Comic Book Resources

Me too.

Then again, I miss Shooter from time to time…

I don’t. Jemas was insulting and upsetting.

You know, as much as despise what Quesada is doing with Marvel I’ll give him full credit for actually doing something. He’s given the line more of a direction than any editor-in-chief has since Lee realized they could still make money by printing superhero books. It seems a calculated plan to try to gain/retain a certain audience beyond the aging nostalgia hounds. I even see a bit of trying to transition Marvel to other media in his strategy within the comics.

Compared to Jemas (or *ugh* Harris) Marvel comics is no longer floundering. I suppose you could miss Jemas in a sort of “What nutty thing will he do next to try to kill the company?” way.

Jemas had a poor public persona, and he certainly shouldn’t have tried his hand at writing, but overall, he was good at running the business side of things, and apparently kept some of the excesses of the editorial staff in check.

I’m with Scott and Michael. Jemas came across as an insultingly arrogant ass, but his tenure did give the Marvel Universe a chance for a breather and an opportunity to experiment between the complicated 90s and the ongoing one-story-feeds-into-another thing that’s been going on for a while now. And arguably, he opened the door for a lot of the great folks working at Marvel to get a foot in (including Axel Alonso, to whom I’ll be eternally grateful for his role in getting X-Force/X-Statix going).

That said, I wasn’t the least bit upset when he left. And Marville was just awful.

Have a good day.
John Cage

I don’t. But I do miss Steve Guttenberg.

Quesada or Shooter…I don’t know who I hate more.

@Random Stranger

Was Marvel floundering under Jemas? I don’t know a lot about the financial side of Marvel, but I know creatively Marvel was doing great under Jemas.

New X-men, X-force/X-Statix, Marvel Knights, the Ultimate line. I remembering reading a lot more comics under the Jemas reign.

@Lawrence

New X-men, X-force/X-Statix and Marvel Knights were all direct products of Joe Q. and the Ultimate line was a collab with Jemas and Joe Q….

I’ve always liked Bill Jemas.

When he came along Marvel was on the verge of bankruptcy. He and Joe Quesada managed to turn the fortunes of the company around and make it actually interesting for the first time since Stan Lee was in charge.

Quesada and Jemas together helped forge an era of Marvel Comics that I think will go down as one of the in the industry. It’s a shame Jemas never knew to keep his mouth shut.

“Quesada and Jemas together helped forge an era of Marvel Comics that I think will go down as one of the in the industry. It’s a shame Jemas never knew to keep his mouth shut.”

One of the best, is what I meant to say.

DanCJ said:

“When he came along Marvel was on the verge of bankruptcy. He and Joe Quesada managed to turn the fortunes of the company around…”

Marvel came out of bankruptcy because of the Spider-man movie. Jemas and Quesada are victim of being in the right place at the right time.

I’ve actually wondered what it would be like if Shooter replaced Didio at DC. Judging from his own comments, the continuity and publication messes DC has had in the last four years would not have happened. Or the moral excesses in the stories, either.

You just need to round out the quartet with a baby.

Compared to Jemas (or *ugh* Harris) Marvel comics is no longer floundering. I suppose you could miss Jemas in a sort of “What nutty thing will he do next to try to kill the company?” way.

Yeah, he did some really nutty things to try to kill the company, like get a ton of critical and fan buzz for the books, raise a ton of sales, give it its best stock performance in years, sign an incredible amount of top talent to exclusives and drag the company out of receivership and bankruptcy.

WHAT A NUT!!!!!!11!!111!!!!

Marvel came out of bankruptcy because of the Spider-man movie. Jemas and Quesada are victim of being in the right place at the right time.

No.

I don’t really get why Jim Shooter gets so much hate. Maybe there was a bad public persona I wasn’t aware of (although I do know a lot of creators couldn’t stand him) but he was ed.-in-chief during my golden years of collecting Marvel. 1980-1986 gave us great comics, a tight, coherent universe, and a lot of new innovations (limited series, Marvel Universe, etc.) that made that universe a fun place to be. And books were never late.

I do think the Jemas years were interesting because of the books mentioned by other posters (which may be more to do with Joey Q. than Jemas) and those years did a lot to bring me back to Marvel. But they don’t compare to the consistency and (here’s that word again) fun that I associate with Shooter’s tenure.

Shooter was basically a control freak that a lot of others hated to work under. You’re right that he gave some great comics, and the universe that was so coherent is a result of that stifling environment many creators named as the reason they left the company during those years.

We really missed out on a potentail Jemas/Didio war, you know.

Shooter was good to certain creators (Byrne, Miller) and awful to others (see: every Marvel writer or artist who quit Marvel in the late ’70s and early ’80s). He elevated the minimum quality of a Marvel book, but kept many titles formulaic and stagnant.

