Once More, Without Feeling

Secret Wars was a sales juggernaut, which meant that a sequel was inevitable.  Announced even before the first crossover was over, Secret Wars II was the Platonic ideal of a bad superhero event, starting with its pedestrian and predictable name.  Where the first Secret Wars was structured in a way that only minimally interfered with ongoing titles, Secret Wars II was a recurring train wreck that crashed into nearly every comic Marvel published. Where the first event had the slick pencils of Mike Zeck, the second was handed to Art Milgrom, who was not doing his best work here.  Shooter was also not firing on all cylinders:  for all his faults as an editor, Shooter was an experienced and capable writer who had produced comics that are still widely acclaimed to this day (his first runs on Legion of Super-Heroes and The Avengers, for example).  He had signed on to write Secret Wars II, but his attention was divided and his interest intermittent; in particular, the characters’ dialogue suffered. 

Secret Wars II seemed determined to make all the mistakes the first series avoided. In an inversion of the original premise, now the heroes stayed put, but the Beyonder, who had decided to house his omnipotence in a human form, made appearances in every ongoing Marvel superhero comic, dropping in at random points and either bringing the action to a halt, steering it in an unexpected or barely motivated direction, or functioning as a Beyonder ex machinabefore going his merry way.  He also repeated one of the greatest cliches of low-rent sci-fi:  he wanted to learn what it was like to be “human.” Unfortunately for him, he launched this particular quest in the Eighties.  When he first appears, the Beyonder is a generically handsome blond man (Captain America as Aryan Ideal), before switching to long, black Jheri curls, a white jumpsuit, and shoulder pads. 

Can an omnipotent God make a hairstyle so bad even He can’t pull it off?

Since the Beyonder was omnipotent and could teleport, both his adventures in the main series and the tie-ins followed a logic that a charitable reader might call picaresque. The Beyonder attempts to woo two different female mutants (Dazzler, the disco queen and Boom-Boom, a teenage hooligan), gets Peter Parker to teach him how to use the bathroom, turns a building into gold after hearing Luke Cage complain about money, and hires Matt Murdock to represent him in his attempt to take over the world through legal means.  His motivations seem to be as much Shooter’s as his own.  Shooter used the series to settle scores.  One of the first things the Beyonder does is encounter a neurotic loser of a television writer clearly modeled on Steve Gerber, the creator of Howard the Duck fired by Shooter and sued Marvel over the rights to his creation.  The Beyonder bestows powers on the writer, but this only proves how pathetic the writer actually is. 

It’s a strange choice on Shooter’s part; given the power dynamics involved, his clumsy satire of Gerber would be punching down, if the punch were not so poorly aimed.  But it is also one of many signs that, intentionally or not, the Beyonder reads as a stand-in for Shooter himself.  As Sean Howe notes, “sneaking into Shooter’s stories, almost helplessly, was a recurring motif of persecuted deities,” particularly in the multi-issue Avengers storyline known as the “Korvac Saga.” In 1977 and 1978,  Shooter had Marvel’s heroes confront a cyborg from the future who had ascended to godhood (complete with the requisite perfect Aryan body).  Though his actions seemed sinister, Michael (as Korvac renamed himself) was  motivated by the desire to make the universe more just:   “I was in the unique position to alter that, to bring all of existence under my sane and benevolent rule,” he told the super-team. “I am a God! And I was going to be your savior!” Where others saw megalomania, Jim Shooter saw a beleaguered hero who only wanted to bring order to the galaxy.

Or, as Howe puts it later in the book, Shooter’s big theme was “trust power.”  The Beyonder is different from Michael, however, and not just because he used his godlike power to dye his hair black. Where Michael prizes order, the Beyonder is an agent of chaos, demanding that everyone around him cater to his whims. Where Shooter demanded that his writers kill off characters willy-nilly, both the Beyonder and Michael killed multiple heroes only to resurrect them; Michael was trying to maintain his plan, while the Beyonder (in keeping with his origin as a nameless force forcing living action figures to battle each other), simply tired of his toys.

Towards the end of his tenure at Marvel (he was fired in April of 1987, just a year after Secret Wars II ended), Shooter allegedly told his staff that

every single comic had to have a ‘can’t-must’ moment: I am not a thief . . . I don’t want to steal. But I must steal because my grandmother is starving. Every comic had to have that in the first three pages. Literally, a panel where the superhero had to say, ‘I can’t steal—but I must, for my grandmother.’... He was sending comics back to the Bullpen to have the ‘can’t-must’ panel squeezed in, in the middle of the page” (Ann Nocenti, quoted in Howe). 

Late Shooter is The Beyonder (or Michael)  in his decadent phase, when power has completely warped his judgment and made him lose the plot. 

