Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Here's an interview by Jim Shooter, where he talks about the possibility of a last Legion story.

http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/conceptual/108986036075481.htm

And Part 2:

http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/conceptual/109043972713107.htm

Highlights of the interview include Jimmy Shooter saying that a major reason that SECRET WARS was written by Shooter was that occasionally, brawls erupted in the Bullpen about character use, and because of Jimmy's size, nobody sane would take a swing at him!

Here's Jimmy talking about Legion of Super-Heroes and how he got his job:



He also, in this interview confirms that Ferro Lad was intended to be black, but that isn't a new idea.

On a possible last Legion story, Jim writes:



Boy, what I wouldn't give to see that!

If I could add one more thing: Jim Shooter, being the gentleman that he is, doesn't name names, however, if I was to make a wild guess where the opposition is coming from, it would be from Mike Carlin, who according to legend has an incredible undying loathing for Shooter since his training at Marvel as an assistant editor. Some people have even wondered if now that Mike Carlin isn't going to be back, that perhaps this Shooter series will happen after all.



Having had limited contact with Brevoort, I have to echo Jim Shooter's statements that former Avengers editor Brevoort is a condescending jerk.

Ordinarily this wouldn't matter to me. I rate creators by their work, not by their personal behavior.

However, with Brevoort, his problem is that his personal problems coincide with his professional problems. Brevoort's patronization of comics fans (what he calls "the direct sales market") and the people who buy his product, for instance, is known which means that there are situations where he okays things that show a real lack of understanding of characters, particularly as fans see them, such as his arbitrary and deliberately obtuse decision to place Bendis on MIGHTY AVENGERS, which is supposed to be anti-Bendis "counterprogramming" for classic Avengers fans. A guy can say whatever he wants about angry guys on the internet, as long as they write like professionals should, but if you let DISASSEMBLED happen...well...

For Godsakes, AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED happened on his watch! Talk about falling asleep at the wheel! Mark Waid, with his usual panache, said that you have three responsibilities as a creator: 1) to tell good stories, 2) to entertain your audience, and 3) to not kill Hawkeye. Making it zero for three, Tom?

True, Brevoort also was editor of AVENGERS FOREVER, one of the greatest Avengers stories. However, this is typical of a growing problem, one that is not new: the irrelevance of the editor position. The stories are good and respect history when the writer is good and respect history. They're bad when the writer does neither. Making sure writers respect history that they may not know is the EDITOR'S job. When nonsense like JMS's THE OTHER happens, it is the editor's fault for letting it happen. The job of the editor is to say "no."

Speaking of people and their work and personal behavior, of all the writers and creators working in comics, the person I have the most respect and admiration for, as an ethical professional and as a human being, is Jimmy Shooter.

For one thing, Shooter has refused to sue DC, even though his case is airtight, over characters like Princess Projectra and Karate Kid, which he created when he was a minor. As he was a minor, his "work for hire" contract is null and void and Shooter can claim ownership of these characters. But Shooter refuses to do so, and his restraint is shown as being all the more extraordinary by the fact that, at least in the 1980s, there was a lot of money involved. As I understand, a lot of hush-money was paid to DC by the KARATE KID movie, which became the biggest blockbuster of that year (the credits say that "Karate Kid is property of DC Comics" at the end of the film). True, the fact that Shooter brought this story up during a time Marvel was having labor disputes was extremely self-serving, but still.

Also, every single time some writer complains about a Shooter edict that forced them to do something or told them not to do something, my reaction is, most of the time, "Good call on Shooter's part, because I think you were completely wrong and that what you wanted to do would have been a big mistake."

A lot of people are annoyed at Jimmy's so-called edicts: for instance, that Wolverine should never kill, which was not only disastrously unrealistic, but also meant that the X-Men had to fight robots or cyborgs if Wolverine was in a story. I for one, agree with Shooter; in a superhero world with superhero rules, killing is immoral and makes you "broken goods." Wolverine's ability to act as a hero needed to be preserved, long-term.

Another was the idea that there were to be no explicitly gay superheroes at Marvel. I personally agree with this. Sexuality, apart from fun-spirited cheesecake, should not play a role in superhero stories. If you're a good writer, sex can be implied. Steve Englehart, for instance, in his AVENGERS, had the Mantis be, quite clearly, a Vietnamese b-girl, but this was never explicitly stated. Read it, and you see how you get the picture, without Englehart ever really saying anything. Englehart also implied very strongly the very real passion the Scarlet Witch and Vision had, but never showed us any scenes of Bionic Boning (is this what they mean by "love machine?"). Those two had so much heat there's no way anyone could ever think it wasn't physical.

Overall, sex in superhero comics should never be addressed, because the reader's filthy imaginations fill in the blanks just fine. Look at all the bright blue Comet and Supergirl gags.

