Jim Shooter (1951-2025)

 

Comic book writer and editor, Jim Shooter died a few weeks ago (June 30^th) and I just wanted to write a quick post about who he was.

At age 13, in mid-1965, Shooter wrote and drew stories featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes, and sent them in to DC Comics. On February 10, 1966, he received a phone call from editor Mort Weisinger, who wanted to purchase the stories Shooter had sent, and commissioned Shooter to write Supergirl and Superman stories.

"The editor called up and said, 'We want you to write for us regularly' and started giving me assignments and I worked my way through high school. He didn't realize that -- about that time I'd just turned 14 -- until some time later. I lived in Pittsburgh and he asked me to come to New York, spend some time in the office and learn a few things. I was kind of hesitant, because I was in school. I said, ‘I'm 14.’ He said, 'Put your mother on the phone.' My mother had to come with me on my first business trip. Which is a little embarrassing. I worked for them for five years essentially."

Shooter did the job because he needed to support his financially struggling parents. He said, “My family needed the money. I was doing this to save the house; my father had a beat-up old car and the engine died – this is before I started working for DC – and that first check bought a rebuilt engine for his car so he didn't have to walk to work anymore. I was doing this because I had to, working my way through high school to help keep my family alive.”

Shooter has studied the recently rising Marvel comics and adopted their character-based narrative approach. He created new Legionnaires Karate Kid, Ferro Lad, and Princess Projectra, as well as the villainous group known as the Fatal Five. He also created the Superman villain Parasite in Action Comics #340 (Aug. 1966). Shooter and artist Curt Swan devised the first race between the Flash and Superman, two characters known for their superhuman speed, in "Superman's Race with the Flash!" in Superman #199 (Aug. 1967).

In 1969, Shooter was accepted into New York University, but after graduating from high school he successfully applied for a job at Marvel Comics in New York but he only lasted three weeks before quitting and moving back to Pittsburgh. After leaving Marvel, Shooter took up work in advertising concepts, writing, and illustration for several years, supporting himself through several menial jobs during periods when advertising work was unavailable.

A few years later Shooter was back at DC writing Superman and the Legion of Super Heroes again. However, Shooter's relationships with both Superman editor Julius Schwartz and Legion editor Murray Boltinoff were unpleasant, and he claimed that both forced him to do unnecessary rewrites. In December 1975, Marvel editor-in-chief Marv Wolfman called to offer Shooter an editorial position. And on January 2, 1976, Shooter joined the Marvel staff as an assistant editor and writer.

Because of the quick turnover at the Editor-in Chief position at the time, Shooter rapidly found himself rising in the ranks, and in January 1978, he succeeded Archie Goodwin to become Marvel's ninth editor-in-chief. During this period, publisher Stan Lee relocated to Los Angeles to better oversee Marvel's animation, television and film projects, leaving Shooter largely in charge of the creative decision-making at Marvel's New York City headquarters.

Although there were complaints among some that Shooter imposed a dictatorial style on the "Bullpen", he cured many of the procedural ills at Marvel, successfully managed to keep the line of books on schedule (ending the widespread practice of missed deadlines popularly known as "the Dreaded Deadline Doom"), added new titles, and developed new talent. Shooter in his nine-year tenure as editor-in-chief oversaw Chris Claremont and John Byrne's run on the Uncanny X-Men, Byrne's work on Fantastic Four, Frank Miller's series of Daredevil stories, Walt Simonson's crafting of Norse mythology with the Marvel Universe in Thor, and Roger Stern's runs on both Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man. Shooter also had two great runs writing for Avengers. And he was also the editor that oversaw the famous “Secret Wars” crossover event.

Despite his success in revitalizing Marvel, Shooter angered and alienated a number of long-time Marvel creators by insisting on strong editorial control and strict adherence to deadlines. Shooter occasionally found himself in well-publicized conflicts with some writers and artists. Creators such as Steve Gerber, Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, John Byrne, and Doug Moench left to work for DC.

John Byrne said “Shooter came along just when Marvel needed him – but he stayed too long. Having fixed just about everything that was wrong, he could not stop "fixing"…Shooter had put Marvel into a place where all that was needed was a kindly father figure at the helm – and that was not Shooter!”

Shooter was fired from Marvel on April 15, 1987.

I was lucky enough to meet Jim Shooter at the Big Apple Comic Con in NYC in 2008.  I was surprised by how tall he was. (6’ 7”).

I had Shooter sign Adventure Comics 346, the first comic he did when he was 13. He didn’t think much of it, “Yeah you could tell how young I was when I did that.” Then he signed Adventure Comics 352 and he said “I was just starting to really get it when I did this one.”

He signed Avengers 161 for me next and he said, “Someone in the business told me the other day this was their favorite Avengers. That made me feel pretty good.”  Lastly, he signed Avengers 171 for me.