Though Shooter would not be around to see it firsthand, the Secret Wars events permanently changed Marvel, if not quite the way comparable crossovers did at DC.  At both companies, the sales success of crossovers would make event comics a perennial feature, but it was only at DC that such events radically changed the nature of the company’s storyworld. At Marvel, it simply meant chasing after the next big event.  For the remainder of the Eighties, Marvel experimented with a few different formats and premises for its next events.  Two crossovers were limited to annuals (yearly special issues of ongoing titles) in order to recreate the thrill of the event without interfering with the monthly storylines:  The Evolutionary War (1988) and Atlantis Attacks (1989). Two more crossovers were closer in scale to Secret Wars, but without a miniseries to anchor them: Inferno (1988-1989) and Acts of Vengeance unfolded over several months’ worth of regular series.  Inferno had the advantage of being the culmination of years’ of X-Men-related subplots, as well as the follow-up to two previous crossover event that had been (mostly) limited to the X-books:  The Mutant Massacre (1986-1987) and Fall of the Mutants (1988), but both stories intruded on most of the comics almost at random.  Acts of Vengeance had a premise that could not be more basic:  a disguised Loki convinces Marvel’s villains to swap archenemies and fight heroes who were unfamiliar with them. 

Marvel would return to crossovers over the next several decades, to varying degrees of success. In the 1990s, Jim Starlin’s The Infinity Gauntlet (1991) and, to a lesser extent,  its two follow-ups, The Infinity War (1992) and The Infinity Crusade (1993), recaptured the excitement of the crossover story, while in the early twenty-first century, Civil War (2006-2007) and Secret Invasion (2008-2009) were huge commercial successes.  All of these series also found their way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in one form or another. In 2015, Marvel published another (much better) Secret Wars event, which inspired an upcoming movie.  The legacy of Marvel’s events is undeniable. 

Next: Spider-Man Grows Up

Secret Wars and the Rise of the Event Comic

As most of this book is about Marvel's artistic successes and near-misses, the rest of this introduction is meant to provide an overview of the general trends in the company's output, regardless of critical acclaim or disapprobation. Marvel introduced a number of elements to its storytelling and marketing that have had a huge impact on both the company and the industry.  And in many cases, even if the initial Eighties output might be of dubious quality to readers who did not grow up with it, some of Marvel's worst creative decisions have their fans, and, more important, gave later creators material that could be transformed into something far better.   This overview is also an opportunity for brief discussions of the many strong runs and fascinating experiments for which there is simply not enough room in this book.

Secret Wars and the Rise of the Event Comic 

In the mid-1980s, both Marvel and DC would be forever changed by the introduction of line-wide crossover events, although the nature of these changes was different for each company.  The financial success of each event incentivized the creation of further such events, with ramifications for the companies; storytelling that are felt to this day.  But where the impetus for DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths came from concerns about the company's storyworld (Crisis was meant to simplify DC's complex system of alternate universes), Marvel's Secret Wars started with a failed toy deal and ended with a change in Spider-Man's costume that benefited comics sales and merchandising tie-ins.  Without Crisis, DC's storyworld would be vastly different from what it is today.  Without Secret Wars, Marvel wouldn't have the black costume that eventually merged with Eddie Brock to become Venom.  Venom may have been the most successful new character of the decade, but in terms of the overall canvas of the Marvel Universe, a Venom-shaped hole would not in and of itself make today’s Marvel unrecognizable. 

Nothing will ever be the same again! Except that it will be exactly the same again

In the medium-term, Secret Wars led to significant story beats, such as She-Hulk’s replacement of the Thing on the Fantastic Four, Colossus’s break-up with Kitty Pryde in X-Men, and the introduction of the second in a long line of Spider-Women. But the timeframe of the event meant that, unlike so many other such crossovers, it did not hijack ongoing Marvel titles.  The set-up of Secret Wars was simple, if random: at the end of each of Marvel’s comics that came out in January 1984 (cover dated three months later, in keeping with industry traditions), the main characters are compelled to investigate the sudden appearance of a huge, alien construct in New York’s Central Park.  They enter and disappear, only to reappear the next issue (in most cases; occasionally, it took two months).  The entire twelve-issue miniseries takes place between these two issues, creating an unusual kind of suspense: we know that Spider-Man has a new costume, and that She-Hulk has replaced the Thing, but we don’t know why or how these changes happened. For that, we have to read the monthly installments of Secret Wars. 

