Entering the comics business as a young teen, writing scripts for DC (including an influential run of Legion of Super-Heroes), he would eventually become editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics in his 20s, and after that starting several new publishing house. One, Valiant Comics, has continued in one form or another even ’til today.
He started publishing “direct-sales” only Marvel comics that bypassed newsstands, brought about the Epic division of Marvel for creator-owned works, and wrote the Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars event series. While selling well, Secret Wars was somewhat critically drubbed at the time, but has been more positively reconsidered in recent years. (The sequel, Secret Wars II, has not.)
Shooter remained active and available even up until his last days, attending conventions and being part of a Kickstarter for an unpublished title from one of his short-lived companies. He also had a blog that stopped updating back in 2016 but plenty of entries are still up!
Now, I know there were some noted conflicts between Shooter and some of the creative talents that worked under him. I’m not going to detail them all here, but suffice to say, for all his achievements, some measure of controversy surrounded him as well.
I thought these magazine covers were interesting, all of which I bought new off the stands at the time in the ’80s. This, the general interest Comics Scene debut issue, features Jim Shooter with Mr. Marvel himself, Stan Lee, on the cover:
…a motif repeated by this image by Ron Zalme on this Marvel house mag Marvel Age:
Mmm, okay, this next one may take some ‘splaining, because yes, I realize this isn’t the most flattering depiction of the man (though, um, there are definitely worse):
This issue of Comics Journal, #115, contains transcripts of several testimonies in a libel case brought about by writer Michael Fleisher against the Journal and Harlan Ellison. Shooter gets grilled pretty heavily about the business and the Journal‘s impact on it, among other things. Inquiries on the fanzine search engine should get you at least a taste of what’s going on there.
At any rate, when my mind turns to Shooter, this Comics Journal cover by Don Simpson is one of the images that immediately pops into my mind, for good or ill. That’s a big powerful drawing of a big once-powerful-in-comics fella…meant to be ironic, I think, but still, what a caricature. (And probably the only image that dares to pair Shooter with Zippy the Pinhead.)
Jim Shooter was a talented and influential creator and businessman who may have had his share of issues, but still he was a giant part of my comics reading over the decades and I’m sorry to see him go.
So long, Jim.
RIP Jim Shooter.
I always think of the Korvac Saga in late Bronze Age issues of Avengers when I think of one of Jim’s best story arcs; but I also enjoyed his Bronze Age Legion of Super-Heroes stories that he wrote as a wunderkind, and all of the great characters he created, including Ferro
Lad, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Shadow Lass, Chemical King, etc.
And I would rank Shooter as Marvel’s second best Editor-in-Chief, after Stan Lee. Even if he was controversial, during his era we had the rise of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne and various other artists X-Men run, the Frank Miller Daredevil run, the Walt Simonson Thor run, Jim Starlin’s poignant “The Death of Captain Marvel” graphic novel, Marvel Fanfare, Epic Comics, tn Direct Market experimentation which let Ka-Zar, Micronauts, and Moon Knight survive–if not thrive–for a few extra years, and so much more. And didn’t he fight for the talent at Marvel to get higher page rates, and their original art returned to them, and also for some sort of profit sharing once a book has surpassed a certain sales quota? I also seem to recall that Jim always provided Steve Ditko with work when Ditko wanted or needed it. So, he definitely had a compassionate side to him.
And the fact that he successfully built the Valiant Universe after his time at Marvel is also impressive; although, I wonder he didn’t end up licensing more Gold Key characters, such as Dr. Spektor or The Owl–or make arrangements with John Carbonaro to license the T.H.U.N.D.E.R.
Agents, or with Martin or Chip Goodman to license some of the better Atlas Comics characters –Tiger-Man, Satanna, Wulf, The Tarantula, The Scorpion, Planet of the Vampires, The Destructor, Demon Slayer, etc.–for another go-round?
