Anyway…..

I too have fond memories of Shooter’s Marvel since it was the one I grew up with. Didn’t know much about the guy then but I admire his professionalism when compared to some current writers/artists.

So far I think the first two issues of his Legion run have been decent. There’s some really nifty ideas and some predictability and some cool retro moments. For now I”m on board only because I like the idea of one of the Legion’s “founding fathers” so to speak returning to write the book for its 50th Anniversary. I’m not expecting it to be the greatest comic I’ve ever read, but it should be fun and interesting (and come out on time).

The whole creator’s-rights movement of the 70s was pretty controversial in the industry, but the fans were pretty much on the creators’ side.

On Shooter, the thing that I remember is that most of the things people remember the Shooter years for actually started under his predecessor, Archie Goodwin. Marvel had been flailing for a few years after Roy left the top job; the nadir was Gerry Conway’s short stint as EIC. People called Gerry the “seagull editor” – he flew in, crapped all over everything, and flew away. Archie got things stabilized, and Shooter built on that. As far as I know, the decision not to renew any of the writer/editor contracts was made by corporate management during Archie’s tenure, but the contracts didn’t expire until after Shooter was EIC. I’ve also heard that Shooter made a bad situation worse by being less that honest with the writer/editors about this decision.

Well, no, it really wasn’t.

http://www.beaucoupkevin.com/2008/01/theres-always-crazier-hobby-out-there.html

I find Jim Shooter’s era looking better and better in retrospect (yeah, except for Secret Wars II. But I still say the first Secret Wars was pretty darn good for what it was.)

One controversy not mentioned here was the “Marvel should give Jack Kirby his original art back” kerfuffle. I think this was the touchstone for a lot of people to get all crazy-mad with rage (and in retrospect, you can really see a lot of people getting *seriously* unhinged.)

Shooter (seems to me maybe a bit unfairly, but stories differ) was Marvel’s point man for the unceasing barrage. I think the controversy gave a lot of people who didn’t really care one way or the other about Shooter reason to hate him (i.e., because they supported Kirby), and for people who *already* hated Shooter, it sent a lot of them off the deep end into incoherent rage.

My hunch is that a comprehensive objective history of the era would give this particular controversy a lot of importance beyond its own merits.

Nonfans who ask about it really can’t wrap their heads around it. But an example I use is the Dallas episode that erased a whole season as a dream. My wife watches soaps and I find it amazing how similiar some of the ideas are…especially when it comes to bringing back dead characters.

I was twelve going on thirteen when I started reading “normal” comics. I’d been reading Archies since I was three, but when I was twelve I discovered the Transformers comic. In turn, I started reading Rom because it was sort of like Transformers, and it became my introduction to Marvel/superhero comics.

When I was thirteen, I discovered comics shops, and I was at just the right age to appreciate the explosion of independent and weird comics available in specialty stores in the mid-1980s. I read everything from Watchmen to Boris the Bear to Shatter to Electric Warrior and was able to take it all in with a completely open mind.

I was eighteen or nineteen when I began to feel that comics had lost their innocence and were going somewhere I wasn’t willing to follow them. I’d liked Todd McFarlane’s work on Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man, but in the early nineties everyone started trying to draw like him or Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld and it depressed me. I wanted everyone to go back to trying to draw like John Byrne, like they had in the 1980s!

Also, too many crossovers ruined the series I was following. I’d been a loyal reader of Quasar and Ghost Rider (Volume 2) since issue one of each, and now I couldn’t understand anything that was happening from issue to issue because in between issues the characters had to go do a crossover. So I’m picking up the new Quasar, thinking, “At last, I can find out how he gets out of last month’s cliffhanger!” and suddenly he’s on the other side of the universe or dead and in the afterlife.

For my own sanity I eventually had to adopt my friend Paul’s policy that as soon as that happened, I would drop a title. See what you did, comic companies? You lost a reader.

Where were we? Oh yes: fans’ outrage. I didn’t have any when I was thirteen. Now I do.

I don’t like the look and feel of most current movies. Science fiction and action were my two favourite genres when I was a teenager; SF and action movies from the present have an obnoxious quality to me. To paraphrase Peter Griffin, they insist upon themselves. Comics adaptations, or at least superhero ones, suffer from that problem, and from the problem that they aren’t faithful to their sources.