The series itself was never going to be mentioned in the same breath as Watchmen or Maus, but that was not what it was for.  The premise could not have been simpler, if not simplistic.  Most of Marvel’s heroes and villains are transported to a strange planet referred to as Battleworld, by an all-powerful, unseeing being who would become known as the Beyonder, who tells them: "I am from beyond! Slay your enemies and all that you desire shall be yours! Nothing you dream of is impossible for me to accomplish!" (Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars 1, May 1984, by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, and John Beatty.).  The Beyonder would never coalesce as a character over the course of the series (a deficiency remedied in the sequel, though with terrible results), but that was fine.  The Beyonder was a placeholder for the implied reader:  however uninspired Secret Wars turned out to be, it is hard to deny the intrinsic fanboy appeal of the question, “Who would win in a fight between X and Y?” One can practically see the hands smashing together the action figures that initially failed to materialize. Secret Wars had a simple job to do, and it did it. 

Who says comics aren’t profound works of art?

Along the way, Secret Wars actually managed to advance a few character beats.  The Beyonder separates the characters into two camps, heroes and villains, with the X-Men quickly separating themselves out. But Magneto, who had been introduced as an antagonist in the very first issue of X-Men, was already on a slow journey of redemption in Claremont’s X titles.  Thus all the characters in Secret Wars are surprised to find Magneto placed in the heroes’ camp rather than the villains’.  In part thanks to the complications arising around Magneto, Secret Wars also pays attention to the fundamental differences between the X-Men and the Avengers as teams (the latter are acclaimed as heroes, the former are outcasts).  

Next: You guessed it, Secret Wars II!

Portrait of the Editor as a (Very) Young Man

Note: My post two weeks ago coincided with the announcement of Jim Shooter’s death. At the time, I noted that the post was a poor excuse for an obituary. As it so happens, today’s strikes me as slightly more appropriate.

Condolences once again to Jim Shooter’s friends and family.

Jim Shooter was not simply a bean-counter coming in and cutting costs; he was a life-long comics professional who had strong opinions that were not subject to revision.  Shooter's origin story was less Lee & Kirby than it was Dickensian:  he took up the pen to support his struggling family.  After re-discovering comics at the age of twelve, he broke into the industry the following year, before his fourteenth birthday:  having cracked the code for Marvel storytelling, he sent spec scripts (and art) to DC Comics, landing him a three-year gig that transformed the Legion of Super-Heroes from an awkward, embarrassing attempt at sci-fi into an enduring fan favorite.  When he joined Marvel as an editor in 1975,  he was a comics veteran at the age of 24.  

Literally looming large over the Marvel bullpen (one website lists his height at 6 foot seven, he must have carried a great deal of baggage from his career as a comics wunderkind.  At DC, he had worked with the legendary editor Mort Weisinger, whom he described as "mean as a snake at his nicest."  Weisinger used to call his underage employee on the phone every week to berate him: "You fucking moron!  [...] These layouts are supposed to be clear, retard!" Shooter, paralyzed with anxiety, would nonetheless have to produce more scripts, his mother crying in his room and reminding him "We really need a check.”

Is it any wonder that, when he was in the editor's seat, he might have only limited sympathy for a writer running late?  Shooter had no room for preciousness. Though he was the same age or even younger than the writers and artists who chafed at his demands, Shooter was something of a generational hybrid, combining the fannish background of Marvel's 70s generation writers with the work ethic of some of his jaded elders, for whom comics were just a cheap entertainment to hack out for money. If Shooter was ever sentimental about the people who worked for him, it would be older, unpopular but workman-like artist such as Don Perlin, whom he continued to employ, first at Marvel, than at his own company, Valiant.  

Compared to Mort Weisinger, Shooter was an editorial saint. But he was also the young teen whom Weisinger traumatized on a weekly basis.  Shooter's kinder words for Weisinger are as revealing as his description of the older man's abuse. Shooter, who was impressed by Stan Lee, "slowly expanded [his] horizons" beyond Weisinger's strict frameworks, but nevertheless saw some value in Weisinger's rigidity: 

Mort’s rules always worked, story-mechanics-wise. Easy, idiot-proof, safe. Trying things that explored the frontiers beyond the confines of Mort’s rules was tricky—fraught with opportunities to fail—but if you were daring, if you had the necessary depth of understanding and the skills, you could do wonderful things. [1]

Shooter's grudging admiration for Weisinger's formula, along with his frustration at Weisinger's narrow storytelling parameters, would probably strike many Shooter-era Marvel expatriates as deeply ironic.  Shooter's vision was far more expansive than Weisinger's; even the unsuccessful initiatives launched while he was editor-in-chief, such as the New Universe line, are evidence of a willingness to experiment.  But the experimentation had to be on his own terms.   One industry figure alleged that, after deeming his long-running Korvac storyline in The Avengers a failure, Shooter declared that all stories should be confined to single issues.  He made every single Marvel superhero comic tie in with his Secret Wars series, one of the first big event comics (a commercial success and a critical failure), and micromanaged the teams on the tie-in titles to within an inch of their lives. 