I think Marvel–or DC–could have benefitted from making Shooter and Editor-in-Chief again a decade or so ago.
Anyway here’s a link to a very long but very in depth career-spanning video interview with Jim Shooter from a few
years back:
https://youtu.be/FBh709_dLNs?si=f9L4SlwY1_3OllV5
I will always love his teens written by a teen Legion, but most of his later output leaves me cold. His EIC term at Marvel was profitable, for better or worse.
I’m glad that Shooter lived long enough for there to be a reappraisal of his work and impact – while mixed, both are decidedly more positive than the general consensus would have held ten or more years ago.
Based on what I’ve read by and about him, he seems to have been one of those people whose strengths were also his weaknesses. He had a strong sense of comics storytelling, but imposed it on others even when it hurt the work; he had some story ideas that were strong and original for the genre, but returned to them over and over again; and he was made previously inefficient systems (like 70s-era Marvel) run well enough that he stopped being indispensible to running them.
Marvel nowadays is so big a behemoth people forget, 50 years ago, it was in such a deep hole that it needed the sales of the ‘Star Wars’ adaptation, then the ceaseless editorial steel of Jim Shooter, for all his flaws, to get out of it.
(Secret Wars II and the New Universe were still failures though.)
Anyone who can sell a comicbook script at *13* has my respect. R.I.P.
Man, Shooter’s Marvel was my introduction to comics. In addition to all the amazing series Sean mentions above, I remember Secret Wars being *the* book to buy.
I know his leadership was equally good and bad, but it really did result in some of Marvel’s best output ever.
Great summary of Jim Shooter’s career and creative output, Sean. His work on the Ultron/Wasp/Jocasta and Korvac story arcs in Avengers were a core influence on 14-year-old me. I believe he even did pencil breakdowns on an issue of Super-Villain Team-up that weren’t too shabby.
Despite it’s huge popularity and sales success on the first Secret Wars series, I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed – might have been my first experience with hype exceeding the actual work itself.
I met Mr. Shooter several years ago at HeroesCon in Charlotte. For reasons I can’t remember, I asked him how his health was. Surprisingly, he was quite candid and said that he was dealing with a few medical things. Not sure if he had been diagnosed at that time, but he seemed upbeat and optimistic.
Absolutely loved his late 70’s Marvel output.
One thing that I recall as interesting from watching those video interviews with Jim Shooter from several years ago was to hear his side of the story regarding Marvel in the late ’70s and some of the decisions he made as Editor-in-Chief.
Although I am a fan of ’70s Marvel Comics and a lot of those more “counter-culture” or offbeat cosmic hippie-type comics that were being created by the likes of Starlin, Englehart and Brunner, Gerber, McGregor, etc., it seems that before Shooter became Editor-in-Chief things were a mess and deadlines were being missed quite frequently once Stan Lee moved to California to try and work the Hollywood angle. So, I don’t recall the exact chronological order, but I think there were roughly five Editor-in-Chiefs after Stan Lee and before Jim Shooter: Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway –who I think quit pretty quick, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Archie Goodwin.
And I think one of the issues was that ex-Editor-in-Chiefs wanted the perks of being able to become “writer/editors” — so basically Thomas, Conway, Wein, Wolfman, and probably Goodwin wanted autonomy to do their own things without any editorial oversight, as well as getting paid extra for having “edited” their own work. And Shooter wasn’t down with that, so Thomas, Wein, and Wolfman jumped ship to DC around 1980 or so. I think Conway had bailed earlier.
I think, on the one hand, I can understand wanting autonomy, and I suppose Stan Lee had a lot of autonomy in th ’60s when he was Marvel’s “writer” –or “word balloon-filler”– as well as Editor-in-Chief–unless publisher Martin Goodman told him to change this or that. But on the other hand, considering how interconnected the Marvel Universe had already become by the late ’70s, I can see Shooter’s point of view of not wanting little fiefdoms for former Editor-in-Chiefs.
