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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2021 2:56 pm 
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Let's check the transcripts to be sure. Jay, what've we got?!?


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2021 3:07 pm 
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Ocean Doot wrote:
Let's check the transcripts to be sure. Jay, what've we got?!?

The transcript reads --

Quote:
Too many fans today consider themselves far too hip and a-go-go to ever go along with the most basic conceit of serial fiction: that the main characters will survive, but we will pretend, for the sake of this story, that that is not a given.

When I was a lad, I worried every time Superman fell into a kryptonite death trap. Usually I only had to wait four or five pages to find out that he was going to be okay, but it never occurred to me to shrug and flip to the next story to see if he survived. Only when reading SUPERBOY was I ever aware that there was no "tension", since we knew Superboy would become Superman. (I refer to this as "Superboy Syndrome", and caution writers to be very careful about it when doing flashbacks or, more significantly, flash forwards.)

If you reach a point at which you "know" no real harm can ever befall the main characters, and you are unable to simply accept that (without commenting that there is "no real tension") then you have crossed an important line, and there is no point in you continuing to follow this kind of fiction. Accept it for what it is, or move on -- but don't find fault with the ocean because it is too wet.


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2021 4:44 pm 
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It is really cool how he's willing to field all questions and doesn't shy away from telling his version.


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:18 pm 
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I found this script / page rough done by a 13-year-old Jim Shooter for Adventure Comics #346 in Taschen's The Silver Age of DC Comics and decided to look up the art as printed, pencilled by Sheldon Moldoff... interesting that they broke it out into two pages.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:41 pm 
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I was reading a Jim Shooter interview from Alter-Ego #137 and I found this portion of it very interesting. When Lee took over the writing gig on the Spider-Man newspaper strip, he put a call out among all the writers then working at Marvel to plot for him. Len Wein submitted plots but after he was fired, only Jim Shooter would agree to do it.

I didn’t realize Stan didn’t plot the Spider-Man strip from the very beginning, and the whole idea that this happened kinda blows my mind for a number of reasons…

1) According to Lee, he wrote nearly the entire output of pre-1968 Marvel, all while being the managing editor. Even if his new duties in his post-EIC career as publisher were greater than his duties as managing editor pre-1970, writing a single comic strip is FAR less plotting / writing than creating and writing all the ground-breaking characters and concepts in Fantastic Four, Thor, Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil, Hulk, Iron Man, Avengers, and all the rest. You’d think that on the whole, being Publisher and writing a single comic strip would still be less work than being the active managing editor and writing over 8 titles every month.

2) In fact, If he created all of Marvel's main heroes and villains, wouldn’t that would make him the most creative person in comics history? You'd think a guy who spent the past 15-20 years dreaming up hundreds or thousands of plots, all while being managing editor, would be bursting with more ideas than he could ever use if he suddenly stopped writing altogether after 1970. I’ve read many writers quoted as saying exactly that – there are so many story ideas that pop into their heads throughout the day that there simply isn’t enough time to use them all.

3) And it’s not like he’s creating something from the ground up – it’s a comic strip in which all the major characters and world-building have already been completed, of which he’s has intimate knowledge of. Why would this incredible creator / writer with no creative outlet want to pay someone else to plot his stories (but then still want to dialogue them)? It’s money out of his pocket for something he’s done for decades under a heavy deadline crunch.

4) And if he’s the greatest writer / creator in American comics history, wouldn’t it take him *more time* to find someone to plot for him, have a meeting to discuss the plots, make his own edits and suggestions, and then wait for the artwork to be produced and come back so he could script it – instead of him simply scripting roughly 3-4 four panels a day, essentially as much content as a single monthly comic book (or less since there isn’t the need for constant recaps and exposition in a comic book as there is with a strip)? You’d think he could do a month’s worth of strips in an afternoon and then ship it off to Romita to draw it as written.

I don’t get it.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:45 pm 
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And here's something from Roy Thomas in 2019 on ghost-writing the Spider-Man strip. Apparently by that point, he was fine with using other people's scripting. Weird.

Roy Thomas wrote:
Sometime in the first few months of 2000, I dropped Stan Lee a line saying I'd love to do some work for Stan Lee Media [...] he really needed a writer to work with him on the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip… to plot out and do the first-draft script of the seven-days-a-week King Features strip. I said that sounded fine to me.

[...] Despite his well-known (and correct) views on how important the writing was to the success of Marvel Comics from 1961 on, he would often talk about how it was the artwork that sold the strip.

[...] Mostly, though, Stan and I got along fine. For the most part, he liked what I submitted, accepted most (not all) of my ideas for stories… and until a few years ago often "suggested" (or insisted upon) alterations in them. For some years, he would rewrite a panel or balloon here and there, or even more… while other dailies or Sundays would sail through without a single word change.