Both Shooter's successes and failures appear to be the result of a better version of Weisinger's own high-handedness, a combination of both corporatism and an excessively personal identification with the job and the company.  He was not above using the power of Marvel's huge crossovers to settle scores with former Marvel staffers, Secret Wars II, a series that almost no one remembers fondly, features a ham-handed parody of Steve Gerber (here a bitter, lonely self-proclaimed genius who can't actually create anything). And one cannot help but marvel (sorry) at Shooter's tendency to create god-like antagonists whose noble goals are misunderstood by lesser beings (Korvac) or who expect the entire universe to realign itself according to his whims (the Beyonder, the Mothergod and her son in Valiant's Unity Saga). 

Thus it is no surprise that Shooter's Marvel legacy is contradictory.  He allowed excellent, commercially successful comics to prosper (again, X-Men, Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor), though not without a significant amount of meddling.  It was Shooter who declared that, after becoming Dark Phoenix and killing billions of aliens by consuming their sun, the only appropriate punishment would be for Jean Grey to die.  This scuttled Claremont and Byrne's plans, yet it also led to a much more powerful story. But just six years later, it was Shooter who insisted on bringing her back, a move whose storytelling payoffs would have to wait many years more for a new creative team to find something interesting to do with her. [2]

Under Shooter, Archie Goodwin started the Epic line, which included creator-owned work that often had little to do with superheroes.   Epic never reached the heights that DC's Vertigo imprint would attain, but it had its share of creative gems. Marvel also shored up its bottom line by expanding its licensed comics beyond Star Wars (including Micronauts, Rom, Indiana Jones, and, most significantly, G.I. Joe). None of these books are widely considered classics of the medium,  but several were better than they had any right to be (particularly the early Manto/Golden Micronauts and the G.I. Joe line), and, in any case, they are fondly remembered by many fans who stumbled upon them at the right age. Shooter's New Universe line (1986-1989) is fondly remembered by almost no one, but, as we shall see, it was hampered right out of the gate.    During his term as editor-in-chief (though with credit due to Carol Kalish), Marvel cultivated local comics shops around the country and began selling some of its books in the direct sales market (purchased by stores up front, rather than as returnable newsstand periodicals). 

Yet he was also partly responsible for the rise of  line-wide "event comics" necessitating that the company's creators work in lockstep.  His management style alienated many, but it did have one important success:  by insisting on a certain level of uniformity, as well as a strict timetable facilitated by strong editorial oversight, Shooter greatly improved the quality of Marvel's unremarkable books.  Shooter's combination of corporate hierarchy and personalized editing did not end Marvel's production of mediocre comics, but it did bring their mediocrity to a higher level of professionalism. 

 Note

[1] Vaughn, J. C. (June 2009). "Jim Shooter's First Day at Marvel Comics". Back Issue!. TwoMorrows Publishing (34): 15, 14)

[2] Here I have in mind the Morrison and Quitely 2001-2004 New-X-Men run, which also ended with Jean's next death.   

Under New Management

Unlike any previous editor-in-chief at Marvel, Jim Shooter saw his job in terms of the entire publishing line.  This is not to say that his predecessors ignored this or that comic, or that they didn't try to develop new publication patterns or formats. And it certainly does not mean that they did not care about consistency. Marvel was the first comics company to really conceive of its characters as part of a (mostly) coherent universe.   It was under Stan Lee's reign that continuity became, if not king, then at least an occasionally valued ombudsman. Teaders who spotted inconsistencies could earn "no-prizes" (i.e., nothing) for pointing them out. If this spurred a particular type of obsessiveness among fans, well, it also sustained their interest. And it would rarely result in the solipsistic trap that DC would repeatedly fall into after Crisis on Infinite Earths:  an in-universe obsession with the nature and transformation of the comics universe and its continuity.  Marvel was more of an immersive storyworld than it was a coherent product line. 

Shooter took over Marvel at a time when the industry seemed to be in peril: years of expansion were being followed by a significant contraction (more dramatic at DC, but still felt at Marvel).  He instituted changes that homogenized and regularized the company's output with an eye to new readers:  each issue's splash page would feature a narrative box at the top, restating the book's premise.  Long, meandering plotlines and multiple issue arcs were strongly discouraged in favor of single-issue stories (with the X-Men always an exception--the comic was growing too successful to mess with a wining formula).  

Wait, who is giving this page to whom?

Perhaps the most corporate thing Shooter did was to remind his writers and artists, many of whom started as fans and had serious aspirations for their own work, that the characters and books they loved did not belong to them.  Of course they knew this in a logical, practical way (their meagre paychecks and job insecurity would have been early clues), but Shooter was dismissive of their emotional attachments.  As an editor, he helped encourage a trope that would quickly become cliche:  the hero abandons his costumed identity, which is taken up by someone new.  Such changes were almost always temporary, of course, but Shooter could be brutal about his demands for a shake-up when he was unhappy with a book's performance.  Along with his collaborators, Doug Moench had spent a decade developing Shang-Chi and his supporting cast; is it any wonder that he balked at Shooter's order to turn the hero into a villain and kill off everyone else?

