mrhan

The subject about Valiant and Jim Shooter has been touched on here before but this updated article about Shooter is still an interesting read.

http://rsmwriter.blogspot.ca/2016/06...d-opinion.html

Hokeyboy

Good Lord I thought the man had passed away for a second there.

I met him once at a con in 1993 or 94, where he had a seminar on writing from which I learned a bunch of useful tidbits. Super nice guy. Valiant basically shot themselves in the face with a bazooka when they canned him in favor of the quick buck.

The sheer amount of creative excellence during his tenure as EiC of Marvel cannot begin to be overstated. Claremont/Byrne's X-Men, Byrne's Fantastic Four, Stern's Avengers and Captain America, Micheline/Layton's Iron Man, Simonson's Thor... these are some of the greatest monthly comics ever released.

Gary Groth, on the other hand, has spent decades spouting diarrhetic vitriol from the bowels of his miniscule intellect.

Preterite

Same here!

I'm not a fan, having heard too many negative things about him from creators over the years, but I don't think I could handle another death at this point.

Spiderbite

I am in the middle of the book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe (highly recommended by the way) and I find Jim Shooter fascinating. Though it seems there are a bunch of comic artists and writers that did and still hate the guy, he is easily one of the most interesting people behind the scenes of Marvel.

I always enjoy when he pops up in an interview (though those seem few and far between nowadays) because he doesn't hold anything back and just says straight up what he thinks, period. He also has a crazy, detailed memory and will call people out on anything. Probably the most polarizing character in comic book history.

He used to have a blog but I am not sure if he still does it anymore. What is he up to recently?

I will definitely check out the article. Thanks for posting it.

Dexter Douglas

He was at Denver Comic Con this weekend and all the attendees I talked to said he was an absolute blast.

mrhan

All I can say is when he was running Marvel in the early 80's they were firing on all cylinders. Anyone could get into the stories; there was a balance that is missing today. It didn't matter if you were a new or old reader. They were that good.

I think the only DC titles I was really into was the TT and LSH; everything else was pretty forgettable. Once in a while there was a good story arc in one of the other DC titles but they were a distant second to what Marvel was producing.

brayzie

During his time as EIC at Marvel, didn't he have a motto, "Every issue is someone's is someone's first"?

Thanks for sharing the article.

davidh777

I still first think of Shooter as the teenage writer of LSH.

cultshock

Holy crap, thank god he's not dead! He was the EIC during my peak Marvel comic reading years (late 70's-mid 80's) so I have really nostalgic feelings toward his tenure there. His blog has tons of great stories, too bad he doesn't post much there these days.

mrhan

Why the fuck did you guys think he died before coming into this thread? All I did was post his name. Damn. I'm sorry I misled everyone.

fujishig

His blog is still at jimshooter.com, and a recent post even acknowledges this article, though it hasn't really been updated by Jim since like 2012. Still a fascinating read if you haven't read through it before. You can also see from his talking about the failed Legion run how hard he was to work with (though perhaps justifiably so, he seems to hate when he does a full script and the artist changes it significantly). It's also all remembered through his viewpoint, of course.

Besides turning Marvel around and getting all these killer creative teams together, they did amazing stuff with licenses. GI Joe and Transformers both have super active fandoms to this day, and they not only did the comics but also the stories behind the toys. Rom and Micronauts are still thought of fondly as well.

And his story about submitting his plots and selling his first Legion script to Mort at the age of 13 is like the stuff of fanboy dreams.

PhantomStranger

I think Shooter is just about the best editor-in-chief a superhero comic book company could ask for if they want quality storytelling. The quality of output under his tenures at various companies were always compelling, fun stuff.

davidh777

When the title of your thread is just a name, people can let their imaginations run wild.

Josh-da-man

Started reading comic books in tne 1980s, starting with Transformers. Not long after I moved I started reading stuff like X-Men and Daredevil, so I was sort of familiar with Jim Shooter before I started reading his Valiant comics in the early 90s.

It wasn't until a few years later (thanks to the internet) how reviled he was by certain people in the industry. But he also seemed to inspire fierce loyalty from others (Chuck Rozanski's constant hype from Mile High Comics got me into Valiant early on).

It's really sort of fascinating just how polarizing Shooter is; seems like those who have worked with him either love him or hate him with very little middle ground.

I'd love to be able to corner Shooter sometime and grill him about what his original plans for the Valiant universe were, from Rai #0 on.