01/07/2025
Looks like Jim Shooter just passed.
Controversial does not begin to describe this man's legacy and tenure, but it's unquestionable that he presided over a handful of the greatest and still most discussed runs in comic history: Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor, the Dark Phoenix saga, Sienkewicz' New Mutants.
He was there for Marshall Rogers Doctor Strange, Paul Smiths x-Men, John Romita Jr and Bob Layton's Iron Man and my second favorite comics run of all time, the Moench-Gene Day Master of Kung Fu.
(Hell, he was even there for the John Byrne and Mike Zeck Captain America, both under Roger Stern.)
Yes, he was there for the dawn of the Image guys, gimmick covers, was huge on toy tie-ins and probably singlehandedly created all these embarrassing multi-title crossover events and miniseries that made the 80s and 90s mostly unreadable dreck (Mutant Massacre, anyone? The Scourge? Secret Wars, poorly scripted like a juvenile with zero comprehension of the characters and backstories involved by the man himself?)
He scared off some of the best writers and artists in the medium with his unreasonable hands on edits and ridiculous bowlderizations, and filled the void he alone created with subpar artists like Al Milgrom and Don Perlin, seemingly exclusively across multiple lines and titles. And Milgrom used to do a fair Jim Starlin back in his Captain Marvel days! Go ahead, take a look at his Spiderman run(s) then come back. It was pretty bad.
He also elevated editors to full script duties, producing some of the worst runs of the era - Ann Nocenti and Louise Simonson, whatever their merits as editors or on a personal level, kind of stand out in this respect, though they were far from alone. I recall a Danny Bulandi trying his hand at a few runs...all pretty much quarter bin fodder to this day.
And he was HIGHLY opinionated and involved in fan circles, as well as playing micromanager to staff and spending an inordinate amount of energy on reframing his legacy as hero, rather than, as fandom would have it, the great Boogeyman of the era.
But I will be the first to say, his takes were intelligent, possibly insightful and definitely possessed of a concrete rationale for his actions and decisions. You may not agree with the man, but he certainly knew how to build a good case for what he had done, and I found myself reassessing it on a recurrent basis.
Now he is gone, and much like the monolithic force that was Stanley Leiber - who you likely know better as Stan Lee - remains one of the handful of most significant figures ever involved in the medium, for better or worse.
Stan, I regularly defend and stand by. Shooter, by contrast, remains controversial.
But taken all in all, he was a man, and if for nothing more than his long ago rehabilitation of the Legion, setting the stage for the later improvements of Cockrum, Grell, Levitz and Giffen? He remains a giant among them, if only in terms of his own rather formidable height!
I met the man, trust me. He was tall...