Marvel in the 1980s did not eliminate a personal relationship with a given comic so much as it changed the parties involved.  Creators who did not want to follow Shooter's seemingly arbitrary edicts could either relent, walk away, or be summarily dismissed.  The changes he demanded may not have been emotionally rooted in the character development and previous ongoing storylines, but they had to be followed.  Steve Rogers would stop being Captain America (again), Iron Man would fall off the wagon (again) and hand the armor over to his friend Rhodey, Spider-Woman was abruptly (and temporarily) killed off when her book was cancelled, and Ms. Marvel's handling was so egregious that it gets its own section of Chapter 2. Shooter saw himself as the guardian of the company's intellectual property, but his editorship, though corporate, was not cool-headed and disinterested.  The personalized relationship between the creators and their comics was now supplanted by a personalized editorship. 

 Next: Portrait of the Editor as a (Very) Young Man

When Bad Comics Happen to Good People

Note: I just learned that Jim Shooter died today. Had I known, I would not have published this post at this time—it was never intended as an obituary.

My condolences to Jim Shooter’s family and friends.

What is the value of a bad comic? Not the market value, of course--plenty of terrible comics have become collector's items for one reason or another.  Rather, is there anything that can be learned from talking at length about a bad comic? And if so, how much?

As openers for a book on comics go, this does not sound particularly encouraging.  But I started my previous book on Marvel Comics in the 1970s with an extended discussion of a DC miniseries from the 1990s, so, if anyone is keeping score, I am building a solid track record for perverse introductions.  In any case, comics readers know that there can be a great deal of pleasure in dissecting (or trashing) a bad comic, and that there are plenty of reviewers online who scratch that particular itch.  This book's goals are different.

The question of bad comics is essential when considering Marvel's 1980s publications, thought not because the company's output was overwhelming or unusually bad. The decade saw numerous artistic and commercial hits (X-Men, Daredevil, Walt Simonson's run on Thor), against a backdrop of, if not necessarily badness, then concerted mediocrity. Marvel in the 1980s inadvertently asked and answered a number of questions about the comics industry: what makes a good comic, or a bad comic? What are comics for?  And how can they be produced more consistently, and with greater efficiency?

In Marvel Comics in the 1970s: The World Inside Your Head, I focused exclusively on those few creators who managed to produce work that pushed the boundaries of the possible and the permissible, even if the results did not always age well. If there is an overall drama to the book, it is about the struggle of a few artists and writers to take advantage of weaknesses in the Marvel corporate structure that might allow them to tell stories that were personal, inventive, or absurd.   

Marvel's Eighties output was largely the result of a push in the opposite direction, and, like most generalizations about decades, its beginning did not coincide with the change in the calendar.  The Eighties began with the appointment of Marvel's ninth editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, in the early days of 1978. Shooter's ouster in 1987, one year short of a decade after he took the job, was an end of an era in itself.  But his replacement by Tom DeFalco, while welcomed by Shooter's many enemies, did not immediately result in a drastically different Marvel landscape. So while this book focuses primarily on the Shooter years, it does not use 1987 as hard stop.

Note: I just learned that Jim Shooter died today at the age of 73. This post was never meant to be an obituary—it would be a terrible one, and had I known, I would not have published today. My condol

It would be easy to cast Shooter as the villain of this volume. Fired, pushed out, or simply fed up, nearly all the creators who managed to produce innovative comics at Marvel in the 1970s left not long after Shooter took over, along with a host of other longtime Marvel stalwarts: Steve Gerber, Steve Engelhart, Marv Wolfman, Don McGregor, George Perez, and eventually Doug Moench, John Byrne, Gerry Conway, Gene Colan, Denny O'Neil, Roy Thomas and Mike Ploog. Never one to shy away from a fight, The Comics Journal editor Gary Groth published an essay in 1994 called "Jim Shooter, Our Nixon," which not only listed many of his affronts against creators' rights, but also asserts that "Jim Shooter was everyone's favorite villain" (The Comics Journal 171, September 1994: 17-21).

I bring in Groth not to dispute his assessment, but as a stimulus to reframe what Shooter's approach did to Marvel. Anyone interested in the corporate and office politics at the company during this period can get the details from Sean Howe in his excellent Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Howe's remit is historical, while mine is interpretive. I do not wish to rehash or relitigate Shooter's interactions with the writers and artists who left Marvel, but rather to think about Shooter's editorship as an answer to the questions with which I began: what makes for a bad (or good) comic? And what are comics for?  Shooter's answers changed the course of Marvel Comics, if not the entire industry.

