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LIANE HANSEN, Host: Joining us now is a man who made National Public Radio cool back in 1988. At the time, Chris Claremont [sp] was the featured writer for the Marvel Comic Books series The Uncanny X-Men. NPR on- and off-air personalities were featured in the story `Go Tell the Spartans.' Claremont spent 17 years writing sagas for Marvel's stable of mutants, during which time X-Men became the best-selling comic in the Western hemisphere. Claremont left Marvel in 1991. Today he is the owner and creator of the D.C. Comic Books series Sovereign Seven, and he's the author of several novels. The latest is a collaborative effort with filmmaker George Lucas. It's called Shadow Moon and Chris Claremont joins us from New York.
[interviewing] Hi, Chris.
CHRIS CLAREMONT, Author, `Shadow Moon': Hi, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN: I have issue 226 of The Uncanny X-Men - Fall of the Mutant in front of me and I suppose it was only righteous, right, that a reporter named Conan got into a Marvel comic?
CHRIS CLAREMONT: Well, with his- with his penchant for walking into dangerous situations and coming out unscathed, where- where better?
LIANE HANSEN: Yeah, but this- it's proof that this is pure fantasy, I think, that not only does NPR have a car but Neal Conan is driving it [laughs].
CHRIS CLAREMONT: Well, but, on the other hand he's backed up by Manoli Wetherell, so how much danger could he have really been in?
LIANE HANSEN: That's right, our crack New York engineer extraordinaire Manoli Wetherell, also a character. I'll tell you, this reference in the X-Men means a lot more to 14-year-olds than anything else we could do at NPR, and a 14-year-old that I know, who is a- an avid reader of the comics that you have written, particularly X-Men, wanted me to ask you how did you keep all the mutants straight?
CHRIS CLAREMONT: It's as much as asking how Pa Walton how he kept all the kids straight. I mean, they just- they were- they were the family. It- it was a natural thing.
LIANE HANSEN: And you created stories for them, actions for them, and created their- a lot of their universe.
CHRIS CLAREMONT: I actually thought of it more...