As for comics themselves, I don’t read many current ones. I still spend about $25 a month on comics, but it’s all from the four-for-a-dollar boxes at small local comic cons and swap meets. That’s where I can find lots of good, old comics from the era that I can relate to, and at 25¢, I can even afford to experiment with the occasional new comic and be pleasantly surprised.

However, overall, I feel that “they” are never going to “get it right” again. Of course, I realize that’s subjective, but I’m the one in charge of when I open my purse and when I don’t, and I don’t like what I see today. Maybe in another ten years styles will circle around back to where they were in the 1980s. Or maybe I’m going to be left behind with only my old comics to read.

Why does this lead to outrage? I think because fans are damaged, wounded people. We had bad childhoods. We had bad adulthoods. We’ve been abused our entire lives. One of our few comforts is comics (or animation, or science fiction, or fandom). Take that away, i.e. change it dramatically from what it was, and the pain becomes so deep that it has to be externalized.

So there was a massive exodus at Marvel of angry writers who were suddenly having their autonomy taken away — Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, I forget who-all else. DC was only too happy to offer them a new home — though I don’t think anyone got an equivalent writer/editor position to what they’d had before.

Roy Thomas certainly did as “Earth-2″ editor. Not sure about anyone else…

eah, i knew that Shooter had originally pitched the idea of him coming back for “one last Legion story” to Levitz years ago, but that it fell apart because it seemed everybody was reluctant to work with him. i kinda assumed all that had been worked out since he’s on the book now, and i haven’t really checked out the recent professional reaction to it, so i might have missed that.

*shrug* the fans seem happy enough, though.

Haven’t seen any industry reaction at all, but the fans have been very happy.

I do remember reading somewhere on CBR that the main sticking point at DC, regarding the “Last Legion Story”, was Mike Carlin. At the time he was in a senior postion and threatened to walk if Shooter was ever employed. John Byrne was also working on New Gods or Wonder Woman, I think, at the time, but no word on whether he had anything to do with sinking the story.

It’s so wrong-headed, and suffers the same conceit found in a lot of ’70s movies (you see a montage of this trope in the documentary Out of the Celluloid Closet): the idea that the only way to show gay men is as rapists or villains.

And because nobody asked for it, a link to the trailer I cut for that doco:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIz7E9GVgGM

yeah, i knew that Shooter had originally pitched the idea of him coming back for “one last Legion story” to Levitz years ago, but that it fell apart because it seemed everybody was reluctant to work with him. i kinda assumed all that had been worked out since he’s on the book now, and i haven’t really checked out the recent professional reaction to it, so i might have missed that.

*shrug* the fans seem happy enough, though.

I’m no fan of him myself, but I can’t decide whether the recent little storm of hostility in response to his Legion writing gig (where he’s not even in charge of anybody) is better described as silly or ugly.

there’s been a hostile reaction to Shooter’s Legion?

maybe within the industry, but all i’ve seen and heard amongst the fans is gushing, nostalgic affection… even from those who are nowhere near old enough to be nostalgic about Jim Shooter writing the Legion!

since we’re talking about Shooter, though: can anybody verify the rumor that early in his tenure he had planned to kill off the major Marvel heroes and replace them with new versions of themselves?

(or has this already been addressed in Urban Legends and i’m just forgetting?)

I also liked that continuity was respected, but not necessarily in an exploitative way (except for Secret Wars II and Mutant Massacre towards the end of the Shooter years, which marked the beginning of the crossover craze, probably following the lead of DC’s Crisis). The continuity I’m thinking of are events that bled across titles like Malekith’s winter storm blowing across the world, the Dire Wraiths War, and (my fave) the Scourge of the Underworld knocking off random villains. These elements gave Marvel a coherence, but you never HAD to buy other comics to enjoy the story you were reading, but very often you WANTED to.

I agree with T. that people like me might feel differently if the inside politics was more widely known at Marvel, but as a kid who was into his superheroes, these comic books were fun. And, to beat a dead horse, THEY CAME OUT EVERY MONTH.

Maybe because my friends and I were just reading the comics at the time and weren’t old or connected enough to be privy to all the behind the scenes bickering or didn’t have the 70s memories to compare it to, but i remember not having a single complaint in the Shooter days.

Oh, and the “Marvel Hates Gays” thing is still going on, at least in some people’s minds. See Rawhide Kid, Freedom Ring, and for some bizarre reason, Young Avengers/Runaways threads from last year for how that one’s shaking out.