Having worked with Tom for years, I can tell you that Jim's completely off-base and Tom's one of the best -- if not the best -- editors I've ever worked with.  And I can tell you that the kind of editorial notes Jim objected to are exactly the kind of notes Jim himself used to give to experienced writers when he was an editor.

Plus, when he decided he didn't like Tom, Tom offered to hand the book to another editor, to get it done without any contact between Jim and Tom.  So if Jim had really wanted to do the book, he could have done it with someone else; he chose not to.



Tom was anything but irrelevant to AVENGERS FOREVER.  He was very involved, all  the way, making the project better at every turn.  Not only would the book not have existed if not for him, but even if it somehow had, it wouldn't have been anywhere near the same.



Because Jim keeps giving interviews where he tells you how smart and noble he is, and how everything that's ever gone wrong in his career is someone else's fault?

kdb

Jim Shooter wrote some good Legion stories as a teenager but everything he did as an adult seems to have upset large groups of people.

I enjoyed his testimonygiven at the Comics Journal/Harlan Ellison/Michael Fleischer libel case.  Classic Shooter!

I started reading comics way after Shooter's years. From what I've read, he seems temperamental to work with but produces smatterings of good work. Could someone reply with a reading list of Legion or Superman related titles written by Shooter? Thanks.

I liked Shooter's first couple of years of Legion stories, later, I lost interest in the Legion as it got a little less goofy and less like a sci fi scout troop...but as usual with any personalities, I take their opinions on others with a grain of salt...

Shooter's run on Legion started in July 1966 and went through '69, he did some Action Superman as well, including Eterno the Immortal...

I enjoyed Shooter's original work.  After he returned, it never seemed as good.

Funny, in the Ultimate Avengers DVD featurette, all you talk about is how wonderful George Perez is.  :)  :)  :)


Seriously, you get to see plenty of Tom in the featurette too...  seems to be worth watching to get a feel for the best of the Avengers creative teams over the years (which was a nice surprise).

darn that Shooter!

He must have gotten to the producers!

Seriously, I praised Tom plenty, too -- they must have just thought the George comments fit their piece better.

Another instance of how well freelancers think of Tom as an editor: Tom was not originally assigned AVENGERS in the Heroes Return thing; he was assigned IRON MAN.  George and I both asked that the books be switched, because we knew Tom would be invaluable to making the book as good as we could make it.

kdb

Well, that kind of changes everything, doesn't it? If this is the case, Jim Shooter should not have said what he said about Brevoort.

Don't get me wrong, not every decision Brevoort has made recently has been a terrible one. The assignment of the awesome Brubaker to CAPTAIN AMERICA, who has done some of the best work that book has gotten since Roger Stern, as has the perpetual writing career of Dan Slott, easily the most talented writer working at Marvel now by an order of magnitude. And there was the Busiek Avengers back in the day, naturally.



Understood. What perhaps I should have said was this: Brevoort quite clearly knows who the Avengers are. The fact that he worked on AVENGERS FOREVER (and as you say, was an influential force on the development of the book) proves this. Perhaps my view of the editor's job is off, however, I was under the impression it was the editor's job to say "no" at times and have the final decision over the product he is responsible for producing. Thus, I am extremely dissatisfied with his work in NEW AVENGERS, a book that has little to nothing about what the core concept of the Avengers is about.

Not to mention Brevoort also edited DISASSEMBLED, which features creative choices that were proposed by the writer (Scarlet Witch's relapse into madness, despite her consistent characterization as someone that overcame it to become stronger), as well as nonsense like the pointless death of Hawkeye, who is to the Avengers what the Thing is to the Fantastic Four, and the ridiculous revalation that Chaos Magic isn't real (what does that even MEAN?)

What I'm trying to say is, Brevoort knows who the characters are, and what the Avengers are about, but all this happened anyway. And whatever conclusion can be drawn on does not raise my estimation of his work.



I don't think that's fair. While I will grant you that it is entirely possible that Shooter's comments about his experiences may, by the very nature of their source be biased and self-serving (particularly about his experiences with Defiant and Valiant, business deals that sound fishy) nonetheless, some of his career choices have been very wise and I agree with them - particularly in instances where he tells the writers "no."

An example would be the story about where Shooter tells Bill Mantlo "no" to the idea about Spider-Man and the Black Cat having an illegitimate child. Such an element would alter Spider-Man in a very unsavory and permanent way.

Heck, not every decision you assume he's made, good or bad, is necessarily his decision, either, any more than the editors who worked for Jim Shooter got to make all the decisions themselves.



Your view is off.  The job of an editor isn't to say no, or to say yes, or to guard continuity, or to flout it, or any other set of things various readers want to see at different times.  All of those things can (and sometimes are) part of the job, but they're not the job.

