Author: Jim Shooter

How I Returned to Comics

On October 9, 2025

by Jim Shooter

In 1970 the job market in Pittsburgh for eighteen-year-old comic book writers was pretty sad. I got some good interviews but nobody wanted to risk hiring me, a kid just out of high school. My background wasn’t exactly something I could sell. I did various little jobs and some freelance assignments, but I eventually had to get a normal job. I managed a Kentucky Fried Chicken store for about a year. I worked in advertising.

In 1973…or maybe 1974, dunno…a guy named Harry Broertjes called me and asked if he could interview me for a fanzine devoted to the Legion. The Legion Outpost. I think. Among the last things he asked me—might have been off the record—was why I wasn’t writing comics at that time. I told him that I was sure Mort wouldn’t want me back at DC, and that, having walked out on Marvel after only three weeks, I felt I’d burned my bridges there.

Harry told me, for one thing, that Mort had retired and wasn’t at DC anymore. He thought that people at Marvel and DC just didn’t know how to get in touch with me. I didn’t understand how that could be, but….

(Harry is now a mild-mannered guy who works for a great metropolitan newspaper. Hmm.)

The next day, I got a call from a guy named Duffy Vohland, who represented himself as an editor at Marvel. He wasn’t. I think he was an assistant in Marvel’s British Department. Harry had apparently given him my number. Anyway, he said that I would be welcome at Marvel, and that I should come to New York to meet with Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas and other people.

Okay. I think I went the next day, which was my day off at the department store. I did meet with Roy, who offered me a regular book to start with, Manwolf. I hadn’t picked up a comic book for years, and I had no idea who Manwolf was, but….

After my meeting with Roy, I went to lunch with a bunch of Marvel staffers and freelancers. They all encouraged me to go over to DC and look for work there, too. Apparently, it was okay to work at both companies at once, at that point. Things had changed since the old days when Frank Giacoia, Gene Colan, and many others were forced to use pseudonyms when moonlighting for the enemy (as if you couldn’t tell it was their work). I went to DC’s offices—someone had to tell me where they were, since DC had moved from where I’d left them last, 909 Third Avenue.

I didn’t know who to ask for. I figured that Nelson would probably still be there. Yep. Nelson was very glad to see me and escorted me right into the publisher’s office. The publisher was Carmine Infantino! That was a surprise. He’d been the art director for a while during my first stint, and had always liked my cover designs, so he remembered me, sort of. Carmine wrongly greeted me as the “kid who created the Legion.” Well, no, but….

No matter. Carmine summoned then-Legion editor Murray Boltinoff and told him to put me on the LSH again. Murray seemed pleased. Cary Bates, who was writing the series, had more work than he could handle. Murray needed a guy. Then Carmine walked me down to Julie Schwartz’s office, introduced me (we’d already met, years ago) and told Julie that I was his new Superman writer. Julie sort of grunted an okay.

So, DC offered me two strips with which I was familiar, and Marvel offered me Manwolf. I went with DC. A mistake, as it turned out.

I wasn’t very confident. How could I be, having been through Mort’s self-esteem meat grinder?
Jim

First of all, I wasn’t very confident. How could I be, having been through Mort’s self-esteem meat grinder? Yes, by that point, I’d figured out that I wasn’t a “moron,” but I sure wasn’t feeling like I was God-King of comics writers.

Julie wasn’t as verbally abusive as Mort (though ornery and acerbic), but he seemed to be deliberately hazing me. And, as I learned later, he was. He made me rewrite things two and three times for totally bogus reasons. I had no idea what was going on. Remember, I wasn’t all that confident, figured I was rusty, and for a long time I kept thinking, maybe it’s me. Nah.

Meanwhile, Murray was nicer (though crusty and sarcastic) but seemed to have early stage Alzheimer’s. Seriously. Ask his former assistant, Jack Harris. Murray would give me instructions, forget what he’d said, then be upset that I hadn’t followed some orders he’d never given me. I ended up doing rewrites because Murray misremembered things. Again, at first, I thought it was me. Maybe I was confused. Maybe I didn’t understand him correctly.

At one point, Julie asked me for a plot for a Superman story. When I came to the office to pitch it, he cut me off and said, “Forget what you came up with, here’s the plot.” He gave me a plot bit by bit, scene by scene. I took notes. I followed that plot to a “t.”

