Howard Chaykin was the head writer for the first season of Mutant X and the first episode of season two, "Past as Prologue." According to Tribune Entertainment's executive producer, Seth Howard, Chaykin left Mutant X as season two was being produced, due to "creative differences". Peter Mohan then took over as the head writer of the second and third seasons.
From Seth Howard's Slipstream post in 8/02:
This is a really sensitive subject (as are all partings) as Howard was/is my comic book idol, friend, and I respect him so very much. As with many series (it happens all the time guys and gals), changes need to be made. Howard and Mutant X parted ways during the shooting of the third episode and a new head writer was brought on. It was a decision made by Fireworks & Tribune and it was a difficult one at that. Howard is actively persuing numerous new projects and will continue to succeed in everything that he does. The man is quite brilliant and I hope to work with him in the future. That's all I will say on the subject.
From Howard Chaykin's March 2006 interview with The Comicbook Bin:
It was 2000, and Chaykin had just come to a parting of the ways with his last television show, the syndicated Mutant X. "It was a great job, a good ride. I learned a great deal, I had a great time, and I finally started working myself into an early grave. After I left the show I dropped 35 pounds, I started sleeping, and my life just got easier." The time seemed right for a full-time return to comics.
And from Howard Chaykin's June 2007 interview with Suicide Girls's Daniel Robert Epstein:
Howard Chaykin: In the 90’s I worked in television. I did very little comics. I had a television career that hit the shoals in the early 2000s. I decided I didn’t want to go back. I felt it was time to leave television and become a human being again.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I thought you left Mutant X. Is that not true?
HC: I didn’t quit. I was fired.
DRE: Do you want to talk about why?
HC: No, not especially. It was a pleasant experience while it lasted. It wasn’t a pleasant experience at that point. Frankly I was happy to have the job but I wasn’t all that upset to leave it.
I was fired in June and the way television business works is that jobs become available in May and in November so that even if I wanted to go back to work all I could do was freelance and there wasn’t that much freelance. I decided that since I had all those months I might as well do some comics. So I pitched a book at DC Comics on a Friday and they bought it on a Tuesday. I did the book and I decided on the basis of that I wasn’t particularly interested in going back to television. I asked my wife how she would feel about it and she was delighted because she felt I had become a sort of unpleasant person and I never went back.
Howard Chaykin shared his ideas about Mutant X and his other projects on Sci-Fi Weekly, Comics Continuum, Sci-fi Wire, Comic Book Galaxy, and Comics 2 Film.
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