[...] But at least, once Stan wrote vaguely, maybe a decade ago in his introduction to the hardcover volume Marvel Visionaries: Roy Thomas, that I "help[ed]" him with the Spidey strip, everybody with half a brain knew what I was contributing to the strip anyway. That didn't bother Stan, and it didn't bother me. The strip was Stan's, and I was happy to co-write or write it under his name… although I wouldn't have been willing to go on writing it anonymously once he had passed on, had that alternative been suggested to me.


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 1:33 pm 
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I guess everyone was just dolng the best they could under the circumstances.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 1:59 pm 
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That's a given.


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:16 pm 
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Hanzo the Razor wrote:
That's a given.


True, but I just noticed that I wrote 'dong' instead of 'doing' which made me laugh. :)


Interesting that no one wanted to do the Spider-Man newspaper strip.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:30 pm 
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Simon wrote:
Hanzo the Razor wrote:
That's a given.


True, but I just noticed that I wrote 'dong' instead of 'doing' which made me laugh. :)


Interesting that no one wanted to do the Spider-Man newspaper strip.


No one wanted to do the Spider-Man strip with Stan. :lol:


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:59 pm 
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Simon wrote:
Interesting that no one wanted to do the Spider-Man newspaper strip.

Shooter explained in the first image -- after Len Wein was rejected, people were worried "their star would fall" if Stan rejected them (I suppose their stars would fall in Stan's eyes, I don't know).


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 3:23 pm 
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Yes, but it's still interesting. ;)

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:31 pm 
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But it was explained.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:48 pm 
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Li'l Jay wrote:
But it was explained.

I cannot dispute the rightness of this statement.

Nor can I deny the interestingness of the statements made by everyone in this thread.

This means I can legally wash my tights with impunity, and with soap powder, whilst considering a career as a Wizard.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2021 11:01 am 
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This guy is fast becoming my "most fascinating comics creator still living"...



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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:49 am 
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Very interesting -- at about 49 minutes into this video, they cover a Jim Shooter interview and Jim Rugg says, "At one point, Shooter had a blog and Gary Groth would then point by point debunk every single thing he said, to the point of calling him a compulsive liar. He claims he started the incentive program at Marvel, but wouldn't that make him beloved by every freelancer if that were true? It's hard for me to know what to think of this guy."

Does anyone know where Groth did this? I am trying to find one or two examples.



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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:52 am 
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Ah, here's a refutation of Shooter's Jack Kirby blog posts --

Quote:
JIM SHOOTER: GROUNDHOG DAY IN THE LAND OF THE APOCRYPHIARS

Running alongside his storied career as a comics writer, editor, and publisher, Jim Shooter began a second, parallel career sometime in the 1990s: that of recounting his first career in vainglorious prose and delusional detail. This second career is now going full tilt on his newly created blog, which would be neither here nor there if the fictional portrayal of his first career did not intersect so often with real events in recent comics history, which must therefore become more and more fictionalized to accord with his own disingenuous retelling of his life story. The truth, even any vestigially subjective side of it, is abandoned in the relentless pursuit of self-mythologizing.

There are occasional forays into creative mystagogy, but by and large, his blog is taken up with his autobiographical vignettes — his hardscrabble life in the steel plants (or was it the coal mines?) of Pittsburgh, pulling himself up by his bootstraps when he began working for the comics industry at age 14 (with the occasional helpful tug or two by Mort Weisinger or Stan Lee), and his subsequent climb up the corporate ladder at Marvel, fighting for creators every step of the way, until he became editor-in-chief in 1978. At first, I was prepared to accept this as innocuous pap — until I came upon two recent entries ostensibly describing the dispute between Marvel Comics and Jack Kirby in the 1980s over Marvel’s refusal to return Kirby’s original art. Shooter blogged about his own involvement in this episode, from his insider — and therefore groundbreakingly revealing and honest — point of view. In fact, they were compendiums of falsifications and misstatements of fact that demand refutation. In his April 1 post, Shooter wrote, “I’m the most vilified human being in the world when the subject of Jack Kirby comes up, and it wearies me.” Tell me about it. Jack Kirby’s three-year ordeal to force Marvel to return his own artwork to him (1984-1987) is now a footnote in history, but the truth of it ought to be respected; apparently, constant vigilance is required.

Much More: https://www.tcj.com/jim-shooter-groundh ... cryphiars/


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 11:37 am 
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Epic!