Julie’s assistant, Bob Rozakis, rejected the script because he didn’t like the plot! I pointed out that it was Julie’s plot, and appealed to Julie, but Julie said tough shit, if Rozakis didn’t like what I’d written, I should re-plot the story with him.

Okay. I did. Then, I rewrote the script according to the new plot.

Then, Julie’s other assistant, Nelson, rejected the story, again, because he didn’t like the plot! In his letter, Nelson said the dialogue was great, each scene was well-realized, everything was good—except the plot, which he found puzzling, since I was usually so good with plots.

I had to go to New York to see Murray anyway, so, while there, I went to Julie’s office and tried to tell him that I was being batted around like a tennis ball among him and his two assistants. The first thing he said was that he “stood by his assistants.” He added that if I had written the story well enough, I would have made the plot work. Either of them.

Angry, I went home and wrote a letter to Carmine, explaining what happened. The last paragraph of the letter said, “What do I expect you to do? I expect you to stand behind your editor. But I thought you ought to know what happened, and that I will never work with Julie Schwartz again.”

I got a letter from Julie a few days later. He had intercepted my letter before it reached Carmine! Julie’s letter said, “Dear fellow J.S., You shouldn’t have sent that letter to Carmine. You will never work in this business again.” Exactly that.

No great loss at that point. Curious, I called Murray and asked him if he still wanted me to write the last batch of stories he’d approved. He said, of course. Why wouldn’t he? No reason, I said.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t me. It was them.

Murray continued to be a little fuzzy-brained. One time he sent back a script to be rewritten because it “didn’t work” due to the fact that people could see Phantom Girl. “Jim, she’s a Phantom! How can they see her?” Well…she gets immaterial, not invisible. So I argued with Murray for the first time. And won.

Feeling, for the first time that I knew what I was doing, after that, I often argued with Murray and won. One time, he asked me to send him three “springboards,” which are one-paragraph ideas. I did. He sent them back with a scathing letter saying he asked for plots. What the hell was I doing sending him these paragraphs? So, I called Murray, told him I was happy that he liked the springboards and asked him which to write first. He seemed confused and asked me to “refresh” him regarding the springboards. I did. He specified which order he wanted them in and I wrote the scripts.

However, I also did do a few stories for Marvel during that same period. A Super-Villain Team-Up, an Iron Man, I think…maybe something else. Maybe a Manwolf. I forget.

It was kind of an adventure. I had no idea how to write “Marvel style.” I sent in plots, as requested—okay so far—then was stunned when finished pencil art came to me in the mail. Wh-wh-what?! What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

I tried calling Marv Wolfman, Editor-in-Chief at the time, but every time I called and asked for Marv, the receptionist transferred me to Dan Adkins, who worked in the black and white department. He didn’t know how to transfer calls, and eventually just started hanging up on me. I kept trying to explain to the receptionist what was happening, but no matter what, I got Dan. Click.

Finally, a fan, a member of the Pittsburgh Comics Club told me he thought what I was supposed to do was write dialogue and indicate on the pencil art where the balloons should go. So, I did.

Because I was clueless and couldn’t reach anybody who could explain things, I made some gigantic screw ups. Not all my fault. For instance, the penciler on the Super-Villain Team-Up was George Evans—and it was his first Marvel job, too. He’d always worked from full scripts before. The Marvel plot-pencils-then-dialogue thing was as much a mystery to him as it was to me. And he didn’t know the characters! At one point in the plot, I wrote, “Doctor Doom taunts his helpless captives.” George drew Doom dancing around with his thumbs in his ears, wiggling his fingers going nyah-nyah!

When I saw that in the art, I didn’t know what to do. See, I assumed that some editor had checked the art before it was sent to me. (Nope. Marvel didn’t do that. The writer was, to some extent, the editor. Who knew?) At DC, with Mort, questioning anything was death. I couldn’t live with that image, though, so I wrote the most polite note possible suggesting that perhaps, this was a mistake. There were lots of mistakes, by the way, but that one was over the top. I think Marie Severin fixed that panel when she saw it as the pages flowed like molasses through the office, but I know for a fact that everyone at Marvel thought I had called for that nyah-nyah.

Anyway…somehow I struggled through.

