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Author: Jim Shooter Page 8 of 25

Uncanny Divinations and Premonitions

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On October 25, 2011

In 09 Reminiscences and Tributes, Uncategorized

First This

This is the post that I meant to have up Saturday. Tomorrow’s will be today’s. You know what I mean. Sorry.

Stellar Horoscope 

Early on during my time at Marvel, at a convention in New York City, I met a comics fan who was a part-time astrologer. He had a regular day job, some bookkeeping or accounting-type thing, but on the side, he did horoscopes. He liked what I had to say at some panel I was on, thought I seemed like an interesting subject and volunteered to do my chart. Free. Okay. I gave him my date and time of birth and the city where I was born.

A couple of weeks later, he stopped by the Marvel offices to deliver his work, a hand-drawn astrological chart and his analysis of same.

The chart was beautiful. Framable. I still have it, packed away somewhere in the storage space.

The analysis?

What he came up with was startling. His analysis detailed things about me that nobody knew but people very close to me, and a few things that only I knew. Things that, I assure you, would have been nigh impossible to find out.

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Stan Meets a Mobster and Other Tales to Astonish

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On October 21, 2011

In 03 Marvel Comics, 09 Reminiscences and Tributes

Stan meets Frank Costello

Vince Colletta told me this story. Vince told me a lot of wild stories. At first, I thought he was, as my grandma Elsie might say, “full of potato soup and monkeys.” Like the time he told me he was cast for a major role in The Godfather. Long story, but ultimately the role was taken away from him and given to a big-name actor who had big-time clout with the director. Vince said that the casting director quit because of that.
Yeah, right.

1981-ish. Mike Hobson, relatively new publisher at Marvel asked me to go to lunch with him one day. No agenda, just lunch. Mike was making an effort to get to know the creative troops and told me he wouldn’t mind if I brought someone along. Vince happened to be in the office, so….

I don’t know how it came up, but at lunch, Vince told his I-was-almost-in The Godfather story. It so happened that Mike had been working at the William Morris Agency at the time, was fully aware of the casting dust-up and verified everything Vince said.

Later, Vince showed me a videotape of his screen test, in which he played a mobster being questioned by a Senate subcommittee. He was good.

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ULTIMATE COMICS – All-New Spider-Man #2

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On October 20, 2011

In 18 Reviews, Uncategorized

An Apology

A number of people commented that my assessment of Brian Michael Bendis’s writing effort on All-New Spider-Man #1 was too harsh and too personal. I said that he phoned it in, relieving Marvel of “easy money.” I also referred to the Marvel editorial people involved as “bozos” who are “clueless.”

I’m sorry. I don’t know Bendis, and as Tom Brevoort pointed out, I wasn’t there. I don’t know how hard he tried and I don’t know if he was snickering when he cashed the checks.

I also shouldn’t have said the editorial people were bozos. Clueless, yes, I’ll stick with that. I’ll stick with my unfavorable assessments made elsewhere of the creative management at both Marvel and DC (Didio/Lee, Fine/Buckley, et al), and my negative opinions of the tippy-top brass at both companies who inexplicably allow the madness below.

But my remarks about Bendis? No excuse. It was over the top. But I offer this explanation.

I wanted to like that book. I really wanted to like that book. Bendis is Marvel’s top gun. I expected to like that book. But the writing really let me down. There wasn’t much of it, some of it was weak and there was not so much as a nod to the fact that the work was done for a serialized presentation.

And it was a Marvel book.

They—I almost typed “we”—should be better.

Somewhere in my dark little heart of hearts, I still have some Marvel in me. I remember the days I was Editor in Chief when DC out-promoted us, out-advertised us, had better production values, had movies while we had none, had more household name characters and we still outsold them three to one. Why?  Because, in the words of our circulation V.P. Ed Shukin, we “beat ‘em between the covers.” We were better. We won with good stories, well told. Generally better than theirs, anyway.

