Why was Jim Shooter hated?

Marvel during his tenure is bretty gud.

Because he made the writers and artists get their work done on time.

He was very conservative when it came to wanting to make good comics and what should be good for business, nobody listened and thanks to the power of "creative freedom" from everyone else in the industry, he got his ass fired leading to the decline of Western comic books as a whole. He warned us all and we did nothing.

thats literally why the idea that hes hated is perpetuated, because he was a fucking good employee.big corpo hates that because the quicker something can be completed means less time to earn from idealists

Because he was collateral in Gary Groth of Fantagraphic's defamation against capeshit, the creator owner movement's being filled with cynical cunts and Hollywood Paparazzi's ruining of Stan Lee's reputation.

Actual Marvel writers that "hated" were only Byrne who hated everyone and it was blown out of proportion.

he had a reputation for being overly-controlling and meddlesome and very quick to pull out the "I am your boss" card

Marvel during his tenure is bretty gud.

most of the complaints against him were not about his competency, usually
he did, at the end of the day, lead marvel through their golden age
but just because someone is good at something does not mean he is likeable

he had a reputation for being overly-controlling and meddlesome and very quick to pull out the "I am your boss" card

AKA "do what youre paid and told to do."

he was considered an asshole, which for us is fine since being an asshole can get results, but obviously that's annoying if you work for him

inb4 some guy living off autism bucks tells me creators who disliked shooter were just lazy

ideally, the boss should only pull rank when its absolutely vital and when dealing with someone who would not do what is needed otherwise
comic books arent the army, there is no chain of command that compels your underlings to follow you

He expected people to be, A: Competent and B: To do their jobs.

People literally underestimated how bad things could get and the work ethic was declining so he was blamed on them being lazy

I know you guys have very stringent attitudes to how a boss should be and an inherent dislike of what you perceive creative types to be like, but /how/ you say things goes a long way into running the ship.
You know who else was a stickler for doing the job on time, following rules and getting work done? Mark Gruenwald.
And I don't think anyone ever had an unkind thing to say about Mark Gruenwald. You know why? Because he was a very personable, well tempered, charming guy. Boosted moral a lot around the office. And that goes a long way.
I trust John Romita Sr. the most when he says the first 3 years under Shooter went well, and after that he started power tripping. If a company man like John Romita Sr. is saying(in the kindest words possible because he was a nice guy) you're an asshole, you're an asshole.

if thats all he expected from people, then so many people at marvel wouldnt have jumped ship to DC as fast as possible

he was difficult to work with and would not budge if he thought he was right
now jim shooter was a child prodigy who had been writing comics since he was a teen, so he was often right, but its clear why people would resent it

Are you unironically retarded?

I don't care what other people say. Shooter made sure people got PAID for there work. That makes him a good one in my book

Because he upheld a minimum standard of quality.

if you could show them how marvel is now and time travel, they would worship Jim.

you assume that just because someone is a good manager, that automatically makes him above criticism for any other part of his personality?

Nah, he loved to pull the Mort Weisinger playbook of pitting artist against other artist, editor against writers and being directly involved on the books. All of this in the most passive aggressive way. Worst of all, when something went south he never takes blame. You can get a little insight about this reading on Priest's blog how the Hobgoblin saga went to shit.

I insist that this is vastly blown out of proportion because there was a lot of JOURNALIST-WRITER DRAMA going on in the 80s and shooter and marvel in general where being openly slandered.

The problem comes from how things really went off the rails after he was forced out, which made people think that he should be allowed to be an asshole

Part of the problem with the 90s had more to do with Marvel's owners rather than Marvel editorial. That said as far as I can tell he did TRY to do right by people in general in terms of setting up the royalty program and stuff like that. The only issue against that was what happened with Jack Kirby's original art, and that may have had a lot of guilty parties behind what happened there, not just Shooter.

Big Jim leaves Marvel

Marvel goes downhill

Denny leaves DC (replaced under shady circumstances)

DC goes downhill

Are editors more important than writers?

It'd be one thing if it was just TCJ and a few particularly difficult creators complaining about him. But it was guys like John Romita, who never had a history of complaining, and were model employees before and after him saying he was handling the job less than satisfactory. That makes me give credence to the criticism.

This, we weren't there so we don't really know just how much of a dick he was, that's just what people at the time said. I think some guys also probably felt slighted that he was one of the youngest dudes at Marvel and yet he became EiC over any of them. Like yeah Roy Thomas and Marv Wolfman were not gonna stick around for this kid ordering them around

A lot of people don’t realize that the reason Shounen Jump is successful is because they are known for their incredibly cutthroat but stern editors who look at the markets and what is actually popular. Toriyama’s editors made him shift his gag-manga series more action oriented, adding Vegeta as a rival character, and also giving them families for the female demographic. If western editors were like this they would have stories and marketing that make actual sense

he had a reputation for being overly-controlling and meddlesome

Which was his fucking job comic writers/artists are famously neurotic assholes so their opinion doesn't mean much

like mentioned above, even artists who were known for being good employees like john romita were sick of him

yes, he did a good job as editor-in-chief in terms of business
but in terms of actually handling the people working under him, he did terribly, to the point many of them just straight up left marvel for the competition

Because creatives were always little drama queens and he made them actually work. Though that stuff about Roger Stern's Cap run was probably a real blockheaded move. Not that Stern handled it terrifically either but still I get why he was mad.

