Din antagande var korrekt. Denna adress valdes av X-Men-författaren Chris Claremont, en alumn av Bard College, New York, en kort timmes bilresa från Westchester. Det är troligt att han skulle ha kunnat fysiskt besöka den förmodade platsen och plocka ut en trevlig lugn gata för att placera (fictional) platsen för Xavier's School of Witchcraft och Wizardry.
Chalk it up to Chris Claremont. A comics writer who took over the then-failing X-Men franchise in the 1970s and brought it back to fruition by penning several classic story arcs and focusing on character development, Claremont attended Bard as an undergraduate. “What’s the point of going to a great school if you can’t make it a slightly supporting character in a cool comic series?” he told Almanac. Claremont admits that making Annandale Jean Grey’s childhood home was his call, but says that he wasn’t aware of Professor X’s relationship to Bard.
Claremont recognized the importance of tethering the fantasy world of comics to the real world. “The location of Xavier’s School in Westchester County is something originally established by Stan [Lee] in the opening issues of the series,” says the author. “My contribution to that rubric was to take his general placement and give it more specificity, creating a street address and a real sense of place. Its proximity to New York was a matter of convenience and publishing policy: Everyone at Marvel was located in or close to New York – unlike DC, where the JLA [Justice League of America] characters were placed in fictional analogues for the real world (Metropolis, Gotham, Star City and the like). This way, writers and pencilers could frame the story’s events within a common physical reality familiar to both creators and readers. Everyone’s writing and drawing and reading what they all know, which (for me, anyway) makes the adventures that much more plausible and a whole lot more fun.”
Varför valde han denna specifika adress, är det värt att notera att Claremont citerar Shakespeare som en av hans viktiga influencers . Det är säkert möjligt att han lockades till platsen på grund av dess konnotationer med Macbeth, Greymalkin som är bekant av en av de tre häxorna, en ande förklädd som en ödmjuk katt på samma sätt som Xaviers akademi ljuger en hemlig identitet som hemmet för X-Men.
First Witch: Where the place?
Second Witch: Upon the heath.
Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch: I come, Greymalkin!