Shooter’s Avengers and Legion stories were important to me when I was a kid and I still think they stand the test of time today. And when you look at everything else that was happening at Marvel while he was in charge Claremont/Byrne's X-Men, Byrne's FF, Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars, etc. These are comics that still resonate with readers today and continue to fuel the Marvel today in comics, and movies/TV.   

Jim Shooter's 1979 Dazzler Cartoon Treatment

Jim Shooter quietly released a bombshell on his blog this week. [I’ve got to hand it to Shooter, most comicbook writers, and artists have thus far been giving their personal papers to Universities where they unfortunately will probably only even be seen by a few people a year. Stan Lee’s papers are at the University of Wyoming, hardly a heavily visited area. Or worse, their papers are slowly mildewing in their garages or attics. I’ve long envisioned all of their papers in one Archive, run by me of course, but that’s just a personal fantasy.] Anyway, Shooter is sharing his stories and his archives through his blog. You should check it out!

A recent post told the story of his treatment for a Dazzler animated television Special and included the treatment as a pdf. It is well known that the Disco Dazzler (as she was originally called when disco was still “cool” in the late 70’s) was created with the intention of piggy-backing the character with a real life singer who would have a recording career as the Dazzler. Anyway, this treatment that fortunately never saw the light of day was chock full of celebrity voices: Cher, Donna Summers, KISS, The Village People, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Williams, and Lenny and Squiggy.

The Dazzler was going to be voiced by Bo Derek. If you look at the issue of People magazine Shooter put on his blog you can see Derek's boyfriend is holding a stack of Marvel comics. Derek was studying up.

However, someone else would have done the singing, so why not just cast the singer as the voice too? Hollywood is so baffling; didn’t this cartoon already have enough marquee names?

The Dazzler is performing at a concert at the beginning of the cartoon, but other than that there are no musical numbers in Shooter’s treatment. But, considering it was meant to launch the Dazzler’s real life counterpart’s music career and was full of popular musical artist’s voices, I’m sure the first draft of the script would have been full of musical interludes.

Shooter didn’t write any jokes for Williams, Dangerfield or Lenny and Squiggy, but he did point out that Lenny and Squiggy’s jokes would not be funny until the end of the cartoon when the two characters would meet for the first time. Just what every special needs, characters who are constantly unfunny on purpose!

The cartoon was going to feature Marvel characters so people would know the Dazzler was from the Marvel Universe. The characters were Spider-man and a collection of random Avengers (Iron Man, Beast, Scarlet Witch, the Wasp and the Falcon).



The descriptions for the Avengers Shooter wrote into the treatment were written for someone who’d never seen a Marvel comic and were hilarious. Spider-man didn’t need to be introduced.

Iron Man- Secretly inventor Anthony Stark, who clad in solar-powered circuitized armor of his own design, is an invincible modern knight.

The Falcon- Whose rocket-powered wings give him the power of independent flight. He is actually Sam Wilson, a black teacher from Harlem.

The Scarlet Witch- Born Wanda Frank, she is a mutant, who with a gesture can cause disasters to occur. She is Eastern European, and has a rather formal bearing.

The Beast- Also a mutant, Hank McCoy is furry and bestial in powers and appearance, but extremely intelligent and erudite. He’s crazy.

The Wasp- Jan Van Dyne Pym was given a serum by her scientist-husband that enables her to shrink to insect size and sprout wings. She is an heiress, and very much a lovable scatterbrain.

Did I mention that nearly every character from Cher to Donna Summer, to KISS and The Village People were all going to have super powers of their own?

I don’t blame Casablanca Records for saying this treatment read more like a feature animated film because it was really ambitious, but in Shooter's defense he was only trying to use all the celebrity voice actors he’d been told to use. Given the enormous number of characters he was told to include in a half-hour show, I thought he did a decent job. But I am still very happy that soon after Shooter wrote this things changed at Casablanca Records and the Dazzler project died.

And the world had no idea the bullet it dodged until now. Mr. Shooter I don’t know if I want to thank you for releasing this or whether I wish you’d burned it. If you released it as a way of asking for forgiveness for this sin, I want you to know that I absolve and forgive you.

[The Spiderman and Dazzler drawing is by Tom Beland.]

Report on Big Apple Comic Con 2008 Part 1

First Posted Nov. 17, 2008

(Here’s the beginning of my narrative on the convention. I’ll be posting more as I have time.)

I went to the Big Apple Comic Book, Art, Toy, and Sci-fi Expo, or as they call it on their program, “The National.”

I saw lots of big names, you guys saw the list here weeks ago: Roy Thomas, Joe Sinnott, Dick Ayers, Chris Claremont, John Romita Sr. and so on.

I was at a small convention in Albany last month, but this was my first big convention and let me tell you it was amazing. I don’t have a lot of money right now so I didn’t look much in the bins for deals, but there were hundreds and hundreds of vendors.