I continued working for Murray, but there didn’t seem to be much of a future there. Then, one day in December of 1975, I got a call from Marv Wolfman, then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel. He offered me an editorial position. I agreed to come to New York to discuss it on Monday, December 29.

“The new guy’s here! Jim’s here!” It was as if they were overwhelmed, desperate for help.
Jim

I arrived on time for my 10:00 AM interview. Marv wasn’t there. When I walked into the editorial suite, however, I was happily greeted as if I already had taken the job by the rest of the editorial staff—Roger Slifer, Scott Edelman and Roger Stern. “The new guy’s here! Jim’s here!” It was as if they were overwhelmed, desperate for help. Um…they were. They asked me to proofread the lettered, inked art boards for an issue of Captain Marvel that had to go out that day. Okay. They were very happy to see me and deferential, as if I were the new boss. They came to me and asked me questions about finished art boards they were proofreading! “How should I handle this? What should I do here?” What da f**k? So I proofread Captain Marvel and answered questions the best I could.

The other two people who sat in that room were Marv’s secretary, Bonnie, and Chris Claremont, who wasn’t in. He did arrive later, but spent most of his time sitting in Bonnie’s chair with her in his lap, necking. They eventually got married. I was at the wedding.

I soon found out that, for years, since Stan had stopped being the one-man writing-editing-creative head guy, mostly Marvel writers were on their own. Writers sent plots directly to the pencilers, pencilers sent the pencils directly back to the writers, writers sent the script, pencils and balloon placements directly to the letterers, letterers sent the lettered pages directly to the inkers and the inkers finally sent the pages to the office. So, the first time the work was seen by someone in editorial was when the pages were finished, all but colored. Everybody on the editorial staff was a “proofreader”—trying to fix problems that were already committed to ink on boards.

So, if there were major problems with a story, or major mistakes, they had to be corrected on the inked, lettered boards! That’s hard. Much rewriting, re-lettering, redrawing and re-inking had to be done routinely.

Marv breezed in around noon, stopped in his office long enough to drop off his bag and breezed out again, going to lunch. Okaaay…so I went to lunch with the editorial troops at the local Brew Burger.

Sometime after we got back, Marv breezed back in, and finally we had our talk. Marv wanted me to replace Chris Claremont, who was going freelance. Chris occupied a position Marv called “pre-proofer.” What? Apparently Marv had come up with the “revolutionary” notion that if someone in editorial read the plots before they were drawn and checked out the scripts and pencils before lettering and inking, mistakes could be caught earlier when they were easier to fix, before they got to the “proofreaders” in a finished state.

I said, so you want me to be the editor? He said, no, I’m the Editor. I said, no, you’re the Editor-in-Chief. He was still uncomfortable with my title being Editor, so he offered the title “Associate Editor.” Okay. Whatever. The job was the same, the money was okay. I was to supervise the plots, scripts and pencils, head up the “proofreading” staff and be his second in command. Fine. Marvel was a train wreck at that time. I thought I could help fix it.

What a total lack of organization. What a mess.

When I took the job at Marvel, I still owed Murray a few stories. It was okay by Marv that I deliver them. I told Murray I’d finish what was on the docket, but then I was done. He seemed honestly disappointed.

Roger Stern, who had started at Marvel only two weeks before me quickly became a friend and volunteered to help me plot those stories. I think it was a good exercise for him—he wanted to become a writer—and he was a great help to me. That was all I had going with DC then.

I officially started at Marvel on the first working day of 1976, January 2, a Friday. Just like in my first try at Marvel, I showed up that day with a suitcase and no idea where I was going to sleep that night. Déjà vu. But, this time, I had some money in my pocket. I think I stayed at the Y again, at first, but at least I could afford to eat.

Thank you to JC Vaughn for allowing me to excerpt an article he wrote.

That Time I Quit the Comics Business

By Jim Shooter

On September 30, 2025

In 02 Early Life, 03 Marvel Comics

By Jim Shooter

When I started writing comics, it was to make money for my family. I never intended to become a comic book writer, or any kind of writer, for that matter. I was going to be a scientist. I was going to help beat those damn Commies to the moon, or cure cancer, or something.