I can also understand Shooter wanting to make the books as marketable as possible through promoting clear storytelling, etc., although it was lame that he forced Gene Colan out–but that ultimately became a win for DC and Batman. I think that once Shooter got things firing on all cylinders Marvel, and the fans, ultimately bennifited–although personally I never cared for Secret Wars, and the New Universe sure crashed fast–largely because Marvel’s new owners weren’t willing to put the financial backing into it to promote it and didn’t hire the top talents, but also because some of the concepts seemed half-baked. But mainstream Marvel in the ’80s had most of the top artists. I think Shooter once said that the only artists he wished he could get to come over to Marvel from DC were Jose-Luis Garcia Lopez and George Perez (who had been At Marvel in the ’70s).
Friends, take another look at that Ron Zalme cover for “Marvel Age.” The longer you look, the more you will visually rewarded:
– Wasp tucked in Jim’s pocket
– Reed Richard’s hands make an APPLAUD sound effect, not CLAP
– bolts and a nut fallen to ground beside Iron Man
– feathers shed by Angel
– background characters are *immediately* recognizable to me as Captain America and Hawkeye by a single large letter (and Dr. Doom by the squares around his eyes)
@ExistentialMan
Agreed that Shooter’s pencil layouts were pretty good. He started doing layouts for Curt Swann on those Legion stories he wrote when he was a teenager, and as a result we have some of the best Curt Swann art of his career–with more dynamic poses and a greater variety of panel compositions than those found in most of Swann’s Superman stories.
This is kinda cool–Mark Waid, Paul Levitz, Paul Kupperberg, etc. talking about their favorite Jim Shooter stories:
Our Favorite Stories Written by JIM SHOOTER | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture https://share.google/mypOHv8VGB01qUeMS
Sean, I never realised that Mort Weisinger’s irascible faith in Shooter extended to giving Curt Swan his layouts to follow! One has to wonder what the veteran Swan, old enough to be Shooter’s father, thought of that — presumably he had no idea just how young Jim was.
I loved all of Shooter’s runs on the Legion, even the much maligned third one from the Threeboot. It’s a shame that they dumped him or he quit without finishing it – that last issue is one of the worst comics I have ever read, and it appears to have been written by someone who had never read an issue of the Legion before, let alone the one immediately preceding it.
His sixties Legion is really the reason it became such a long running series for my money. The Legion before that is mostly mediocre. And that first Mordru story has the distinction of being the only good Legion story set in the present.
Never cared for most of the other stuff of his I read. Secret Wars was kind of disappointing and Secret Wars II was gibberish. And boy, was the New Universe terrible.
@ Oliver
I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere–or maybe Shooter mentions in the video interviews–that Curt Swann kind of got a kick out of Shooter sending breakdowns/layouts and that it made his job easier. Whether or not Curt knew how young Jim was at the time I do not know.
For anyone that feels like checking out that Shooter video interview, I believe there are time stamps or whatnot that indicate what topic is being discussed at which point (as the interview is hours and hours long –but that way, if one were only interested in Shooter’s Legion stuff, one would know where to start and stop without having to watch the whole thing).
I do recall that Shooter points out that Weisinger was a real piece of work, and why he ultimately stopped working for him.
And who knows, once Jim became Editor-in-Chief at Marvel did he, maybe even subconsciously, ever treat anyone else the way that Weisinger had treated him? One hopes not.
But speaking of hope, it’s interesting to speculate to what degree the “hope” that comics can instill influenced and shaped many, many writers, artists, and editors in the industry to rise above circumstances. I think when Shooter was writing Legion stories as a teenager he was basically helping to support his family. And Len Wein was incredibly ill as a child, so maybe reading comics as a form of escapism helped him gain the will to recover and later go pro and become part of the comics industry?
Somebody really should interview Marv Wolfman and Gerry Conway and some of these other elder statesmen for a documentary about the industry and their time in it during the late ’60s and beyond–as I believe that Marv, Len and Gerry also all sold their first comic book scripts while they were teenagers, albeit they were all older than Jim Shooter was when he sold his first script.