“I do remember that my wife woke up around 6:00 am to get ready for work. She discovered Bob Layton asleep on our kitchen floor with his head inside our refrigerator. I later learned that Bob wanted a soda or beer and the last can was on the bottom shelve in the back. He was so tired he sat on the floor to get it, but fell asleep. Yeah, we freelancers live glamorous lives! Jim led another of these re-do parties over the years.”

https://www.cbr.com/why-moon-knight-fir ... c-redrawn/


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 12:08 pm 
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Hanzo the Razor wrote:
Ah, here's a refutation of Shooter's Jack Kirby blog posts --

https://www.tcj.com/jim-shooter-groundh ... cryphiars/

That's good detective work, Hanzo.

VERY interesting reading. As I've said before, all the Marvel guys from this era come across as incredibly self-serving in their memoirs. I think it's commonly accepted by anyone who cares about these things that Marvel treated Kirby unfairly, though. It's an almost textbook case of special treatment - they knew very well how much creative input he'd had so they were leery of Kirby (hence the four-page document, etc).

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:40 am 
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Very interesting look at Jim Shooter's attempt to grow Valiant through Western's distribution channels in mainstream markets:




He's got a great track record and all that, but man, I'm surprised by how weak some of those early Valiant covers are considering Shooter's background and understanding of the important of covers. Just about anything not done by Barry Smith or Bob Layton is well constructed technically, but lacks any kind of excitement or dynamics. I totally skipped over Valiant in the 90s and this was probably a big reason why. A common comment back then was that if you combined Valiant's writing and Image's artists, you'd really have something.

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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:56 am 
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Ed and Jimmy giving Shooter his props for his "every comic is someone's first" credo (which I also agree with).

I don't mind a longer story, but each chapter of the story has to be very enjoyable all on its own. My wife and I are watching the newest season of Stranger Things and while it's a long continued story, each chapter is highly entertaining on its own and I come away satisfied that I got *enough* story.


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 Post subject: Jim Shooter (1951-2025)
PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2023 9:24 am 
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I get nostalgic for "The Unspoken Decade" from time to time and was reading some of the early Valiant comics for the first time yesterday, Solar: Man of the Atom and Harbinger.

I gotta say, Shooter's writing actually impressed me, especially in comparison to the writing of the same era found in the books I'm familiar with from the same time period -- the X-Men titles, the Spider-Man books, the Ultraverse books, and most definitely the Image titles. But then, I guess I shouldn't be surprised -- I enjoyed his issues of Legion of Superheroes (The Death of Ferro Lad HC is what made me a LoSH and Curt Swan fan) and the first 6-7 issues of Starbrand he did with John Romita JR.

In the first Solar arc (about 4-6 issues, can't recall), I thought he took some daring writing choices by making the story non-linear and doing some weird stuff with the multiple versions of the main character, Phil Seleski. It was interesting, if nothing else (which is usually my only criteria to get baseline enjoyment out of writing). In the two issues of Harbinger I read, he was doing the typical "teen with superpowers is hunted by evil corporation" trope, but I felt he did it in a way that was well paced and felt believable. But the real star of his writing was building the Valiant universe's arch-villain, Toyo Harada, into a real menacing character with some depth and intrigue to him.

Now maybe these stories won't really end well and I won't feel he's so good later on, but based on what I read last night, I have to say I found them pretty enjoyable despite a lack of visual interest and superhero costumes (outside of Barry Smith's Solar segments and Solar himself, natch). I think he has a good feel for "realistic" superheroes and the quality of writing feels more like a science fiction novel of the time instead of a typical superhero comic.

That all said, you can really see why Image was so much more successful. The audience for comics was still mainly pre-teen / teenage boys and we wanted to see costumes and cool-looking stuff on every other page. The vast majority of these books are adults talking in offices with little visual interest to carry that end of the book. Conversations don't have to be visually boring -- look at an Eisner, Kirby, or Frank Miller comic -- but Shooter's devotion to "extremely clear storytelling even to the detriment of exciting storytelling and visual engagement" probably hurt the Valiant books' salability... at least in comparison to Marvel and Image.

I mean, take a look at this Jim Lee cover to HARD Corps #1 -- it's just guys in jump suits and none of them look particularly cool. Now this definitely makes it feel more realistic but I can't imagine a 12-year old seeing that and thinking, "Hell yeah. Sorry, X-Force, but I gotta check out these guys!"

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Especially in comparison to what Jim Lee was drawing elsewhere --

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(Side Note: I always wondered why Jim Lee drew the cover of HARD Corps #1 while he was building a competing company in Image / WildStorm -- I just read last night that Valiant roped him in by getting him tickets to a sold-out U2 show!)

After Shooter left, Valiant started making more of an effort to appeal to the kiddos --

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