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The new X-Men, written by Chris Claremont in the late 1970s, was the biggest thing to hit comics since Spiderman in 1963, and is still unbeaten in terms of critical acclaim and explosive sales growth. And guess what? It’s full of real-time references. Coincidence?
I don’t think Claremont sat down and thought “let’s have a real time comic,” but he did decide to write stories that were relevant, up to date, and going somewhere. And look what happened! (Most of the references on this page are based on Essential X-Men volume 1, which collects Giant Size 1 and X-Men 94-119.) Real dates! Real events!
The original X-Men stories in the 1960s apparently took place in real time. See for example Iceman’s origin story at the back of issue 44 in 1968. We are expressly told that the story takes place in 1963 (the year when the X-Men comic first appeared). However, apart from that one example the real-world references were generally scarce, and sales were poor. When Claremont took over the X-Men, the real time references were greatly increased and sales exploded. I am not claiming that real time is the only thing that makes a comic sell, but there does seem to be is a correlation. Claremont took over with issue 94. Issue 98 ties the book to Christmas (it was on sale Christmas 1975) and refers to Jean’s powers "back in 1969" - that’s right, a real date! And the origin of Ororo (issue 102) says she was born in 1951, another real date! Then it refers to events "five years later" in 1956 during the Suez crisis. Another real date! These characters were tied to real events and real dates in the real world and real time. In addition, the stories feature real people and real current events from the time: I should also add that the book visited numerous real world locations in these early issues: New York, other US states, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Antarctica, Greece, the southern tip of South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and of course Kenya, the Pacific and the USSR in the first issue. And these were generally more than just names on the page, they were treated with some understanding (albeit brief) of the culture and climate of each region. The “real world” feeling was palpable. Weeks or months pass between issues
Some of the classic issues follow on without a minute’s break in between. But others have longer breaks: These references are not enough to prove a one month to one month correlation. Sometimes six months’ issues cover just a single week. But the dates and current events indicate that, long term, the comics keep pace with real time. Claremont created a strong feeling of time passing in other ways too. Issue 116 begins with the heroes starting a dramatic mountain climb at dawn, "it took effort to remember that only day before..." The feeling of time passing is intense. Another story begins with the Beast struggling through the endless snow. Another begins with the team trying to navigate a vast ocean in a storm. Time does not pass imperceptibly, you feel every moment! Claremont showed great respect for history and continuity, so the reader could feel that the stories were going places. Themes are built up over many months, even years. Footnotes frequently refer to earlier issues and other books. E.g. issue 119 refers to both of Moses Magnum's previous apparent deaths, and government agencies take interest. These events are remembered! They have significance! Past stories are not just quietly forgotten as in modern comics. Heroes who grow older and move onThe classic X-Men was characterized by frequent permanent changes. People say they don’t want their favorite characters to change, but sales say otherwise. Note that these are permanent changes (unlike the later cashing-in such as bringing back Phoenix), and substantial changes (unlike, say, a new costume for Spiderman): Just look at what changed: Giant Size 1 saw a completely new team. The next issue (X-Men 96, p4) says that the old X-Men were once children but are now adults and are leaving home. Sure, heroes often leave teams then come back, but is made clear that these leavings are (more or less) permanent, and are due to the natural passing of time. Soon after a member died (Thunderbird) and another was changed forever (Jean Grey) and a couple of years later she too was dead. Heroes with grey hair and wheelchairsAre these heroes all young? No. Banshee comments on his graying hair. Professor X is no spring chicken. And how old is Wolverine exactly? Around a hundred years old, last time I heard. But they don’t look old, you say? of course not! In real time, superheroes never look old. Superhero work is inherently dangerous so anyone who slowed down would be killed in the normal course of battles. Indeed, Banshee often comments that he is surprised that he has survived so long, despite his graying hair. But what about heroes who were not killed? Would they become wheelchair bound and retire? Just read issue 117. Xavier looks back over his past life, and reflects that his “children” have all grown up and left home, and some of them are dead. He is now confined to a wheelchair, and decides to retire and move away. Is that dull? Read the issue and see for yourself. Superheroes have access to the latest technology so would look young even when they were old. And they do not grow less active or less interesting as they grow older. They stay active and in touch with the latest events or they die. And when they die it is all the more heart-rending and unmissable because we know it is permanent. So all the fears about aging heroes are completely unfounded Grant Morrison and the X-MenWas Claremont a fluke? A great writer who just happened to use real time elements? Or do all great writers tend to want real time? Let’s look at another great X-Men writer, Grant Morrison, and see his approach. Modern writers are simply not allowed to use real time, so what do great writers do? They change the rules to get as much real time as they can. Of course they don’t call it real time, they call it “permanent change” and “permanent character development” but it is the same thing. This commentary is from Adam Cadre’s site “A problem that has always plagued superhero comics is that of stasis. Though there are some amazing writers on a few of the titles, these are still commercial properties they're writing. In the early days, characters' status quo changed enormously over time: characters grew up (Spider-Man went through high school almost in real time and then went off to college, for instance), their relationships with one another changed, as did their looks and powers... but then that all stopped. Marvel's core business is no longer comics; it's maintaining a stable of properties that can be turned into