Because creatives were always little drama queens and he made them actually work.

if that was the only problem, then so many people wouldnt have outright hated the guy

The pettiness of creatives can not be understated.

Are editors more important than writers?

I wouldn't say MORE outright but they do provide a valuable service and as we've learned in recent years.

rip Gruenwald, I wonder how different Marvel would be in the 2000s and maybe even today if he was still alive

I personally love working with editors, they charge a lot though

look, no one is saying he didnt handle the business side of things very well
but along with that came with an attitude that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and a lot of their problems with shooter was not unfoudned

this is not just a case of being told to actually work, if it was just a case of delivering their work on schedule and wearing a suit to the office then he would have just been seen as a stern but effective boss
because it is possible to be a stern, fair, but still personable and likeable boss
shooter was just one of those things and not both

It's not his job to be likable or personal. It's his job to the be the boss. And every day and in every place, everyone has to deal with a shitty strict boss. But for some reasons it's always the creatives who think they should be exempt from this shit. He's the one who signs their checks. It's part of being an adult.

Explain yourself

What's to explain? You can hire an editor to help your work get published. Publicists and agents will also hook you up.

Do the people who are like "Oh Marvel would still be amazing if he ran it" have anything to say about how the other comic companies he started all failed and also didn't really produce much great stuff?

It's his job to the be the boss.

part of his job means actually retaining talent, which was a part of his job that he failed at

he doesnt have to be nice or likeable, but it sure helps a damn lot when dealing with your own employees
and having the reputation as an asshole is certainly going to drive away a lot of your own workers

But for some reasons it's always the creatives who think they should be exempt from this shit.

the writers all said they did not like jim shooter, they did not like how he handled the creative process, and they did not like how he interacted with them
it is entirely within their rights to move to another company if they feel like their boss is not someone they can put up

It's part of being an adult.

im shooter himself holds part of the responsibility as to why people did not like him
it
there was a disagreement over how things should be run in the office and the writers had alternatives to go to
jim could have largely avoided these issues without affecting the bottomline by just not being so much of a hardass

Manlet rage

No, the

I personally love working with editors

part

Criticism is helpful and they can provide solid framework to help better achieve results.

Because he was an asshole who overstayed his welcome. He fixed the company and then kept fixing until he pissed everyone off and ruined the thing he helped save. People here now worship him just because they hate artists and enjoy re-imagining him as the based business man who forced them to do work.

I understand, and I appreciate your answer but that's not exactly what I was asking about. Why are you involved with them, what do you do?

Funny pic. The ones they do nowadays suck

ughh which Spider-Man villain do you identify with?

And then they give the lamest answer ever

I mean that was a thing. A lot of the bigger name writers would buy into their own hype and believed they should have all the freedom they wanted. I don't doubt that Shooter rubbed people the wrong way though because his mentor was Mort and evem if unconsciously he likely picked up the need to be more firm and iron fisted when it came to creatives from him. It's not really surprising that mostly maladjusted (and in some cases counter cultural) nerds would have issues with a suit and tie type. Also didn't help that the guy with the largest platform (Gary Groth) hated Shooter's guts and regularly compared him to a slave owner, Nazi and Nixon and would goad people (notably an aged and near death Kirby) into slamming him and Marvel and anyone else he personally disliked (like the infamous Harlan Ellison interview shitting on Don Heck).

It just seems weird to lay all the blame on the writers for sucking up to jim shooter rather than on jim shooter for not handling his employees with more tact
yeah, a lot of them are counter-cultural nerds, but jim shooter should have factored that into his dealings with them

Shooter basically lived out every comic nerd's fantasy of getting to run a comic company, call the shots, and be a big hero who fixes everything by being a big, powerful guy in charge despite not contributing much creatively.
Which is a shame because Shooter /could/ create, he could even draw, but no one really talks about that, they fetishize him as the boss, because that's what they aspire to be.

Got up his own ass, alienated everyone, then completely failed.

John Byrne was always going off on something.

the way this site loves everything executives do except for when they put gays and blacks in stuff is a thing of wonder

hey Byrne, youve been tripping for 2 weeks on your desk, where is that fucking script

THIS IS LITERAL FASCISM

This site will never blame executives for that, they think creatives break into the building and hold execs hostage and make them finance their gay and black shows.

Since when is writing like /this/ a thing?

Literally nobody said that. Jim Shooter was a cunt AND he made everyone actually get shit done
he was still a cunt, but it's undeniable that marvel was better for it

Why are you involved with them, what do you do?

I have hired them freelance to help me improve my self-published novels, I don't always drop the money for it but when I have it's always been money well spent.