I took five years worth of math in four years of high school—algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, trigonometry/analytical geometry and calculus/probability/statistics. I also took six years worth of science—biology 1 and 2, chemistry 1 and 2, and physics 1 and 2. I voluntarily went to summer school one year to take Physics 1. I won the tri-state science fair in ninth grade. I was in the science club. I took four years of a special, after-school extra class (for credit, mind you) called “Biology Research,” which paired science-psycho students like me with University of Pittsburgh researchers to serve as their lab assistants and create/execute a research project of their own. Mine was an iteration of the Hill reaction, photosynthesis in a vat, basically. Does that tell you I wanted to be in the science biz?

P.S., what I learned from my Pitt PhD adviser while being his lab assistant was how to make LSD. I forget, now, and no, I never tried it.

During my freshman year in high school—before I had ever taken even chemistry 1—I participated in a tri-state chemistry contest, the prize being a scholarship, sponsored by the American Chemical Society and various local industry giants like Koppers. I finished in the top ten, against nothing but senior chem 2 students! I was the only freshman there! I was serious. I had been studying chemistry and science in general on my own for years. In fifth grade I wrote a term paper for my accelerated English program on hydrocarbon chemistry. I was lucky to have a pre-med student as a next-door neighbor. In exchange for my playing chess with him, he’d explain chemistry things that daunted me in my reading—mostly things that were over my head math-wise at the time.

However, writing comics, which I started just before ninth grade, cut into my study time a bunch. I never had to open a book to ace chemistry 1 and 2. No surprise that I did less well in the chem contest during my sophomore and junior years, and didn’t even try in my senior year.

Fortunately, I got a scholarship anyway. I aced the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. That’s a story, too. I had been up for over 48 hours, skipping school, trying to make a deadline for Mort. I finished the job in the wee hours of the morning of the day of the NMSQT, a Saturday, and mailed the pages air mail special delivery at the main post office in downtown Pittsburgh, which was open 24-7. Air mail special delivery usually got there the next day, for 55 cents, as I recall—an outrage. There was no FedEx back then. Anyway, by the time I got back from the post office, it was around five AM. Had to be at the school at seven to take the test. I was dying to take a nap—but I knew that if my head hit that pillow, I’d never make it to the test. And, hey, I payed seven dollars to take that test, goddammit! So I stayed up, drank a vat of coffee, walked the mile and a half or so to Bethel Park Senior High School and took the test. I was wired. I was electric. I was intuiting the answers to calculus problems before I’d ever taken calculus. I finished before anyone else and went home and slept like the dead. When the results came in, I had one of the best scores in the state. Sheer, total magic. I’m not that smart.

Anyway, I got scholarship offers, in addition to the NMSQT scholarship, like crazy. Even one from MIT. NYU offered me a chance to be what they called a “University Scholar,” one of only two that year. They would have paid for everything, housing, books, tuition, everything. I could have designed my own curriculum. They would have even given me a “cultural stipend,” money to use to go see Broadway plays and such. Cool.

However….

I had given every dime I’d ever made to my mother. She/we had never paid my taxes. I was in debt to the Feds. A lot.

No scholarship covers that.

So, I would have had to work while going to college to pay my back taxes. I would have had to work anyway, to pay living expenses the scholarship didn’t cover, but, without the tax situation, a flipping burgers job would have sufficed. The tax thing meant I had to have a real job.

Having worked my way through high school, I don’t know…I just wasn’t ready to grind out the writing through another four years. Didn’t think I could make it.

I would stare at blank paper for days…until the fear of not delivering eclipsed the fear of delivering.
Jim

Also. When I started to work for Mort, writing, drawing and creating came easily to me. And it was a joy. And I thought I was accomplishing something for my family. As time went on, after being screamed at countless times that I was an idiot by the Big Important Man in New York, it became harder and harder. I felt like no matter what I put on the paper, it would be wrong, and that Mort would yell at me. I dreaded our Thursday night calls. In fact, it got to the point that when I heard a phone ring anywhere, anytime, even in school, I’d freeze up, white knuckled, fearing that it was Mort, calling to yell at me. It got to the point that I was afraid to make a mark on the paper, because I knew that whatever I put there would be wrong and Mort would scream at me. I would stare at blank paper for days…until the fear of not delivering eclipsed the fear of delivering. Then, I was greased lightning. Our family financial situation never seemed to get better. It got worse. I remember my mother, desperate for a check, coming up to my room, looking at the paper on my lapboard, seeing that it was blank, and crying as she went back downstairs.

