The Four Color Media Monitor

Trib Live reported that veteran Legion of Superheroes writer and Marvel EIC Jim Shooter has passed away at 73 years of age:

Former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, a native of Pittsburgh, died Monday at age 73.

Shooter died after battling esophageal cancer, according to several reports.

A 1969 graduate of Bethel Park High School, Shooter plotted stories for DC Comics as a teenager, created dozens of characters for several companies and served as editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics in the late 1970s and ’80s.

As a child, Shooter spent a week in the hospital for a minor surgery. He had plenty of time there to read comic books, coming to appreciate the more modern approach taken by Marvel vs. the more old-fashioned DC.

“So, I mean, that’s at 12 years old, I decided I’m going to do this,” Shooter said in an interview with comicbookhistorians.com. “I’m going to write like this Stan Lee guy.”

And in some ways, yes, he did. I'll say this for Shooter: he was a pretty good editor in his time, and there were good things that came about when he was working there for nearly a decade. Including, IIRC, the wedding of Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson, which went to press on his way out. And he did oversee the launch of the Marvel Fanfare anthology, which I thought was one of the best of its kind, if only because the paper quality did it justice, IMO. Shooter also panned the disaster Marvel had become by the time Axel Alonso became EIC, and which, under a corporate ownership, they may never recover from.

But, was Shooter a controversial figure in his time? Was he divisive with his MO? Yes, and there's no doubt people coming from many different positions who could argue that for different reasons, and a few writers left because of disagreements. It could even be argued he has blame to shoulder for allowing a story as tasteless as Bill Mantlo's in Incredible Hulk 256 to go ahead. The Avengers story where Hank Pym was put in a position of looking like a spousal assaulter against Janet Van Dyne was in very questionable taste, and it's decidedly a shame any writers had to keep bringing it up over the years. Shooter once even made absurdly condescending remarks about 2 or 3 Legion members, surprisingly enough. And, I also find it difficult to understand why, if it was his doing, he seemed intent on sidelining Carol Danvers and even the 1st Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, who IIRC died at the end of the 1978-83 series, but fan protests saw to it she was revived, though she too was still largely sidelined for a time, making appearances in titles like Wolverine's out of costume, and Shooter's successor, Tom deFalco, didn't seem to do anything about that when it could've mattered.

The Hollywood Reporter tells how Shooter originated the whole line-wide crossover concept:

With 1984’s Secret Wars, a 12-issue miniseries that Shooter, Mike Zeck and John Beatty drew, he instituted the concept of publishing crossover events, a companywide initiative that saw one main story play out and influence many of the other titles coming out for months on end. Secret Wars was a massive publishing success and a toy bonanza. It’s a concept that is still being used by Marvel and DC to this day, in varying degrees.

Oh, and they don't have any issue or misgivings about it? Sigh. This, from an artistic/business perspective, is something requiring an objective view. I know that at the time, Marvel wasn't seeking the kind of direction DC lost their minds over - that is, killing off almost every character they thought was an expendable burden, as seen in Crisis on Infinite Earths for starters - but in the long run, Secret Wars had a ruinous effect in that you had as many as 2 or more company wide crossovers occurring every year for a long time afterwards until today, forced by editorial mandate into many different ongoing series and possibly miniseries, and it damaged the stand-alone quality and creative freedoms of the assigned writers. And nobody in the MSM will challenge that today. If a story like Secret Wars matters, it's entirely possible to do one that's self-contained without forcing separate monthlies to be part of it, and then have all these different heroes and villains and civilian co-stars appearing in a single stand-alone miniseries or maxi-series tale without intruding upon what a separate series has to offer. Yet no mainstream press source is likely to make the point and argument today. What the Hollywood Reporter does mention, though:

But despite the successes, and Marvel’s growing corporatization and assured dominance in comics, Shooter’s hard-driving and micro-managerial style began to alienate talent and editors. He drove Miller to DC — twice — where the creator left an artistic mark on literature and pop culture with his masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns. He pushed Byrne to DC, where the writer-artist’s Superman relaunch became such a media event it made it to the cover of Time magazine.

[...] Shooter was indeed fired by Marvel in 1987 — a failed publishing initiative and the rough relations with editors and talent finally taking their toll. But he remained a player in the industry and a few years later launched Valiant Comics, a company that in the 1990s rebooted such comic characters as Magnus, Robot Fighter and Solar, Man of the Atom while created new heroes in an attempt to compete with Marvel and DC. He even brought along Marvel veterans Bob Layton, Barry Windsor-Smith and Don Perlin, among others, for the venture.

Micromanagement can be a negative approach to business handling, and depending how he did it, that was a mistake. As for Valiant and a few other ventures he worked on, they may have had a few significant stories, but none of what he oversaw by then lasted long.

Forbes noted one more controversy worth pondering:

But that success came, 80s style, with sharp elbows and attitude. Shooter had strong opinions about how to make comics and he leaned hard on the company’s talent to execute according to his vision. His tenure was marked by stories of creative blowups and controversies, including his insistence that the X-Men character Phoenix had to die to atone for crimes she committed in the story, over the objections of the creative team. In 1987, after Marvel had been acquired by New World Pictures, Shooter, whose welcome was already wearing thin, was, by some accounts, fired for demanding editorial autonomy and the payment of royalties.

On the topic of the Phoenix, depending how you view it, his opinion Jean Grey would have to die as atonement was understandable, based on how Claremont and Byrne, believe it or not, wanted to basically write her being let off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist for slaughtering a planetload of alien inhabitants, which is stupefying. But an even more valid question can be made as to why Shooter was okay with turning Jean de-facto into a monster in the first place. An established character whom I thought I was supposed to be rooting for, and they force her into the role of a demon instead of creating a new character to fill the role? I know it was reversed in 1985, when Jean turned up again circa the Fantastic Four's series. But look how much damage has been wrought as later writers started regurgitating the Phoenix themes ad nauseum, and nobody thinks that's embarrassing? Ugh. Now, we'll never get an answer as to why Shooter saw nothing wrong with tarnishing one of Stan Lee's creations during the Bronze Age.

As for royalties, was that in connection to artists and writers who wanted special bonuses for use of what they created? Well, I think that's okay, but the way Shooter approached it was decidedly awkward - if memory serves, his idea was for creators to be paid according to how and when the characters they developed were used in written stories going forward? What they should really be paid for is when their stories are reprinted in paperbacks and hardcovers. Something that's bound to be the case today, but back then, while there were early examples developed (and the Masterworks originally came up at the time he'd left), the efforts then were still too little, and of course, they never even considered changing the approach to serial fiction - shifting from monthly pamphlets to paperbacks - even though there are advantages. As I've figured, it could've been because they didn't want to forfeit the whole line-wide crossover concept, even though as has since been the case, they did more harm than good, and House of M and Civil War were just some of the worst.

In conclusion, Shooter was one of the better contributors to comicdom, but he did make mistakes just like everybody else, and there are certain steps he took that were decidedly regrettable. But, there were also plus sides, and I do appreciate what he oversaw at the time, including what was done for Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and various other series and miniseries. But will today's industry learn from his ups and downs how to best manage things going forward? Don't bet on it.

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