When Shooter came to power, he put an end to Marvel's free-wheeling (some would say chaotic) editorial structure. Gone were the days of the writer/editor, an institution that, while facilitating such excellent books as Gerber and Colan's Howard the Duck, was also tantamount to an almost total absence of editing as such. In the 1970s, Marvel was plagued by deadline failures and produced a line of books whose quality was shockingly inconsistent.  The system that gave Don McGregor the freedom he needed to redefine the Black Panther also facilitated the production of a vast array of mediocre comics.  For every Tomb of Dracula there were three Marvel Team-Ups, Incredible Hulks (not a high point for Marvel at that time), or Ghost Riders.

One of the easiest labels to lob at Shooter's approach to the editor-in-chief (EIC) job is "corporate."  No doubt it is also accurate:  Shooter replaced a largely horizontal set of relationships and relatively flat org chart with a hierarchal system of bosses and rules. In an industry that runs on the efforts and imagination of what present-day corporate types now refer to as "creatives,"  "corporate" is an inherently negative term.   We have all seen this movie before (especially in the Seventies): the corporate stooge vs. the  gonzo radio station that doesn't want to have its playlist homogenized (FM, WKRP in Cincinnati); the military brass vs. the anarchic but top-notch field surgeons who will not play by the rules (M*A*S*H*); the slacker enlisted men who become heroes despite their disdain for military protocol (Stripes).  Even Shooter, who wrote his share of Marvel books during his time as editor-in-chief, gestured in the direction of these tropes in The Avengers 168,  with National Security Council  Official Henry Peter Gyrich objecting to the Avengers' lax security and chaotic procedures.  In Shooter's hands, Gyrich was an annoyance, but he was not entirely wrong. When David Micheline took over the book and, following Shooter's directive, was obliged to reduce the team's roster to seven, he had Gyrich issue the edict in a manner that showed Gyrich (and, by extension, Shooter, who created him) to be officious and unreasonable. 

But what if, at least as a thought experiment, we concede that a corporation publishing comics might benefit from being a bit corporate?  That is, we can object to any number of Shooter's policies and decisions, and lament the death of the creative spirit found in the best of Seventies Marvel.  But it is also difficult to imagine a scenario in which Marvel would survive and prosper as a profit-making company without some form of inevitably alienating overhaul. Shooter's approach to the comics business was precisely the sort of thing that was anathema to Steve Gerber:  comics were to be seen as the company's product. 

Next: Under New Management

Preface

Marvel in the 1970s: The World inside Your Head  was my origin story as a comics reader.  Of course, I hope it was much more than that: the point was to showcase the innovations of a neglected period in the history of the medium. But it was also a passion project.   These were the comics that made me who I am.

It certainly had not occurred to me at the time to follow it up with a sequel, and I do so with a comics fan's hard-won awareness about just how disappointing sequels can be (I'm looking at you, Secret Wars II).  If the Seventies got me into Marvel Comics, the Eighties almost got me out (with the Nineties all but sealing the deal).  This was not only a result of changes at Marvel, but changes in my life.  I graduated high school in 1984 and college in 1988, going on to start my doctorate that same year. College nearly broke all my tethers to popular culture. There were no televisions in any of my dorms (we were all people who proudly "didn't own a tv"), and it took me another fifteen years for me to come back to that particular medium.  There were also no comics shops in a twenty-mile radius, though my hometown store held onto my selections until I came to visit. This included four months in Leningrad in 1986, when my isolation from American popular culture was at its peak.

This book keeps bad sequels and tragic hair to a minimum

If I stayed with comics at all, it was not because of Marvel (well, except for X-Men and Daredevil, but these were the exceptions that almost everyone made). It was because of the burgeoning independent comics movement, which ranged from fly-by-night publishers to self-publishing geniuses (Dave Sim's Cerebus and Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest) to companies that managed to last more than a decade (Eclipse).  And it was also because DC Comics, which had for so long been a backwater of unimaginative tedium, had become a hotbed of innovation (facilitated by refugees from Jim Shooter's 1978-1987 term as Marvel editor-in-chief and the famous "British Invasion" that brought Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Peter Milligan, and so many others to the American comics industry). Mainstream America would finally start to recognize the accomplishments and potential of the comics medium when Watchmen (DC), Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (DC), and Maus (Raw/Pantheon) were all published in 1986.  None of this was thanks to Marvel Comics.

There is a temptation to link Marvel's commercial ascendence in the 1980s to its retreat from both innovation and from comics that displayed the individual vision or voice of a particular creator or creative team.  Certainly,  strictures placed on corporate comics creators became less a matter of the comics code or industry structures than the centralized, top-down authority of a powerful editor-in-chief.  But the story is not that simple. 