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ULTIMATE COMICS – All-New Spider-Man #1

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On October 19, 2011

In 18 Reviews, Uncategorized

First This

 
Video of the NYCC panel I participated in, “Screen Future: Gaming, Comics and TV Around the World and Five Years from Now” may be found here. The panel was moderated by Intel Corporation Futurist Brian David Johnson and included savvy SyFy Channel exec Craig Engler and renowned SF author/visionary Cory Doctorow.All-New Spider-Man #1

The Cover:
The “standard” cover features Spider-Man swinging through the city, a standard riff. Spider-Man’s pose isn’t distinctive. Make the web into a rope and it could be Robin just as easily. It is also nonsensical, in the sense that the figure doesn’t really seem to be swinging on the web-line. It’s as if he was floating past and reached out to grab it.

 

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NYCC Panel – Screen Future: Gaming, Comics and TV Around the World and Five Years From Now

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On October 18, 2011

In 14 Events, 15 Video

JayJay here. On Sunday, we went to the New York Comic Con see the panel Jim was a part of, Screen Future, with Brian David Johnson (Intel Futurist and author of “Screen Future”), Craig Engler (senior executive, Syfy channel) and Cory Doctorow (sci-fi author and blogger on Boing, Boing). Freddy filmed the panel and I’ve uploaded the video (all 6 parts) to YouTube, so settle back, grab some popcorn and kill the better part of an hour in the future. ; )

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Jim Shooter NYCC

The New York Comic Con

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On October 17, 2011

In 14 Events

Science, Fiction, Friends and Formidable MindsThere was a guy with a bullhorn directing the crowd headed toward the Jacob Javits Center, endlessly repeating: “Ticket holders, green entrance! Picking up tickets, yellow entrance!” He noticed me among the throng—I’m easy to notice in a crowd, as would be Lurch or Chewbacca.


Actually, come to think of it, those two probably wouldn’t stand out much in that crowd. Anyway, he noticed me, and through the bullhorn blasted, “Good morning, Mr. Shooter!”

My welcome to NY Comic Con 2011.  : )

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October Tales: Spooky or Inexplicable Events – Part 2

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On October 15, 2011

In 09 Reminiscences and Tributes

Directory Assistance

Toward the end of my teen-age stint as a writer for DC Comics, I took a part-time job washing dishes at a restaurant.

It wasn’t that DC wouldn’t give me all the work I could handle and fill every minute of my time—the fact is that working for Mort Weisinger was killing me. His abusive keep-the-creators-under-his-thumb editorial “style” had worn me down.

Early on, when the big, important man (said he) called me from New York to yell at me about every little flaw and mistake in my latest script I felt terrible. After four years of this, I’d finally figured out that DC wouldn’t keep sending me checks if what I did wasn’t any good, and Mort’s rants about what a moron I was for misspelling a word or some such became just noise. Grating, irritating noise. Mort still made writing comics a pain, an ordeal—even if he no longer had the ability to make me feel bad about myself.

I found myself less and less interested in the work, less and less enthused about doing something, that at first, I loved. My productivity fell off steadily.

So I looked for something, anything else to do to make some money for my family. Options are limited when you’re eighteen. So, that year, and for several years after quitting DC, whenever any creative work I got wasn’t steady enough, I took various less glamorous jobs.

Washing dishes at the Viking Restaurant in Banksville, just through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and down the road a ways from Pittsburgh, I met Sam, a fellow kitchen grunt. We became friends.

At one point, I needed in the worst way to make a long distance call and had no money for the pay phone. Sam gave me his last five bucks with days to go till payday. As long as I live, no matter what I ever do for Sam, there’s no way I can ever repay that five bucks. You can’t give more than all.

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Science Fiction vs. Science Fantasy

By

On October 15, 2011

In 08 Recent Work, 10 Questions / Answers

Defiant1 Commented:

“I think it’s funny seeing Matt Murdock say “It was nice of Foggy to get me this push button tape recorder”. That would have been a big deal to a kid back then. My dad let me play with one he owned in the 70’s and I know I played with it for hours upon hours. The one pictured above looks like it’s about 3 times as big as the one I used.