The job of an editor is to:

1. Make the books sell.

2. Deliver the books his employers want.

3. Deliver the books on time, to the extent that it fits with 1 and 2.

I haven't been reading NEW AVENGERS, but from what I read about it, it seems that Tom is delivering pretty much exactly the book his bosses want, making them sell, and bringing them out on time to the best of his ability and within the constraints of the assignment (i.e., you wait for Bendis, you work around Epting and Grummett, etc.).



Virtually every editor has told a writer "no" at some point in a way you'd agree with.  Not just Jim, but editors you'd overall despise, too.  And there are decisions that you almost undoubtedly wouldn't agree with, like Jim's reported plan to kill off all the Stan Lee versions of the characters and replace them with new versions initiated by him -- a story that Jim denies, but which I've heard about from enough sources to believe is rooted in something.  Or Jim deciding that the Avengers should be Marvel's big guns, and throwing out the Vision, Wanda, Hawkeye, Wonder Man, the Beast and more.  And there's the fact that under Shooter, Marvel lost, forced out or chased off Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench, Frank Miller, John Byrne, Gene Colan, George Perez and others, to the point that one DC exec once told me that DC viewed Jim as their greatest asset, and the whole DC boom of the Eighties couldn't have taken place without him.

But I'm not saying Jim's a bad guy, a bad writer or a bad editor -- everyone makes good decisions from time to time; everyone makes bad ones.  How it balances out is up to the individual observer.  Heck, I'd like to see that last Legion story, too -- and I'm the guy who pitched Tom on contacting Jim to do a Korvac follow-up in the first place, so I'd have liked to see that work out.  [And come to think of it, that's another nail in the coffin of the idea that Tom killed Jim's comeback story -- there wouldn't have been a project for Jim to quit if Tom hadn't contacted him and asked him to do it to begin with.]

But Jim has a long, long record of painting himself as a put-upon genius unfairly booted around by the other guy, whoever the other guy was at the time.  If you believe his interviews, you're getting a very, very one-sided picture.

kdb

http://www.newcomicreviews.com/GHM/specials/LifeOfReilly/1.html

gives what seems to be a good idea of where editing fit into one of the darker Spider-Man periods, and mentions Tom "There's no way in hell that I'm going down in history as the man who killed Spider-Man's baby" Brevoort.

I was jazzed about Jim Shooter writing a new Avengers story when I first heard about it. Less enthused when I noticed it was going to be revisiting the Korvac saga, which probably made sense from a sales standpoint, but to me sounded suspiciously like another case of rehashing the glory days of comics' past and adding unnecessary baggage to a classic story that should just be left alone as is. But I was still pretty jazzed.

Since then I had the opportunity to read the script he had proposed, and I admit I was glad it didn't see print after all. There was just too much stuff there that I wasn't comfortable with. <SPOILERS AHOY>

For one thing, a big chunk of the story brought in the character of Nova, who pretty much never had anything to DO with the Avengers... and it brought him in just to KILL him. That doesn't make sense to me creatively, unless Shooter just wanted one last chance to give Marv Wolfman the finger or something. For another, there was some pretty sadistic torture of a couple of female Avengers involved. I'm sure that Shooter would claim that this was all in the name of good characterization, and that this was to give the women a chance to show that they were just as heroic as the men, finding the strength within to overcome unimagineable pain and adversity, etc. But it just left a queasy taste in my mouth reading it. And I can't envision Shooter writing Thor or Captain America being crushed to a pulp and sent, still alive and inside a box, to Avengers Mansion. Why do it to the girls instead?

There are a lot of comics projects I've read about over the years that never made it to print, and I wish many of them had, but that isn't one. Hopefully his proposed "last Legion story" would have been worthier of the classic past.

As I have said before, I enjoyed Jim Shooter's silver age work on Superman and the Legion.  His work when he returned to comics didn't strike me as original.  Regardless of his work as a writer, it does appear as if a number of people had issues with him as an editor and editor in chief.  I think his work as an editor in chief and as a writer are really two different issues.

People are people, and so it goes...

Speaking of old-school greats making comebacks, here's one that's going on for real:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=8052

Steve Englehart, arguably the greatest writer in superhero comics history, reunites with Marshall Rogers for BLACK RIDER, a cowboy book in the 1880s about a Gil Kane-esque cowboy hero in New York City and Chinatown. It's going to have a Young version of the Ancient One, and MAY, just MAY lead to a series written by Stainless itself! So, everybody, buy a copy so this does well enough to become a series.

And best of all, it's coming out...THIS month!

A new Englehart book...and SNAKES ON A PLANE, within a week of each other? Life don't get much better than this.

I purchased that one Julian and it was very good.  I suspect Marvel did western month just to retain copyrights on various titles and characters, but it was nice to see them honor their western characters for at least one more time.