(Reprinted with permission from Tim. -JayJay)
Whilst I was away on our wonderful family holiday I received two messages to ask if I had heard Jim Shooter had died. I hadn’t and it hit me like a brick in the face. I had plenty of time to think about what I was going to say about Jim, whilst I was away.
I hope you will forgive the length of this Tribute to Jim Shooter, but he was a very special man in a very special time in my life – I just wish it could have lasted forever.
I first met him at the Marvel UK offices way back in 1986, when he had made the Cross-Atlantic flight across the pond, from NYC to London, to deliver his motivational talk on creating comics and meet his, then very young, UK-based comic creators at the Bayswater offices just off Queensway at 23 Redan Way – which nowadays look nothing like they did back them.
A short while after his visit, I was visiting the Marvel UK offices and was told that Jim had been very happy with my inking and that “I got it.” He had loved my ability to separate plains with the line thicknesses and the spotting of blacks I added to the pages. I was really chuffed to hear this, but it would be some time before I was able to thank him for his very kind and encouraging words.
The years went by and I found myself a guest at Frank Plowright and Hassan Yusuf’s GLASCAC93 on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th March 1994 held at the Glasgow City Halls in Glasgow.
There, I had arranged to see several editors who were over for the event. I was lucky enough to even pick up a script from Andy Helfer, after only a couple of minutes of arriving there on the Saturday. The rest of the weekend saw me pick up more work from my editor at DC/Warner Bros and spending a lot of time chatting to my peers of the time.
On the Sunday, I was about to set off back home when I saw Jim, who had been a special guest there, and decided to wait for him to finish chatting with someone in the café area and take the chance to speak to my old Editor-in-Chief and say hi.
It was probably THE single best decision I have ever made at a Comic Convention in my life, because – although I didn’t know it at the time, I was about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life, and it would be life-changing.
Eventually, after what seemed like an age, the chat ended and Jim sat with Janet Jackson (not Michael Jackson’s sister, but JayJay Jackson of Marvel Comics fame). I went over and said hi to them both, and amazingly, he remembered me and said, Hi, Tim. That was the kind of guy he was, he remembered me from the day at the Marvel UK offices and that simple gesture certainly made me feel appreciated.
We all three had a brief chat and as we were ending it, Jim said, hey if you are ever over in the States and want to show me your latest work, feel free to drop by. I decided to strike while the iron was hot and replied that I had my portfolio over with my friends at our table, where we had been drinking tea and coffee, to which Jim said great, let’s have a look at it now.
He and Janet both looked through it, and they would occasionally stop and pass complimentary comments on the contents, which pleased me no end. As any artists reading this will know it is a great feeling to be told that some likes your work, when that someone is of the calibre of Jim and JayJay, it suddenly means the whole world.
It was here that I heard Jim say for the very first time, “Hey, I believe we can harness his power for good.” I would hear that same phrase several times again later, as he looked at the work new artists and writers with the intent of hiring them.
Following the very complimentary comments as they both perused my artwork, Jim said to expect a package soon, as they were hiring me as a painter for his new comic company Defiant.
Now, to be fair, at the time I was riding on a high wave with lots of companies hiring me at the same time, so I found myself working flat out, but I had also heard lots of folks saying they had work for me that didn’t happen, so I was used to hearing things like this.
Sure enough, within just a few weeks, I was sent a package containing some collectable cards artwork on watercolour paper for one of their books – Dark Dominion.
I had just been trialling photocopying my original artwork onto watercolour paper to mimic the Kentmereing process used by 2000AD and found that it worked. When I saw this was the same process being utilised by Defiant, I was beyond pleased, because I knew exactly how this same grade and make of watercolour paper worked.
I sent the batch back to them a day or so later and another batch arrived, which I sent back to them.
I was finishing up some inks for Paul Neary at Marvel UK and a Future Shock for Alan McKenzie at 2000AD, as well as some other work for different publishers, so it fell very nicely for me when I got the transatlantic call to ask if I would be able to go out a week to the Defiant offices. This turned into a return trip for two weeks (or so I thought) two weeks later, after I returned home to go on a week’s family holiday in a country cottage in North Wales. The two weeks turned into a month, then two, then six. I would return home Christmas week and get called back out again during the festive break to land on the first week of January in a snow-covered NYC and stay there until around April/May.
I have written several large blogs about my time there and have been asked on numerous occasions to write a book about my time out there. I am looking at doing this soon now and wish I had done so before this sad news.