One thing that bothers me about modern comics is that in many cases they are still using repulsor rays and outdated or misinterpreted science from 50 years ago. When Stan Lee wrote about transistors in 1961, they had only been invented 2 years earlier. Stan didn’t understand that transistors don’t actually power anything, because they were just a switch…. What’s important to me is that he made an attempt to keep the science and technology relevant. I don’t see any interest by most writers to do that in modern comics. We have scientists on the verge of creating black holes in Europe. We’ve got robots that climb walls using nothing but surface tension. We have scientists out in Arizona melting diamonds and creating heat 60 times hotter than the sun. I liked comics for the imagination and possibilities they introduced. Definitely not just social possibilities they showed us. There was more to it than “Hey, I’m bigger than you… I’ll stick my chest out while I’m hitting you into the next state.”

People are working on Iron Man armors. People are working on suits you can wear to climb walls like Spider-Man. Scientists are working on Invisibility cloaks that can hide objects or entire events. Scientists have made a material 10 times harder than diamonds. Is it any wonder kids have no interest in science related occupations anymore. Mainstream modern literature escapes more into pure science-fantasy than it does science-fiction.

Apologies for derailing the topic, but those images mean more to me than just examples of female stereotypes in the 60’s and 70’s.”

Answer:

RE: Science fiction vs. science fantasy: Some of us are still trying to go the science fiction route. An executive from Intel whose title is “Futurist” was sufficiently impressed by the research and real science underlying the stories my recent Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom and Magnus Robot Fighter comics that he based a lecture he gave at the University of Washington on my stories. He also invited me to appear with him and Craig Engler, senior executive of the SyFy Channel on a panel this Sunday at the NYCC: “Screen Future: Gaming, Comics and TV Around the World and Five Years From Now.”

A Question About Female Characters

By

On October 14, 2011

In 10 Questions / Answers

Question:

“Totally off-topic, I’ve been reading some old Daredevil tales from the 1960s/70s and was surprised at the “limp” way the female characters were presented. Both Karen Page (in particular) and the Black Widow are from the “Oh, Matt…” school. Any thoughts? (or kick me into the place where I SHOULD have posted this) – MmM “

Answer:

RE: the portrayal of female characters in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Those were less enlightened times. And not all the creators at that time were up to date even with the current state of enlightenment.

I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. That was a remarkable time in which a sweeping revolution began that has changed the world, at least the western world, tremendously. It didn’t happen suddenly, all at once, but starting then and continuing now a revolution in the human condition occurred. I was just old enough to retain an awareness of the before and comprehend the transition into the after, up to the present. Therefore, I am able to conceive of and believe in progress beyond the still-sorry state of things.

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The Secret Origin of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe – Part 3

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On October 12, 2011

In 03 Marvel Comics, 05 Secret Origins

Issue # 15 of a 12-Issue Limited Series and Other Tales to AstonishJust as I stayed out of Larry Hama’s way on G.I. JOE, and stayed out of Archie Goodwin’s way on EPIC Illustrated and EPIC Comics, I pretty much left Mark Gruenwald alone and let him do his thing on The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The series wasn’t what I had envisioned or what I would have done, but that was okay with me.

If an editor or a creator knew the fundamentals, had an approach that seemed reasonable and had the chops to pull it off, well, all righty then. It was never my goal to Shooter-ize everything. I just wanted to make good comics, and I realized there were many ways to go to get to that goal.

(ASIDE: For instance, Editors in Chief before me had always taken personal charge of designing the covers and writing the cover copy. It seemed to me inevitable that a sameness to the covers would creep in after a while. I’m not talking about a consistent “Marvel feel” or even a house style—I mean staleness—“oh, that again” syndrome. Didn’t matter who the EIC was, or how talented. The covers Len Wein created under his own administration as well as those he created as freelance cover editor for Marv, in my opinion, fell into a rut, to a certain extent. Too many covers featuring two big figures duking it out. To much similar copy: “Can you guess the shocking secret of…?” “This one has it all” “Not even your (enchanted hammer or whatever) can stop Name of Villain!” Archie Goodwin’s covers, too, fell into a certain pattern.

As soon as I became reasonably confident that an editor had a clue about cover design, I butted out and left the covers up to him or her. Even if some weren’t as good as I would have liked, or as good as I would have done, better to have more variety, I thought.)

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