An X-MEN WEEK special! An EXCLUSIVE clip from Patrick Meaney’s documentary film about the master of mutants!
With “X-Men: Days of Future Past” out this week, we asked Meaney, who’s becoming the Ken Burns of the comics world, to provide us the segment of his doc — “Comics in Focus: Chris Claremont’s X-Men” — that deals with the famed storyline in the comics. Check it out!
Says Patrick: “X-Men exists at an interesting intersection of character-based storytelling and the needs of a Marvel comic, particularly one from the ’70s. There was a lot of heart and emotion in the stories, but also the obligatory fights and cosmic villains. I wondered what the priority of the writer was. Was the character stuff a happy accident, what was his true focus? So, it was pretty great to hear that Chris valued the lives of his characters more than any action or spectacle in his stories. I always felt that what made the X-Men so special was watching this gradual development of the whole team, and hearing him talk, it was clear that’s what interested him too.
“He was working at a time when every comic needed a fight each issue, and sometimes those fights were incorporated better than others, but on the whole, the things that Chris wanted to express with his stories were what I took away as a reader, and that made it a joy to talk to him.”
The film is now available on Vimeo on Demand, where you can rent or buy a download of the film itself. It’s also available at the Sequart store, where you can buy a DVD or download of the film. The DVD contains more than 80 minutes of additional footage, and you can buy download packages with up to three hours of additional material. Dig it!
