Forum - View topicNEWS: Comic Writer, Editor Jim Shooter Dies at 73
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Cheap Trick
Posts: 58 |
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I'm sure more than a few hit pieces on the man will come out following his passing, but love him or hate him his work spoke for itself. Marvel thrived under his leadership and hasn't been the same since he left. RIP
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Jabootu
Posts: 418 |
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My memories of Mr. Shooter are direct, if few. When he was Marvel's Editor in Chief he appeared at a comic convention in suburban Chicago. He did a scheduled Q&A with fans, answering any question--some a bit inane--put to him. He also asked questions in return. I remember him asking, for instance, what people thought Marvel's worst books were. One fellow opined one such was Ghost Rider (the original run). That was a favorite of mine so I was pleased that the choice was booed by several people. Mr. Shooter himself responded that Ghost Rider's sales were quite solid and that it was generally liked. I can't remember if he noted that it was one of many books he himself wrote at some juncture.
His scheduled duties done, he then repaired out to the hallway to talk to anyone who was interested in doing so. His towering height (not to mention his crisp button down shirt and tie, not a look rife at comic conventions) certainty made his presence known. I joined the small crowd around him and listened to his interactions, which lasted a well over an hour. I know once he became management he was hated by many of his fellow creatives, but that era was a bit of a golden age for Marvel, and certainly one of its most financially successful periods. And while he might have thrown his weight around editorially, his interactions with fans, of which he was one once himself, were generally friendly, polite and interesting. He will certainly be missed by many of us. |
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BaronViolet
Posts: 495 |
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First Peter David and now Jim Shooter. Tragic news. I still remember reading Secret War for the first time. I loved it. RIP Jim.
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mdo7
 Posts: 8229 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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RIP, you'll be missed Jim Shooter.
For those of you that don't know how important he is, he was the brain behind Marvel's Secret Wars (1984-1985), Secret Wars was Marvel's equivalent to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths when they both came out in the mid-80's. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19138 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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He also played a critical role in the climax of X-Men's "Dark Phoenix Saga" turning out the way it did. Easy to argue that that storyline wouldn't be remembered as the all-time-classic that it is without his intervention. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 5148 Location: New York |
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My favorite Jim Shooter story, and one that arguably changed the fortunes of Hasbro as a toy company, was Shooter getting the rights to G.I. Joe, and finding out that their initial run sold out because it had a lower printing than average because his head of sales Michael Firedrich didn’t like military books, encouraging stores to instead buy Elric, a book he wrote.
Shooter IMMEDIATELY fired Firedrich when he found out and ordered a second printing of Joe, which went out to outsell X-Men in subscriptions (and this was X-Men at the height of Chris Claremont’s creative powers) and pave the way for more licensed comics, including Transformers. So Shooter opened the door for two massive franchises because sales mattered more than Firedrich’s feelings. RIP to Mr. Shooter. He was probably the epitome of the statement “you can be someone’s friend or their boss.” And that resulted in a lot of material that lasts to this day. |
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Jabootu
Posts: 418 |
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Mr. Shooter also wrote most (and oversaw all) of The Korvac Saga, an epic cross-title storyline that ran a good year and ended with an epic battle where most of the Avengers were killed. I had been reading comics for decades at that point, and I had never seen anything like it. It was amazing. Probably the closest previous analogue was Roy Thomas' Kree-Skrull War War, although it didn't span as many titles nor run as long. The Korvac Saga was certainly an early example of something that far-ranging, and for good or ill, influenced the sort of "big story" arcs that DC and Marvel now regularly do to this day. Usually poorly.
The George Perez art in the Avengers issues certainly didn't hurt. Man, that guy was great. Best period of the Avengers, largely because so much of the art was handled by Perez or John Byrne, probably the two best guys ever at handling group books. Add in one of the most iconic team line-ups and it was comic book heaven. Last edited by Jabootu on Tue Jul 01, 2025 12:45 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Jabootu
Posts: 418 |
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Yes! If I remember correctly, Chris Claremont intended Jean Gray to survive the Saga, despite having literally destroyed a planet full of billions of sentient beings. Shooter wouldn't allow it. I think he was right, and as Key suggests, the storyline would not be as fondly remembered today if Claremont got his way. I was reading that storyline as it was published back in the days, and again, it's got to be one of the ten greatest stories in comic book history. Only Days of Future Past comes close to matching it as an X-Men story. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8229 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I had to go to Wikipedia to look up on this, and turns out you're right. I didn't know Jim Shooter was intervene on the climax of Dark Phoenix storyline, and I can see why that storyline is still remembered today, and I can see how Shooter was able to do that, and to this day, the Dark Phoenix Saga is the most beloved X-Men storyline ever created. Now I see why Jim Shooter is very well-respected amongst aficionados that are comic book fans. He not only wrote Secret Wars, but also helped Dark Phoenix Saga the way it's status is hold today. This is another Today I learned/TIL for me when it comes to Jim Shooter. Thank you for that information Key. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 864 |
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It's kinda wild that before him, there would be no Cybertron for Transformers, such an integral part of the mythos of that brand...