Miller's Daredevil, as the work of a writer/artist with a strong, identifiable sense of what the comic should be, might be considered the exception that proves the rule, but that would be a mistake.  The X-Men would mutate into a sales juggernaut that, while not necessarily an example of the most profound artistic statement ever made even in mainstream comics, was nonetheless the triumph of a particular type of storytelling mastered by writer Chris Claremont, especially in his collaborations with pencilers John Byrne and Dave Cockrum (but also playing to the strengths of John Romita Jr, Paul Smith, and remarkable guest stints by Barry Windsor-Smith). In this regard, The X-Men is emblematic of one of the signal differences between the would-be auteurs of Marvel in the Seventies and the creators who followed them.  Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench, and Don McGregor would all be either fired or pushed out by Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who issued sweeping mandates for Marvel comics and rarely hesitated to require changes in a team's storytelling decisions.  Claremont, though he would express dissatisfaction both with individual editorial interventions (the demand to kill off Jean Grey, followed by the decision to bring her back) and the line-wide trends that made planning more difficult (particularly crossovers), managed to incorporate virtually anything that was thrown at him and continue to tell the stories he wanted to tell.

Daredevil and the X-Men were the brightest stars in a dismal sky, but they were not alone. Two other writer/artists did well for themselves at Marvel over the course of the decade: John Byrne and Walt Simonson.  Byrne came off of his groundbreaking run on X-Men to revamp The Fantastic Four, a comic whose better days seemed behind it.  It was here that he showcased his retro sensibility while still managing to tell stories that were far more engaging than most of the books on the market at the time. Simonson performed similar magic on Thor, but in a much more foreword-looking fashion.  Taking over a sleepy title that had enjoyed a strong run at the beginning of the decade (when Roy Thomas crafted a complicated and fascinating years-long storyline), Simonson gave the book a grandeur it had not seen since the last years of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run, and with the mythological complexity thatThor so richly deserved.

As in the 1970s, the value of some of Marvel's comics in the Eighties is as much about the uniqueness of their failures as it is about their successes.  Even as Shooter drained the variety out of the comics in Marvel's main continuity, under his leadership, the company made room for some fascinating experiments.  Following DC's movement to direct market sales as an alternative to the newsstand, Marvel produced comics aimed at hardcore fans and older readers. Even if some of them, such as the last years of Bill Mantlo's run on Micronauts, were not exactly awards-baiting material, others, such as Bruce Jones' and Brent Anderson's Ka-Zar, brought a surprising maturity to characters who had previously lacked it.  The Eighties also introduced comics such as Larry Hama's The 'Nam (a non-superhero series about America Soldiers during the Vietnam War) and Peter Gillis and Brent Anderson's Strikeforce Morituri (a near-future story about people whose superpowers come at the cost of a drastically shortened lifespan).  Miniseries and maxiseries also brought new excitement, particular Mark Gruenwald and Bob Hall's Squadron Supreme.

Starting in the 1980s, both Marvel and DC would experiment with the creation of specialized imprints that would feature genres besides superheroes; in some cases, they would also allow for creator ownership or rights' participation.  DC eventually landed on a long-term critical and commercial success with Vertigo (1993-2020, 2024-), the home of its most prestigious comics and graphic novels.  Marvel would take much longer to hit on a successful framework for a new imprint, and it would do so by doubling down on both its superheroes and on corporate IP:  the Ultimate Marvel (later rebranded as "Ultimate Comics") imprint that lasted from 2000 to 2015.[1]

The Eighties at Marvel present a diverse collection of imprints that could be qualified as failures, but their lack of longevity does not diminish their importance. Some of these imprints were a haven for talent that could not comfortably be expressed in the company's mainstream publications during the Shooter Years (or, for that matter, during Tom DeFalco's term as Shooter's replacement, from 1987-1994).  Three publication experiments stand out for their importance:  Shooter's short-lived "New Universe" (1986-1989), a doomed attempt at creating an entirely new stable of superhero characters in their own continuity; the Marvel Graphic Novel (MGN) line of oversized, stand-alone stories that ran from 1982 to 1993; and Epic Comics (1982-1996), which, under the leadership of Archie Goodwin and Al Milgrom, combined a wide breadth of genres, freedom from the restrictions of the comics code, and creator ownership in a manner that now looks familiar thanks to DC's Vertigo.  Epic Comics was never the comics phenomenon that Vertigo would be, the reasons for which will be discussed later in the book.  Nonetheless, both Epic Comics and Marvel Graphic Novels published a small amount of enduring work that rewards rereading and is worthy of sustained critical attention.