So, anyway, writing for Mort through college didn’t seem like an option. I asked Mort if I could maybe have some less taxing office job instead—part-time assistant editor, or whatever. He said no, he needed me as a writer. He needed me?! The retard?!

So—and here’s where I admit that I am the retard Mort claimed I was—I flew to New York—hey, student standby round trip was only $27.50 in those days—then, I called Stan Lee and asked for an interview. Idiot. What if he was out of town, or sick that day? Fool. I called from a pay phone on Madison Avenue. Miraculously, the receptionist put me through. Unheard of. No one got to speak with Stan. Did she sense the desperation in my voice? Whatever. Lucky fool. I told Stan I wrote for DC and wanted to write for Marvel. He said, and I quote, “We don’t like the writing at DC.” I said, and I quote, “I don’t either. The people there call me their ‘Marvel writer,’ and they mean it as an insult.” Stan thought for a few seconds and said, “I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”

I showed up at Marvel’s offices at one PM, as prescribed. I met with Stan. We started talking comics theory. We agreed on everything. He liked me! Hey, Mikey! After three hours of conversation, during which, at one point, Stan jumped up on his thankfully-sturdy coffee table waving a yardstick as if it were a sword (he’ll deny that, but it happened) Stan hired me as an editor. That was the good news. The bad news was that there was no way I could do what he wanted and go to NYU at the same time.

I picked Marvel.

P.S., we’d already beaten the Commies to the moon anyway….

I think I met with Stan on a Wednesday or Thursday. I showed up for work as agreed at Marvel on the following Monday with my suitcase and no idea where I was going to sleep that night. I worked all day, mostly editing a Millie the Model script—and caught a major mistake. Stan, who wrote the book, was very impressed and grateful. Hey, I was a made man on day one.

Somehow, Mort had found out that I had taken a job at Marvel. He called me at my desk that first day and proceeded to scream at me for being an ingrate, “after all I’ve done for you,” retard, imbecile, idiot, blah, blah, blah. Ho-hum.

Sometime around 6:30 PM, I started looking for a place to sleep. I think I ended up in the Y.

I spent three weeks working at Marvel. That would have been at the end of 1969 or maybe early 1970. I loved it. I co-plotted several stories, I edited lots of comics, I learned paste-up, sort of, from the great Ancient One, Morrie Kuramoto, I proofread, I did everything. Marvel had a very small staff.

However, I was eighteen, fresh from Pittsburgh, with only a few dollars in my pocket, desperately in debt to the Feds, without any friends or help. Sure couldn’t count on the family for support. I went over two weeks without eating. No money for food. And I was skinny already. My draft card, which I still have, says I was six-foot-six and 170 pounds at age 18, some months previous. Picture that. I don’t know what I got down to, but I was f**king skeletal. Couldn’t find a place to stay. Couldn’t survive.

Finally, I gave up. I went home to Pittsburgh, where at least, I could sleep in a warm place.

A couple of asides:

In 1966, I had a chance to appear on What’s My Line? For those of you not wicked old, like me, that was a TV game show on which a panel of notable, smart people tried to guess the contestant’s occupation. Who’d guess that a 14-year-old was a writer of Superman and other DC comics? I thought I was a lock to win the maximum prize of $50.

My editor and boss, Mort Weisinger, nixed the appearance. He said that Superman and the other characters were the stars and that he didn’t want creators, like me, getting “undue attention.” Mort never ran creator credits.

Around that same time, Mort asked me to “create” a new character called Captain Action. I was pleased and honored. After I found out how little latitude I had, I was less pleased. So much was dictated to me! CA had to have Shazam-style mythological powers, an Action Cave, a sidekick, a car, a pet panther, for Pete’s sake, and more. I did the best I could….

But when I saw the art for the two issues I wrote—the first issue by all-time-great Wally Wood and second issue by all-time-great Gil Kane inked by Wood—I was back to being pleased. Ecstatic, in fact. The art was brilliant. And, extra groovy, those two issues had my first splash page credits! Woody lettered in his own credit, as he always did, and also lettered in mine (and Gils’s)! (Note: Woody hated writers, but since I provided layouts with my script, in his mind, that made me an artist! Artists deserved credit!)