I'm not trying to put out a huge defense of Shooter here (I didn't know the man so I obviously can't speak to his morals/know his heart), but a ban on gay characters/content was unfortunately a big part of mainstream media in general at the time he was in charge, and was explicitly banned under the Comics Code* until after Shooter was gone from Marvel. And even then they still waited several years to do any stories with non-subtext LGBTQ characters/content. *God the Comics Code is responsible for so many of the problems with the modern comic industry that you could probably make a documentary of it... hell someone probably already has but I don't know the name... |
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YagamiBlackstone255
Posts: 470 |
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All I know about him was that he got hired AS A KID to work on comics. He lived the dream but I dont like he apparently didn't like gay characters.
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Green Luthor
Posts: 30 |
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Depictions of homosexuality weren't explicitly banned per se, but the actual rules were such that... well, it'd be hard to convince anyone it would be allowed. The specific prohibitions were on "illicit sex relations", "sexual abnormalities", and "sex perversion", while also stressing comics should emphasise the "sanctity of marriage". Which, in the 1980s... yeah, they weren't going to let gay characters through. Homosexuality wasn't mentioned by name, but... it's pretty clear it would get included in those prohibitions somewhere. (Plus, the CCA had a catch-all "anything that goes against the spirit of these guidelines" rule, so if you submitted your story and they didn't like something in it... it wouldn't take much for them to reject the story, and it wasn't exactly easy to get them to ever change their minds.) It's like the famous Spider-Man story where Harry Osborne was a drug addict. Stan Lee personally was in contact with the DEA about doing an anti-drug story, but the CCA said no, even though drugs actually weren't mentioned in the CCA guidelines at all. But that catch-all meant they could reject it... even though, again, the government itself gave its approval for Lee to do it, and the story was very much against drug use. But the CCA wouldn't budge, and Lee just went ahead and published them without their approval, leading the CCA to update their guidelines to allow such stories in the future. (So DC's Green Lantern/Green Arrow story with Speedy as a heroin addict was actually Code-approved.) |
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kgw
 Posts: 1540 Location: Spain, EU |
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In the comic-book industry remained the idea that Jim Shooter was sort of negative (or controversial) figure. But he was also part of the history of Marvel comics, and he was behind some of the ones I read as a kid, so rest in peace, Mr. Shooter
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1303 |
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During Shooter's watch, comics were allowed to be dramatic enough to engage young readers (characters could fall in love, get married, get injured, deal with real problems, sometimes die (for a while)) at a time when TV cartoons were so nerfed that G.I. Joe had to show the pilot leaping to safety every single time a plane or tank exploded.
The CCA was not yet the joke it became, nor was it as restrictive as it had been. The books that percolated out of that environment could go well beyond the cartoons of that era, but not so far as to alienate young readers. For me, those years struck a perfect balance. |
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James Scryer
Posts: 12 |
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Depictions of homosexuality were not exactly banned. The famous Hulk comic where Bruce Banner is sexually assaulted in the YMCA showers by two gay men was published in 1980. It was also written by Jim Shooter and based on something that happened to a friend of his.
Whether Shooter personally liked gay character or not isn't really the point. Like mentioned Shooter was all about business. He didn't allow gay characters at Marvel under his charge because he focused on selling comics and what comic readers were actually buying. Just like he had zero interest in Mike Friedrich's personal feelings on not liking the military with G.I. Joe. He only saw Friedrich let his personal views get in the way of making a good business decision so he fired him. Personal opinions and feelings don't and shouldn't matter in business, at least according to Jim Shooter. No doubt it's seen as a controversial stance today in an era where Marvel and other comic companies focus very heavily on personal politics in books and have little regard for if it sells well or not or how much backlash it gets from audiences. Many people have tried to cancel Jim Shooter and get him uninvited from comic conventions and even tried to disrupt his panels by confronting him during them about his stance on gay characters at Marvel from 40 years ago. But I think that's pretty standard with most of the old comic book veterans. Chuck Dixon, Chris Claremont, and even Stan Lee himself was not immune from similar criticism in his twilight years on this Earth. |
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