John Manard · CC BY-SA 4.0

Claremont spent sixteen years writing Uncanny X-Men, longer than any other writer in the title's history, turning an underachieving comic into the best-selling series in the industry by developing complex female characters and literary themes rarely seen in superhero stories. He co-created dozens of X-Men characters, developed Wolverine, and wrote "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past" with artist John Byrne; the 1991 X-Men #1 he wrote with Jim Lee remains, per Guinness World Records, the best-selling comic book ever printed. He and Byrne entered the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2015.