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.