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.