I can categorically say that I have never worked for a comic company like Defiant – and I have been lucky enough to work for some of the very best during my career. In fact, and I have said this a great many times, Defiant spoilt working in comics for me. I have never received the kind of treatment I saw from Jim and the gang there before or after, spending time in the Manhattan offices in NYC during 1993-94. I have always told people I felt like Elvis every time I went in through their doors – I am now going to say for the first time publicly that I was treated like a god.
From the moment I arrived on the Monday morning after my flight landed the day before during my first long stint from Summer to Christmas, Jim told me, if I needed to ring home anytime, I could do so, as many times as I wanted to and Defiant would pick up the bill – I could send things back home for the kids, as often as I wanted, they would package it and send it off for me again at the company’ expense – I was given an expense account, all I needed to do was invoice for two pages and when that ran out do it again for the same two pages in effect and the cycle would continue, all my other money was wired to my bank back home – All my food and drinks of pop, coffees and teas were paid for by Defiant – I was taken out to places all over at the expense of Defiant – all at the behest of Jim.
Honestly, I wish I had caught a fraction of Jim’s generosity – not just to me, but to all the Defiant family – on video, so you could see what I saw and experienced.
When I got out of the comic business in 1999 – it wasn’t because I hated comics – it was because of the ”business of comics” because I had seen how they could and should be run. That was all down to Jim and the Team he built and surrounded himself with – his Defiant Family.
Watching Jim on a daily basis, working with and interacting with people at all levels of the business – I came to realise quite early on in my time there that I was in the presence of a very honourable man, someone you could trust and who cared for his people and created a fun-loving, hard-worked team of individuals and forged them into a family. We hear talk of a Marvel Bullpen – This one was real. Yes, we worked hard, very hard, but all the all-nighters were more than generally recompensed with care, and love, as well as being exceptionally well paid. I was paid almost as much as the top pencillers there. But, above all that was the respect afforded me by Jim and the entire gang. I could and still can feel that love and there was Jim towering above me instigating it all (honest check out the photos – I felt like a little boy standing next to him).
I have spoken since to many people personally, who saw a different side to the man, but I can honestly say I never, ever saw anything like they recall to me. And to be fair he was just another cog working for the ones who tried, at least twice, to bury him and his companies later, and I always felt that working in his constant presence at Defiant that it always easy to blame him from something that may have happened during his tenure at the place that tried to ruin him, whilst I was there at Defiant, but it was they that loaded the gun and used him to fire it. Make of that as you will.
All I ever saw of Jim was his honour, his respect for others, his humour, and his acceptance of mine, to quote Jim, as The Crazy Brit. Check out the photo of me asleep on the floor below my drawing board, after pulling an all-nighter and thinking I could catch a couple of hours of sleep from 5:00 am before everyone arrived for a new day at the office. It was Jim who was the first in on that day and his humour shone in droves here with the note he left on my chest, as I slept. It was a funny thing to do, but it was also asking the team to work around me and to allow me to continue to sleep. I have darkened the words on the sheet to enhance it for you to read.
He first coined the phrase, The Crazy Brit, after Joe, Rob, Su, Benny, George, and a few others introduced me to John Woo with a full Saturday from early morning until later in the day of his action films.
I was so impressed by the insane, almost ballet-like gun-play that between films, I and the others acted out the gun play along with the relevant gunshot SFX. These antics over spilled on the following Monday when everyone that came into the offices that day that had been at the Woo-Fest found themselves being shot with imaginary Uzis and shotguns. Folks fell all over the place as they found themselves shot and forced into firing back at me.
It was the craziest, but funny, mad mayhem!
Around mid-morning, Jim popped his head around his office door, smiled his big grin and uttered the words, “I might have known it was something to do with the Crazy Brit!” He laughed and went back inside his office. He had been in since early morning and had heard the whole thing.
The occasional gun firing and falling bodies continued on and off for most of the day and, amazingly, people’s workflows actually increased.
On another occasion, I found myself working in a side office with Su and Benny on Good Guys, which was six months behind schedule, to try and get it back on track and up to speed. We were working around the clock for several days without much sleep and hardly venturing from that small side office, except for toilet breaks. We slept at our boards, ate at our boards, and as a result fell ill together at our boards.
Benny had to go home to bed, closely followed by Su, leaving me alone to try and meet the impending deadline.