Mort didn’t have our names removed—probably because Woody was who he was. You just didn’t mess with Woody.

After I left comics I worked at a paint and plastics plant as a quality control tech (less glamorous than it sounds), at a lumberyard, at a restaurant washing dishes, as a security guard, in a payroll office, in a department store, as a house painter, as a car reconditioner and as a janitor— but, during those days, I also got work doing comics-style advertising concept, writing and illustration. I did work for big clients like U.S. Steel and Levi’s—and made incredible money, when there was work. The trouble was that such work wasn’t steady, hence the parade of low-end jobs to bridge the gaps. I also was manager of a Kentucky Fried Chicken store for a while. In one week of advertising work I made as much money as a year’s worth of any of those other jobs. But, I hated advertising. Once I was asked to come up with a pitch for U.S. Steel Building Products Super-C Steel Joists. First, I had to find out what a joist was. I thought, what am I doing? Selling things that I don’t even know what they are, much less, whether they’re any good or not. Bleh.

How I write comics, by Jim Shooter

By Jim Shooter

On September 15, 2025

In 11 Writing

2008

I never want to do anything typical or standard. For instance, I didn’t feel the need to go any particular direction for any VALIANT title. For each new title, I went with the best idea we had at the time. All I cared about was making each one good, gutsy and groundbreaking.

I start by thinking about events that might be in the story, the effects those events might have upon the characters and, conversely, how the characters would shape the events. I think about what is, or might be at stake, both in plot terms and in human terms. This is very much a freewheeling process—I play “what if…?” a lot and imagine recklessly. No thought, no idea is too far out at this stage. Nothing is out of bounds. Usually, I write down pages and pages of notes—ideas, snippets of dialogue that occur to me, character bits, scene ideas, real events from my own life that relate, events from the lives of people I know or have heard tell of that relate; whatever. I make lists of words or things that relate to the ideas that come up—for instance, if the story might involve the sea, I’ll probably make lists of nautical terms, fish, ships, etc. Free association. I do a great deal of research into the ideas that come up. At first, the research is speculative—just poking around for more items to include in my notes and lists—but as I become more sure that something is going to end up in the script, the research becomes more focused. I even make sketches.

While doing all of the above, I’m also thinking about what I have to say about the subjects that emerge. Do I have any insight I can offer? A new thought, a new way to look at something…or an “observation about the human condition,” as a former publisher I knew used to say. I’m not talking about building a corny moral into the story, or some stupid lesson; not just a stupid irony, or even a clever O. Henry-style irony. I’m talking about things that make the reader say, “I never thought of things that way before,” or “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” or “I know just how that character feels,” or “I understand that more deeply, or in a different way, now,” or…whatever.

For instance, my Legion of Super-Heroes story, entitled “One Evil,” has a subplot about a leadership crisis. I know about such things from both sides—being the leader of an organization in difficult times and being a follower in such a situation. I have plenty to say about that subject, plenty of insights to offer. If I can convey to the readers something new via the characters involved, what they go through and the way they go through it, that’s a good thing.

Those are the kind of things that can touch the reader, involve the reader and make a story personally meaningful. And, that’s the hard part. Often, I fail spectacularly. Once in a while, I think, I succeed. At least a few times in my life I’ve succeeded, apparently, because a few people have come up to me at conventions and told me that something I wrote moved them.

I remember stories Stan Lee wrote, that I read as a kid, that moved me, and how much they meant to me. It’s a wonderful thing. Rare, in my case, but wonderful. I keep trying.

Solid structure is not formula—it’s effective communication.
Jim Shooter

Writing a story is architecture as well art. Once I have my ideas sorted out, I try my best to build a story using Aristotelian principles. Solid structure is not formula—it’s effective communication. Most great Western literature is built using Aristotelian principles, as are pretty much all television and movies.

Summing it up, you need a good story to tell and the ability to tell it effectively.

My scripts are very detailed. I provide the artist a great deal of reference—photos, web links, even sketches, sometimes. I’ve seen some other writers’ “full scripts” that are less than 3,000 words for 22 comics pages. Mine are generally 12-15,000 words. I work things out pretty thoroughly. That doesn’t seem to stop some artists from high-handedly “interpreting,” though—and ignoring things, and just plain butchering things. Sometimes, what they do is extremely disappointing. “Look what they done to my song, Ma….”