One of those works, Moonshadow, is a whimsical and philosophical coming-of-age story with echoes of both Dickens and Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Written by J. M. DeMatteis with gorgeous painted art by Jon J. Muth, Kent Williams, and George Pratt, Moonshadow survived the collapse of Epic Comics thanks to the imprint's creator's ownership structure, leading to republications by Vertigo and Dark Horse Comics.  Moonshadow is DeMatteis' finest achievement, although it finds good company in some of the writer's other, more personal work. DeMatteis never quite gained the cult/auteur following of Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore; his vast, varied output over the course of four decades includes much that is forgettable.  But his work at Marvel in the 1980s stood out from the crowd. In addition to Moonshadow, his run on The Defenders, a comic that had never really found its way since Steve Gerber was kicked off the book in the late 1970s, brought a focus on character development and interiority that most of Eighties Marvel lacked, while his run on the various Spider-Man titles (particularly a six-part storyline called initially called "Fearful Symmetry" before adopting its more famous name, "Kraven's Last Hunt").  DeMatteis revives the absurdity of Steve Gerber and the spiritual seeking of Steve Englehart that also relies on the writer's unfortunate tendency to double down on New Age philosophy.  At its best, the result is Moonshadow (and, much later, Abadazad with Mike Ploog), but at its weakest, the results can be mawkish and predictable (as we will occasionally see in The Defenders and associated titles).

Despite the uneven quality of the company's output, the Eighties were a huge decade for Marvel, in terms of volume, sales, and cultural impact.  As in the previous book, I see no point in devoting extended analysis to comics that are simply mediocre or dated, unless they hold a significance that is disproportionate to their quality.  Instead, the focus will be on work that is outstanding, or work that is strong, but flawed.  There is not enough room in this book to cover every good book the company managed to put out. [2] Peter David began his twelve-year run on The Incredible Hulk in 1987; to my mind, this is therefore material that would be a better fit for a book on the Nineties.  Shooter's brief return to The Avengers included a number of fascinating stories and plot points that would have repercussions for decades to come (particularly Hank Pym's abuse of his wife, Janet Van Dyne (The Wasp), but, like so much else in the decade, it was rather hit-or-miss, and in any case, the limited length of his run (16 issues spread out over more than five years) does not leave much to work with. The Introduction briefly treats these works about which i have not chosen to write an entire chapter, as well as the controversies surrounding key stories (such as the misogynist treatment of Carol Danvers at the end of her career as Ms. Marvel).  Also covered in the introduction are some significant trends inaugurated in the Eighties that did not result in storylines of particular significance in their own right. These include the now-familiar trope of passing the mantle from an established hero to a usually temporary replacement (who most often goes on to create a new costumed identity of their own); Peter Parker's costume change, his marriage to Mary Jane Watson,  and the creation of fan-favorite villain-turned-anti-hero Venom; Tony Stark's alcoholism and the generally strong extended Iron Man run by David Micheline, Bob Layton, and John Romita Jr.; Marvel's production of comics about characters and toys licensed from third parties; the Punisher's rise from relative obscurity to fan-favorite;  and the rise of the crossover event. 

As with my previous Marvel book, I do not pretend that my choices are not guided at least in part by my personal taste. which is in turn a function of my age.  I am a great deal more forgiving of the flaws in the comics of my childhood than I am in those I read as a young adult, and it is quite likely that I would be able to form an attachment to characters who leave me cold (Venom, for instance) if I were ten years younger.  But I have always taught my students that the pleasure one gets from reading a particular text can provide the first step for a more analytical approach, in the hopes that they can move from simply saying that they liked something to figuring out what it is about the text that grabbed their interest and talking about it in a way that is less dependent on their personal reaction.  I do not stick precisely to this approach in my own work, just as I allow myself to talk about myself and to write in the first person even though I usually beg my students not to. [3] This, too, is a function of age (and experience). 

This book is not meant to serve as a thorough history of Marvel in this particular period; like its predecessor, it is a reading of a set of Marvel texts.  Choosing such texts can never be truly impartial; nor, for that matter, could the readings really be the product of a faux journalistic view "from nowhere."  Instead, I am trying to provide a series of coherent and engaging approaches to a particular set of Marvel comics whose cultural, aesthetic, and ideological values are worthy of sustained examination.

Plus, not forget the obvious: a lot of these comics are a lot of fun. I hope that, if this book convinces you to read or reread some of the best of them, you will come away agreeing with Mary Jane Watson's signature catchphrase : Face it, Tiger, you've hit the jackpot.

Notes

[1] The Ultimate line was revamped and revived in 2023.

[2] Those interested in a more comprehensive overview should take a look at the first book to use the title Marvel Comics in the 1980s, by Pierre Comptois (2014).  In addition to thematic overviews, it consists of capsule summaries of numerous issues published during the decade, from the outstanding to the run-of-the-mill.

[3] For what it's worth, I explain to them that both the first person and self-reflective writing have their place, but that it is important to learn how to write about something other than oneself. 

Next:  Introduction: When Bad Comics Happen to Good People