Jemas & Quesada may have been contemptuous of their core audience, but they put out some exceptional comics. On the other hand, they were responsible for the rise of Chuck Austen…

Whose idea was it to put Stracynski on Spider-man and let him do whatever he wanted? It was like bad fan-fiction from someone who barely knew who Spider-man was and led to the end of the character/book.

The Ultimate line was good at first because it was for new audience, then seemed to become bad over time.

RE: Shooter. Personality conflicts aside, his visual policies resulted in some shitty art if the artist in question wasn’t a top-tier star.

Also, sure Jemas came across as a major asshole, but I can’t help but notice how much the innovative spirit and willingness to take risks that made the early days of “nuMarvel” so exciting (if also sometimes frustrating) just… sputtered out once Quesada was left on his own.

I miss BIG NUMBERS.

In fairness when Straczynski began Amazing Spider-man it was critically applauded and not as convoluted, irreproachable and totemic before jemas left. Sure the guy was a hard to like, what with his snark on Peter David and whatnot from Marville but I can’t remember the Marvel Universe being such an important and fun read, universe wise, after he left. There was even a month of non- dialogue comics for nearly every title, even if the idea didn’t really work bar the odd comic, they still had the confidence and passion it seemed to try. They were some really good books worthy of the price you would pay compared to the five minutes it takes to read some Marvel books today – except Uncanny X-men. Maybe Jemas was a relative of Austin or something.

Just wondering where I could read some specific examples of Shooter’s policies weighing down creators.

I can imagine stuff like Secret Wars and definitely Secret Wars II being a real pain for writers, and to a lesser extent subplots like Scourge of the Underworld. In a sense Shooter did let the crossover genie out of the bottle.

But what about pre-1984? Besides the Dark Phoenix Saga, what other times did he take control of people’s stories? What creators left because of him (I think I read Marv Wolfman was one of them). What comics suffered from being pounded into formulas?

These questions aren’t meant to challenge what anyone’s saying, I’m just genuinely interested in what Shooter did.

(at the time I was reading X-books, Byrne books, Daredevil, and occasional Stern Avengers, so it sounds like I might have been just reading the stuff Shooter left pretty well alone…)

But what about pre-1984? Besides the Dark Phoenix Saga, what other times did he take control of people’s stories? What creators left because of him (I think I read Marv Wolfman was one of them). What comics suffered from being pounded into formulas?

These questions aren’t meant to challenge what anyone’s saying, I’m just genuinely interested in what Shooter did.

According to Shooter himself, one of the policies that led to the departure of Wolfman, Wein, Thomas and the like was the eradication of the writer/editor position. Apparently, Shooter also felt the need to micromanage artists like Gene Colan, staying on his case for the number of splash pages and the amount of shadow he used in his work. Bill Mantlo seems to have been another Shooter target; Shooter seems to have made it abundantly clear that he had little respect for Mantlo as a writer. (Unlike the others, though, Mantlo stuck around and took the harassment.)

“Also, sure Jemas came across as a major asshole, but I can’t help but notice how much the innovative spirit and willingness to take risks that made the early days of “nuMarvel” so exciting (if also sometimes frustrating) just… sputtered out once Quesada was left on his own.”

Actually, most of the recent events have been the kind of risk-taking that Jemas fostered. Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Messiah Complex have all resulted in major changes for significant characters that are lasting for a good while. Dark Reign’s on that path, too. That doesn’t mean they’re good stories, but they’re certainly moving beyond the status quo.

New X-men, X-force/X-Statix, Marvel Knights, the Ultimate line. I remembering reading a lot more comics under the Jemas reign.

I agree. It was a different set of books, but I definitely agree.

I kinda miss Jemas too… I wasn’t really reading (superhero) comics during his tenure, but I gathered he was a major-league asshole.

When I think about it now, though, it was actually catching up on some of the nuMarvel-era stuff like Bendis’s Daredevil and Alias AFTER he had left that brought me back to superheroes after years away (Marvel in particular I had not cared about since the late 80s).

What really makes me miss Jemas, though, is going through the quarter bins and coming across books like Unstable Molecules and Muties… I don’t even know if these comics are actually any good, but it seems astonishing to imagine a time when Marvel would have published work this daring and non-typical.

Comb & Razor: Unstable Molecules was very good, Muties not so much.

I miss Jemas too.

Marvel came out of bankruptcy because of the Spider-man movie. Jemas and Quesada are victim of being in the right place at the right time.

Erm…no – they did it before Spider-Man came out.

And yeah, Unstable Molecules is a prime example of why Marvel is now a poorer place without Bill Jemas

And as for Jim Shooter – I think the only Marvel comics I’ve actually enjoyed from his reign were the Frank Miller ones and (to a lesser extent) Damage Control.