A thread on Millarworld about this week’s Lying In The Gutters turns into a referendum on Jim Shooter, bizarrely enough:

“The people at DC are pretty much the same people who were at Marvel when Shooter was running it. And I summed up the hate as: Shooter came to Marvel, actually acted like a boss and the employees didn’t know how to handle it because the structure of an artist still to this day doesn’t know how to do anything even remotely close to 9-5. So he was resented for treating employees like employees.”

“A bit of a biased account, as Shooter also made decisions that, although business lead, affected other things. As a for instance, it is directly down to Shooter that Alan Moore refuses to work for Marvel in any capacity- it is Shooters fault that Marvelman had to be renamed Miracleman after lawyers sent Quality Communications (publishers of Warrior) a cease and decist letter in the mid 80’s. It was Shooter who refused an agreement that allowed Moore copyright on his Captain Britain stories even though legally the copyrights should have remained with him, as Moore had never been given a contract to sign. It was also during Shooters’ tenure that Dave Sim received a similar cease and decist letter over his use of the the Wolverine parody Wolveroach, which almost caused Cerebus to close down (and arguably laid the foundations for Sim’s decent into the realm of the unwell). There were also arguments with certain creators that lead them to abandoning Marvel at the turn of the 80’s, or are you accusing Roy Thomas and Marv Wolfman (both of whom were editor in chief before him) of unprofessionalism?”

“I’d say they didn’t take to well with a young buck that many felt was undeserving of the EIC role, whom they also used to be in charge of, suddenly telling them what to do and calling the shots. Happens quite a bit actually. I know I certainly wouldn’t want to work under someone who I used to be the boss of. As for Moore and Sim? Just like Quesada today, it highly doubtful that the EIC has anything to do with legal matters such as the ones involving those two. It’s also his right to refuse Alan Moore over Captain Britain. It’s not his fault Moore wrote it without a contract. That’s on him. Staying with Moore for a moment–look, I think he’s done a tremendous service to the comic book industry. If there was a Mt. Rushmore of comic creators, he’d arguably deserve a place on it. His influence is monumental and far reaching even outside of comic books. But will someone please, for the love of god or snake gods let him know that the world does not revolve around him. Someone else is always the bad guy. He is always the victim. He gets into a dispute with damn near every single publisher he works for. Maybe, I’m just saying, maybe, the other guy isn’t always the problem.”

“In any other business, I’d agree with you. But the big two in comics have always treated creators like shit - far worse than has ever been possible in any other medium. Creator’s rights, as we are all aware, is a huge topic. So what I’m trying to say is - in the case of Moore, and all the other creators fighting for their rights, yes, the other guy is always the bad guy.”

“The bottom line on Shooter is that he tried to turn what was a very, very anarchic publishing company into an efficient business. This involved doing several things that fans and artists find distasteful (Marvelman etc) but would be regarded as essential ‘brand protection’ in any other industry… The record of output under Shooter is really mixed - the high points are amongst the most creatively charged and revolutionary things ever to happen in the medium. The low points laid the groundwork for the kind of massive over-promotion (to a shrinking customer base), franchise-milking and lowest-common-denominator narrative that blighted the 90s (and is, arguably, making a comeback now). He established a much more favourably royalties schemne than the industry had ever had but also centralised editorial control to an unprecedented degree… As for Moore… I love the guy’s work but there comes a point where you have to think that maybe the entire friggin’ world isn’t wrong all of the time and that maybe, just maybe, he’s gone overboard from time to time.”

Also worth checking out in the same thread: Whether or not Marvel was justified to go after Marvelman/Warrior…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 8:37 am and is filed under Creators, Fandom, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.