That morning saw, first JayJay, then Joe, come in, seeing me coughing, sneezing, and spluttering my head off. As soon as Jim arrived, unbeknownst to me he was hijacked before reaching his office with news of my co-painters having to go home and the state of me still trying to work, but looking rough as heck and in no real state to continue.
He took one look at me and said to Janet to get me a doctor and put it through Defiant. I said I was okay really, to which he said, “No you aren’t – I know you work very hard here, but we are killing you.”
Well, as I have mentioned Jim was a touch taller than me, so we compromised and I accepted some paracetamol and cough medicine from the drug store that they sent for and to go back to my apartment for some sleep and not to return until I was feeling better – the book could wait, after all it was already very late.
I went back, took some tablets and a little of the medicine and got some much-needed real sleep in a real bed. I woke up the next morning and felt a lot, lot better, so rang to say I was coming back in. I was told under no uncertain terms, that if I did and wasn’t better, as I was saying, they had orders from Jim to send me straight back. I promised them I was now feeling far better and asked them to let Jim know this.
The first thing he did upon my arrival back at the offices was come to check on me. He had asked reception to let him know as soon as I arrived. Su and Benny were back that same morning too, also feeling much better, and together we met the deadline.
Dark Dominion was always on time and we always managed to meet the deadline, but on one occasion an issue was right up to the wire and I had switched to inking one night, along with two other inkers, and also to pencilling a few panels and then inking some pages, so I could continue to paint them. I was last man standing eventually, and the pages needed to be finished by 9:00 am to leave on the 10:00 am flight to Canada to reach the printers that very morning, or we would break our unbroken record of meeting the deadline.
I commandeered Ed’s office and asked Joe to stand outside it as bodyguard and not to let anyone, even Ed, in – it was 8:40 am and I had a page to start – it was madness. I walked out of Ed’s office at precisely 9:00 am with the still very wet page to hand over to Zack, so he could go and catch his flight. Guess who was standing outside the office to greet me with a loud round of applause and cheers with the rest of the Defiant team – Yes, it was Jim leading from the front as always and his big grin and enthusiasm in his applause made it very special to me. That moment will stay with me forever – I was almost in tears. It became known in the office as the twenty-minute page.
JayJay and I have often paraphrased Charles Dickens and his book, A Tale of Two Cities, by saying, “They were the best of times, they were the worst of times.” From the opening few words from the opening lines of it. Because they really were the best of times, but we also sadly experienced the worst of times forced on Jim by the people that had hired him to be the Editor-in-Chief whilst in his mid-twenties.
I hated to see what they were doing to the man I knew, a kind, honourable, generous man, who had time for everyone, always.
Something I have neglected to say was, the first week in Manhattan I stayed in an hotel, the Jolly Madison Towers Hotel, paid for by Defiant. When I went back I spent a week or so in the same hotel, and then was given an apartment on 54th street between 5th and 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas). It was just around the corner from Trump Tower and a couple of blocks behind The Plaza Hotel of Home Alone Fame and beyond that Central Park. And, again, this was all paid for by Defiant.
So, I was paid so well, had an expense account, an apartment, and a set of keys to the Defiant front doors.
Even after Marvel Comics’ farcical lawsuit, Jim still wanted to keep me working on their books from the offices and I was then moved into his personal apartment at 244 Madison Avenue.
Never had, or has so much trust and such great respect and treatment been shown to me.
I have so many similar thoughts on all the happy times during my stay in America during 1993-94 and so many involve Jim at some point. I, like all the gang, miss him already, and will keep his memory alive, as long as we each live because of these kinds of heartfelt stories.
All I will add now is:
Godspeed, Jim, my friend, I learnt so much about how a comic company should be run and how its creative teams should be treated. I always believed it should be run that way and you proved to me that it was possible. Thank you so very much, my friend – I truly wish we could have done it all again and Joe and a lot of others and me always had it in the back of our minds that we would try to recreate the Defiant feeling again by working together once more.
You leave a massive hole in the Defiant family’s lives and, although I have managed to catch a lot of the old gang to offer my condolences, I have not managed to speak to everyone, as I was away when the news was given to me of your passing.
I hope my words here, in some small way offer a little comfort and solace to any and all of my Defiant brothers and sisters who may read these words. Jim may be gone physically, but he will never truly die, as his work lives on beyond the here and now – forever – or to quote, Jim’s Defiant Mantra – Just beyond the imaginary limits.
Love and Best Wishes,
Tim and Snoopy
