Christopher Claremont (born November 25th 1950) is a comics writer originally born in London, though his family moved to the United States when he was three years old. He nonetheless grew up reading The Eagle thanks to a subscription bought for him by his grandmother in England, and was a fan of Dan Dare. He broke into the comics industry more or less by accident in 1969, when he received his first writing credit while employed as an editorial assistant by Marvel Comics. He had a lengthy career with the company woring on most of their major (and minor) characters and titles at one time or another, including Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, Dr Strange, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Man-Thing, Black Goliath, the US version of Marvel Team-Up and a record breaking 17 year run on X-Men, during which he notably scripted the legendary Dark Phoenix storyline drawn by John Byrne, with whom he had frequently worked on other characters including Iron Fist. Along the way, he also co-created Captain Britain for Marvel UK (he also created the Captain's sister, Betsy Braddock, who he later introduced into the X-Men as Psylocke). Following the cancellation of Captain Britain's second solo series in Britain, Claremont and artist Alan Davis incorporated the character into the American Marvel Universe in Excalibur. He has also written for a number of other American publishers including DC Comics, for whom he created Sovereign 7.