When I started at Marvel in 1976, the common “wisdom” among many big-name editorial/creative people was that certain kinds of books “don’t sell.” The genres on the “don’t-sell” list included Westerns, romance, science fiction, fantasy, comedy and more. What idiocy! Every time someone in my presence said anything like, “Science fiction books don’t sell,” or “Westerns don’t sell,” I would say, “Show me a good one!”

Two former Editors in Chief of Marvel actually said to me that “good” books don’t sell! Their opinion was that all the readers wanted (they referred to these generic readers as the fans from “Fudge, Nebraska”) was to see the Hulk slam the ground and make the shockwaves that knocked the soldiers over—again and again and again. They often cited lower-tier books like Jim Starlin’s Warlock, McGregor/Russell’s War of the Worlds and anything Chaykin did as “proof” that good books don’t sell. Again, what idiocy! I can give you dozens of reasons those books didn’t do as well as the Fantastic Four or the Amazing Spider-Man, none of which have to do with them being “too good.”

Sales of comics in the United States these days are generally pathetic. When I was EIC at Marvel, we’d cancel any title that fell near 100,000 copies a month. Our line average was around 300,000! Today, few books reach as high as 100,000 a month. Most mainstream books from major publishers scrape by with pathetically low sales numbers, many under 30,000. Fortunately, the economics of the business have changed so that titles can survive at much lower sales figures than when I was at Marvel. Small indies can hang on with sales of only a few thousand copies. This has opened up a lot of niches.

Therefore, today, the good news is that there is a much wider variety of genres available. The bad news is the same as before—too many books in every genre just aren’t good. “Show me a good one!” still applies.

Some will tell you the reason for low sales is lack of distribution. Nonsense. I believe that if there were comics racks in every store in America, it would make little difference. The overwhelming majority of comics published here are not only not good—they’re unreadable.

The art in comics is generally better than ever, the writing is often clever and glib, but in spite of that, far too many comics are utterly impenetrable.

Anyone can pick up almost any novel off of the rack—and they’re able to read it and understand it. Anyone can turn on almost any episode of any TV show—even if they’ve never seen that show before, they can get the gist and follow it. Anyone can go to almost any movie—and they can make sense of it. But if anyone other than a hardcore fan picks up a dozen comics at random off the rack, I’d be surprised if they could make sense of/understand/follow even one of them. Even hardcore fans find many comics daunting to follow!

The craft of comics storytelling is all but lost. A Who’s Who of industry bigshots have privately agreed with me when we’ve discussed exactly this subject, but it’s a tough problem to fix, given the often huge egos of the creators, general creative anarchy, and lack of trained editorial people.

Good craftsmanship doesn’t inhibit creativity—it ignites creativity.
Jim Shooter

I had a similar problem when I became Editor in Chief of Marvel in 1978. I slowly dragged the creators kicking and screaming toward better stories and especially better storytelling, and, oh, by the way, that led to Marvel surging to leadership of the industry—almost 70% market share—and a truly amazing era of incredible creativity! Good craftsmanship doesn’t inhibit creativity—it ignites creativity. Our VP of circulation used to say that the reason we were so successful, even if other companies out-promoted us, had better production values, marketed better, had more well-known characters, whatever, was that we “beat ’em between the covers.” Better stories better told.

Genre is the least of our concerns. We need to produce brilliant and accessible work—a lot of it, for a long time.

When Watchmen came out, it brought a lot of new readers into comics shops. They enjoyed Watchmen, thought, “Hey, comics are cool! Who knew?” They went looking for more good stuff. They were disappointed to find too few other accessible, entertaining things. We, as an industry, need to produce things that sweep the nation—and have more good things waiting for people who get swept up into comics.

I think that a lot of what the big companies produce is driven by marketing concerns—foolishly. I think they’ve worn out the mega-crossovers and Crises. They need to think of something new. I think a lot of the indie creators worry about and hope for movie and merchandise deals way too much. They should learn their craft and focus on that. Too many writers and artists spend too much time playing permutations—recycling old characters and old stories. We need to create! And, again, as an industry, we need to learn our craft.