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Jim Shooter, Comic Book Icon, Passes Away at Age 73
Jim Shooter, the comic book icon who began writing comics as a teenager, and was Marvel's longtime Editor-in-Chief, has died at 73
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Jim Shooter, the iconic comic book writer who broke into writing comics for DC when he was just 14 years old, and who later became one of the most influential Editors-in-Chief in Marvel history, has died at the age of 73, according to comic book writer, Mark Waid, who noted that Shooter had been suffering from esophogeal cancer for a few years now.
Famously (it was literally the first legend I did as part of Comic Book Legends Revealed), Shooter started writing for DC when he was just 14 years old. As a big comic book fan, he understood that the Marvel Comics of 1964-65 were a good deal sharper than most DC books of the era, so Shooter's idea was to pitch DC on stories that were more like Marvel ones. Really thoughtful idea, right? He also actively looked for a comic book that he felt had the biggest problems with its story, and pitched that title, which was Adventure Comics, starring the Legion of Super-Heroes.
The bewildering idea is that Shooter, who didn't really know how comics were done at the time, literally just wrote and penciled a two-part Legion of Super-Heroes story in 1965 (when he was 13 years old still) and sent it to Mort Weisinger to see if he wanted to buy it! Shooter was a heck of a young writer, but he was not what you would call a professional artist by any stretch of the imagination. However, shockingly enough, not only did Weisinger buy the two-parter in early 1966, he even decided to tell artists Sheldon Moldoff and Curt Swan (who drew the first part and second part, respectively) to use the pages by Shooter as the layouts for the issue!
One of the other audacious things about Shooter's story was that he actually added FOUR new Legionnaires to the Legion in that story! Can you imagine pitching an editor with a story where you add four new members to the team? But hey, it worked out (the new characters were Karate Kid, Princess Projecta, Ferro Lad, and Nemesis Lad, who turned out to be a villain)! One of the things Shooter felt that the Legion lacked was action characters. He felt that everyone's powers were too passive. Everyone just pointed and fired a blast from their fingers or whatever. So that's why Shooter loved the idea of Karate Kid, and he devoted MULTIPLE pages to Karate Kid fighting Superboy in that first issue, which was published as Adventure Comics #346.
Shooter soon became the regular writer on Adventure Comics, and editor Mort Weisinger had Shooter work on other projects for Weisinger, as well, including the introduction of the Superman villain, the Parasite, later in 1966...
and the very first Superman/Flash race in 1967...
In 1969, Shooter graduated high school, and he moved from Pittsburgh to attend New York University. He quit wrtiing for DC, and started working for Marvel as an assistant editor. However, the money wasn't enough for him to be able to afford to live in New York, so after less than a month, he quit comics entirely, and moved back to Pittsburgh.
He worked in advertising for a few years, but a group of Legion fans hunted him down for the iconic Legion of Super-Heroes fanzine, Interlac, and this convinced Shooter to give comic book writing another go at the ancient age of 23. He applied to both DC and Marvel, and both companies offered him gigs, but he decided to return to DC to write the Legion again, returning for 1975's Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #209...
Shooter, though, didn't mix as well with the editors he was working with at DC in the mid-1970s (Weisinger having retired a few years earlier), so when Marv Wolfman offered him an editing gig at Marvel, he left DC for Marvel, working as both an editor and a writer, most famously on the Avengers, where, in Avengers #161, he first wrote a story about Hank Pym dealing with mental illness...
Marvel had spent most of the 1970s rotating through a series of short-lived Editors-in-Chief after Stan Lee left the role in 1972 (first Roy Thomas for two years, then Len Wein and Marv Wolfman splitting the job, then Wolfman solo, then Gerry Conway, which was all in two years' time, and then Archie Goodwin for two years), so when Jim Shooter took over the head job in 1978 when he was not yet 28 years old, no one thought he would last that long on the job, either, but instead, he became the company's longest-tenured Editor-in-Chief since Stan Lee (and still one of the longest-tenured Editor-in-Chief decades later).
The photo of Jim Shooter is by the late Seth Kushner, from his and Christioper Irving's iconic collection of spotlights on classic comic book creators, Leaping Tall Buildings.
I'm at a genuine loss for words for this one. Never realized how prolific Jim Shooter was at DC... and Marvel hasn't been the same since he left the company IMO.
COMICS haven't been the same since they got away from Jim Shooter's leadership, the comics code, and the 1992 departure of the Image Crew (from Marvel).
The industry could really use another Jim Shooter right now, especially considering the classic comic runs he oversaw during his time at Marvel...
Roger Stern Spider-man, Claremont/Byrne X-men, Roger Stern Avengers, Byrne Fantastic Four, Frank Miller Daredevil, Walt Simonson Thor, the OG 1984 Secret Wars.
Rest easy, legend.
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