The place was like a huge maze. They had most of the artists and writers in one place on the second floor, but they were spread out in different rows. There was no directory so for the entire day I was walking around asking people: “Have you found Chris Claremont? Have you found Jim Shooter?” I wasn’t the only one either because lots of people would ask me the same questions. To make matters more confusing lots of the “big names” were in another spot downstairs and Neal Adams was in an area in the lobby because he brought all kinds of merchandise like hardcover collections and painted models. His stuff took up about three tables. Anyway you can picture me walking around like an idiot back and forth between all the different areas.

In the end I had much success. My first stop was Dick Ayers, he signed the cover of my Fantastic Four Masterworks vol. 2. He signed under where Stan and Jack’s name was printed. It was great to see him; he’s 76 and still going strong.






Then I got online to have Joe Sinnott sign some things and while I’m waiting John Romita Sr. comes and sits right next to Sinnott and so I’m practically first in line. Now I’m gonna get major groans especially from collectors like Punk Funk, but I didn’t have much for him to sign. He signed a reprint of ASM 50, so now I have the grandest reprint ever. I also got him to sign his story in ASM 365 and Romita actually said as he was signing it that that splash page with MJ combing her hair is his favorite out of anything he’s ever done.

Then I got back in line for Sinnott and talked too a guy on the line all about the old days and how great comics were in the 60s and I told him to come to Comicboards, so hopefully he will.

Sinnott was doing some great sketches a guy ahead of me got a great looking Thor. The guy right before me had Sinnott sign over 42 comics, most of them FFs. He paid Sinnott about $30 bucks for his trouble, but still I thought it was a bit excessive. I had him sign FF 148, 158, 159. Sinnott was in a great mood and I told him I just saw him up at Albany last month and he said, “Thanks for coming again. Good to see you.”

Then I went downstairs and found my brother because I had his ticket and we saw Stormtroopers and Wookiees outside on the street.








Then I got Neal Adams to sign two Batman tpbs I have and I got Rich Buckler to sign FF 158, 159 and Spectacular Spider-man 103 and 108. Both of them were friendly but not talkative with me anyway.

I saw, Steranko and Infantino, but I didn’t have anything for them to sign.

And I walked past Peter Mayhew aka Chewbacca’s booth, and George Lazenby’s and Bond Girl Gloria Hendry’s too, but I was there for the comic guys!

Then I went downstairs because after walking around and around someone clued me in that there was a “Big names” section down there. That’s where I met Roy Thomas who signed copies of FF 158, 159. Meaning I now had them signed by writer, artist and inker. I thought that was pretty cool.





I also had Thomas sign Avengers 41, and 54. Roy was a really great guy; he was very talkative and enthusiastic. I told him Avengers 54 was one of my favorite Avengers and he kind of paged though it and said he guessed it was pretty good. Then he read a line or two: “You are younger than I expected Black Knight.” “Should I have phoned your mother?” And he said, “I stole that line from a movie, no one noticed though. I did that all the time.”

Than I looked around upstairs and downstairs, that’s the theme of the day. Then my brother asked me who I was still looking for and I said “Chris Claremont, Jim Shooter, Larry Hama…” “Larry Hama, I saw him downstairs, you should have told me who we were looking for.” So we went downstairs, but my brother had only seen Larry Hama’s nameplate which was sitting on an empty table. But while we were downstairs in walks Jim Shooter. My brother spotted him, thank God he was wearing his nametag cause neither of us would have known him from Adam. By the way, as I said, I had just seen Peter Mayhew, Jim Shooter might be just as tall. The man is huge! I had Shooter sign Adventure Comics 346, the first comic he did when he was 13. He didn’t think much of it, “Yeah you could tell how young I was when I did that.” Then he signed Adventure Comics 352 and he said “I was just starting to really get it when I did this one.” He signed Avengers 161 for me next and he said, “ Someone in the business told me the other day this was their favorite Avengers. That made me feel pretty good.” “It’s definitely my favorite too,” I said. Then he signed Avengers 171.





Then I wandered around again and browsed back issues and came back downstairs about ten minutes before the first panel because Roy Thomas had said that he didn’t know where the panel was, but that someone was coming to get him and that I could follow him over. But before the panel I saw that Larry Hama had just arrived. He was drawing a GI- Joe character holding a bow for someone in front of me and he talked at great length about the finer points of Japanese archery, such as how you can hold your next two arrows in-between two of your fingers so you can fire them quicker and that you couldn’t do that with a British bow. “This guys puts Hawkeye to shame,” I thought. I had him sign Avengers 329, 332, 333. (Hawkeye isn’t in any of those) “I forgot I wrote these,” he said. “Actually I really liked 332,” I said. He thumbed through it and said, “Oh, yeah I remember this Doom is in it… They have a big party and Rage brings the cookies.” (yes nitpickers when I looked it up later it was Cupcakes he brought). I didn’t really know who Hama was too well, but he was intelligent and engaging and made me want to pick up a lot more of his stuff. Him and storyteller Roy Thomas were the best guys I met all day.






Part two of the Convention is still to come. I'll report on two panels and post lots more pictures.