepts and working with completed plots that was happening, not leaving them for someone else to finish. Plot threads and concepts, two different beasts, often mistaken for the same. What differs them? Presentation. Claremont, I found tended to over present a concept and create a plot thread more then not. Now for example of him not doing that, Gambit. He never really gave us anymore then what we saw in the earliest issue. Others did the rest, not him. He gave us a Cajun acrobatic thief with mutant powers hanging around with Storm. Nothing more, nothing less. Others ran with to try to flesh him out more.

Also, some times writers are asked when they know they're leaving to leave the odd plot thread open for the new writers to play with. Note that... Claremont was not leaving X-Men, so... (But New Mutants was another deal)

By the way, try to enjoy the ThunderFrog stuff.

[Cat-Scratch]

Could someone get Jude a cold towel and some water? I think my New Mutants thoughts in the last post may have caused him to faint.