movies and toys. These properties have to stay recognizable. So if a writer dares to allow characters to grow, to overcome their problems — the hard-luck college guy ends a string of bad relationships and is happily married, the android develops human emotion, the villain goes straight, a character dies a noble death — someone else gets brought in and it's "back to basics!" Divorce the wife! Wipe the robot's memory! Make the reformed guy go bad again! Resurrect the dead chick! “What Morrison did was say, hell with it — whatever happened before, whatever happens after, I'm writing a book. His entire run, though divided into arcs, is one long story, with a beginning, a middle, and a beautiful Joycean ending.” Modern writers are forbidden from making permanent changes, so Morrison just side stepped the whole problem and made his own real time bubble. But the sad thing is that later writers will have to ignore it or change it back. Without real time we can have no long term narrative. Without real time, any attempt at a living narrative is quickly pulled back and clubbed to death. GeNextThe pressure for real time won’t go away. Marvel.com recently ran a web poll for fans to choose “Claremont’s Next X-Men Project.” Guess what idea won? That’s right, a real time series to see what happens when the heroes grow up. Clearly the fans want real time. These quotes are from various news sites: Claremont said the premise, "is what if the X-Men aged in real time." Storm, he pointed out, "was born in 1950, so you do the math." In this alternate reality the original X-Men would now be in their late 40s or 50s, the "new" X-Men (dating from Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975), would be in their 40s, the New Mutants in their 30s, and even the members of Generation X would now be "pushing 30”. The series takes place in 2006 and follows continuity up through X-Men Vol. 2 #3. People believe Magneto is dead, but in truth he decided he was getting too old for this s--- and disappeared to live in peace. "The '90s never happened," Claremont said, referring to the continuity break and perhaps the dark period full of bad X-Men stories.“ Ironically, the series has been held up in production because of real time concerns - Claremont is getting older and his own health means he has to slow down. Another irony is that, according to some less charitable reviewers, Claremont has himself been superseded by the new generation of writers. You can’t fight real time! We can pretend it does not exist, but it will always come back to bite us. Comments from readers of this siteJason Powell kindly provided an update on what happened since the 1970s. We can see the decline in real time references and the conscious sliding back into Marvel Time, and some curious anomalies. Marvel Time and Real Time just do not sit happily together! One thing that did occur to me immediately was Jean Grey's gravestone in Uncanny X-Men 138, listing Jean's birth and death years as 1956 and 1980, respectively. On the one hand, this temporal reference bolsters your argument, in that it is another very specific timestamp and it places Jean as 24 years old when she died (obviously no longer a "teenager" as she was when she first joined the X-Men). On the other hand, it also shows that Claremont and Byrne were very explicitly making use of Marvel's "sliding timeline," by placing her birth year as 1956. Because if you follow that, no way did X-Men #1 take place in 1963, the year it came out. (Byrne has said that had he stayed on the book and drawn scenes that featured the tombstone "on camera," he would have bumped the years up appropriately -- i.e., a comicbook published in 1983 and featuring the tombstone would have said "1959-1983.") It's worth noting, however, that after Byrne left, Claremont froze Jean's death at having occurred in 1980. This stayed the case all the way up to at least 1983, when Claremont introduced a character named Madelyne Prior and hinted that she was Jean reincarnated. One of the clues dropped in the books around this time (circa Uncanny X-Men 171-176) was that Madeline had been in a fiery plane crash on a specific date "in 1980", with Scott saying, "That's the exact day that Jean died!" I can't remember the specific date, but one is mentioned. Other things of note: In Days of Future Past (Uncanny X-Men 141-142, published in Oct. and Nov. of 1980, respectively), the stories are, I believe, specifically stated as taking place over the days Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, in 1980. This is the story, of course, that presents a possible future for the X-Men in the year -- I think 2013? Of particular interest for your purposes is that one character from the future goes back in time to what was then the present (Oct. 1980) and tells the characters what's coming down the pike. One thing she says, I believe, very specifically, is that in 1984, the "Mutant Registration Act" was passed. It's one of many specific date references made. Anyway, in the ACTUAL year 1984, Claremont did a story in which the Mutant Registration Act WAS introduced. And Claremont was VERY clear about the fact that this was supposed to resonate with Days of Future Past (i.e., not only is this happening, it's happening on the EXACT SAME TIMETABLE that was delineated earlier). Claremont even, in that very story, makes a point of reminding us what year it is, with one character speaking a line of dialogue that goes something like, "This is the year for government paranoia -- thank you, George Orwell." (This all goes down circa Uncanny X-Men 181-184. I'd suggest tracking down those issues in one form or another, just to make sure my memory isn't faulty here.) One final thing of interest ... by 1987, Claremont seems to have changed his approach to the whole "real time" idea. When they started reprinting Claremont's early late-'70s/early-'80s work around this time, under the "Classic X-Men" banner, there were rewrites in every issue (done by Claremont himself). One of the things that Claremont and editor Ann Nocenti did was knock out some of those specific temporal references. The "back in 1969" word balloon when Jean fights the Sentinels was changed to read "years ago," and the Suez stuff in Storm's origin was redrawn, with the dialogue and narration genericized to not specify the conflict. Also, new stories were published in "Classic X-Men" that were meant to be taking place contemporaneously with those early Cockrum issues, but which made references to present day situations. (i.e., a story that purportedly takes place contemporaneously with an issue published in 1979 refers to "President Reagan and his precious Contras." This is in Classic X-Men #29, if you're curious.) Very interesting stuff. Thanks, Mr. P!
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