A few things that stuck with me from the Shooter interview were that it seemed that there was a friendly rivalry between him and Marv and Len–I think he jokingly referred to them as “Len-Marv the two-headed monster.” And I would guess that everyone’s egos came into play, but, ultimately, when Len and Marv and George Perez jumped ship to DC, their flagship project became the New Teen Titans, which
soon enough became DC’s top seller and pretty much rivaled the X-Men in terms of popularity and sales.
The other thing I recall from watching the Shooter video interview some years ago was just how much he respected Paul Levitz, but that he also wished that he had possessed a similar level of professional education to Paul’s to help him navigate the intricacies of the business. It seems that towards the end of his career at Marvel, when it was acquired by another company, he would find himself in board meetings where he was obviously between a rock and a hard place in terms of trying to placate them when they wanted more profits but probably wanted to slash royalties or profit sharing with the takent, yet also keep the Marvel Bullpen staff happy.
I think, by contrast over at DC at that time, publisher Janette Khan and managing editor Paul Levitz were formally educated businesspeople who enjoyed a better working dynamic with Time-Warner (or was it just Warner Brothers which owned DC Comics at that time?). And there was no stopping the New DC during the ’80s.
Shooter’s changes to Marvel in the ’70s show that some restrictions really do make better art.
Of course, overly restrictive editors make worse art, so it’s a delicate balance.
Without mentioning names, every horror/sci-fi writer has a xxx xxx story. He was outspoken and then apologetic years later.
i was on a panel with Shooter-one of those fill a chair at the table because of a no-show–and I recall Jim getting testy with the crowd. This would have been late-80s. The only time it was apparent. you can get the wrong crowd, too.
but other that one time, if you can even say it was bad, he was a great guy. he remembered me, as he often did when he was on panels with them, which often ran 90 minutes.
no xxx xxx stories by anyone. shooter was a decent man. The stories reflected here can show that,
Like most people have that have commented here have said, Shooter was complex, with good and bad points to his tenure as EIC. Years ago I would have railed about all of the bad things he had a hand in, but age has mellowed me and I just want to accept that like all of us, he was a simply person with all of the strengths and flaws that entails.
The three pivotal comics of my life all occurred under his leadership so in essence I am the product of the Shooter era of the MU.
I realize that Secret Wars is mediocre at best, but that series helped turn me into a comics junkie and I still have a fondness for it, flaws and all.
I was genuinely shocked when I opened the page to this site and saw that he had passed.
So long Mr. Shooter, thanks for all the memories you helped make. I hope you are happy exploring your own New Universe.
This is interesting, the 7/7 image from the link below shows Jim Shooter’s plan to license DC Comics characters for Marvel to publish in 1984. Apparently an anti-trust lawsuit filed by First Comics killed the deal.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DL5lonIzpRr/?igsh=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==
” Direct Market experimentation”
He mentioned in an interview I just read, in Comics journal #40 (from back when he had just taken over as EIC), of the importance of the direct sales market, and he was 100% right.
“So, I don’t recall the exact chronological order, but I think there were roughly five Editor-in-Chiefs after Stan Lee and before Jim Shooter: Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway –who I think quit pretty quick, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Archie Goodwin”
That’s brought up in the interview as well.
“but also because some of the concepts seemed half-baked.”
a few were outright awful! But I defend DP7 as a good X-Men/New Mutants riff, set in “the real world”, as opposed to the Marvel Universe.
“Somebody really should interview Marv Wolfman and Gerry Conway and some of these other elder statesmen for a documentary about the industry”
Someone REALLY should, a lot of those guys are gone now.
I still enjoy the Hell outta Secret Wars. If you’re gonna have a 12 issue slugfest story, GO ALL OUT!
“Captian Action #1”
Man, Superman’s face is WAAAY off model on that cover.