Valiant under Shooter absolutely did produce great stuff, and then they forced him out and Valiant has been an experiment to find out just how much dreck a company can produce ever since. I'll give you his efforts afterwards not amounting to much, but you can't take OG Valiant away from him.

As others in the thread have said, he was an overbearing, micromanaging nuisance in day-to-day work. I have to wonder just how much the outright abuse he suffered from Mort Weisinger as a kid informed his managerial style, but either way, he was considered a nightmare to work with. It's a shame that there was so much difficulty around his personal interactions with the talent, because he genuinely did try to do a lot for them, be that pushing for fairer compensation for their work or trying to expand creative horizons with things like Epic. A very complex guy.

Depicting naked women and transvestites is not essential to an X-Men story

The guy is a Commie, Christian Fascist

even artists who were known for being good employees

which is just artists who didn't spaz out hard enough for their issues to become public knowledge

the way this site loves everything executives

People love shooter because Marvel was good under his reign and stopped being good after. Now stop being such a child no cares about you fighting the "man".

It didn't help his image that his own writing was terrible.

So people who were well behaved, right.

issues not extreme enough to be public knowledge and well behaved are not the same

If you work a 60 year career in a notoriously clique-y industry with no call-outs or issues, I’m inclined to say that person is well behaved

i'm not old enough to have been exposed to marvel during shooter's tenure, so my question while reading other people's comments is "how does shooter compare to modern marvel?" because last i checked x-men has been shit since at least bendis and there's plenty of people who think it's been shit years before that. why are x-writers sucking bendis dick and shitting on beast and doing a fascist ethnostate? how the fuck does hate for shooter exist or even compare to the modern dumpster that got bitten by a radioactive fire?

Worst part of comic books has always been and always will be fans.

that doesn't answer my question. how does hate for shooter exist when marvel is so garbage right now? what do you even mean, anon? which fans? fans of krakoa who will pay for any slop? fans of claremont?

which fans?

ALL OF THEM

From what I've heard, when he first became EiC, Marvel was a mess, failing to meet deadlines for over 40% of their comics every month, and this is what he hardballed to fix. And once he did, he ran out of real problems to fix he began micromanaging petty issues, and that's where the problems began. A brutal manager was a godsend when things were on fire, but once the ship was smooth sailing it became a nightmare.

Does anyone have a high res version of this?

okay now i get it. this person is obfuscating about how shit marvel is. got it. i'll stop feeding the troll

where would people put spurrier or remender on that compass?

Just use make a google image search with your own post

This
Shooter was both a creative and a hardass manager, that hardass side of him allowed him to right the ship, but once things were good he was able to inflict his creativity of the rest of the company without the oversight he gave to others.
Which eventually got us Secret Wars 2.

I forget where I heard it but an ideal situation for the industry would of been one where The Big 2 just passed Shooter back and forth between them every few years. Enough time for him to clean things up, but not enough for him to get cocky.

In the 1940's, the um, well lets just say, the men in little hats haha, needed to send millions of Europeans to their deaths and so invented superhero comics as tools of propaganda to do just that.
However after the war they needed to kill the few remaining Europeans that survived and so they switched battleplan. The new plan was genocide through cultural subversion, and superhero comics stood in the way of that. So they began creating shit comics that mocked American values, however the reincarnation of the other guy managed to sneak into Marvel and righted the ship, this was no good, so in a desperate bid to put a stop to this, they straight up sold the entire company. Shooter promptly left, although it took a cheeky little sacrifice involving the burning of an effigy of him to pull it off, look it up, it's real.
Once he was gone things have returned to normal and the plan to destroy comics and all of humanity has been progressing at a steady pace ever since.

Sir you forgot this

Reverse image search doesn't work anymore

The hate for Shooter is chiefly from people within the industry, not from fans.

I do think he dreamed of becoming a writer again and the success of Secret Wars went to his head a bit, but a big side of the problems was his editorial mandates.

There's no recorded instance of him pulling a real Weisinger - remember the man was a corpofag who'd verbally abuse employees in front of the entire room. What's the worst Shooter ever did? Send them mean sound letters?
Hell, he never fired anyone other than priest, and priest had to have a literal autistic meltdown screaming how he wasn't going to allow Stan Lee to marry Spiderman with MJ because he was editing the main title.

I think his real problem was not networking properly and allowing gossip, which was a massive problem on the bullpen, to run amok and make everyone in the office think he was dangerous.

iirc the real problems started with New Universe competing for printer space with the standard titles.

New Universe was Shooter's baby and pretty much proto-valiant. And he insisted on it despite basically everyone thinking it was retarded. He defending it as yet another of his expansive company policies (so was secret wars, the toy license comics, the SW comics, Epic, marvel UK iirc, and more). But for the first time more or less, Shooter made a bad call.

Competing for printer space means something - They couldn't release 200 books at the same time, so New Universe meant something had to go, but I don't remember exactly what.

Ask yourselves

where would comics be today if Shooter didn't leave

and suddenly all your complaints about him are rendered moot

Heroes for Hire.