Former Marvel EIC Jim Shooter Slams The Current State Of Western Comics: “It’s Supposed To Be Entertainment, But A Lot Of It Comes Out Like Propaganda”
In the opinion of former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, not only is the Western comic book industry currently in a bad way, but one of the main reasons for its struggles is its continued focus on “propaganda” over entertainment.
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Shooter, who during his 1978-1986 stint as Marvel’s EIC oversaw the production of such runs as Frank Miller’s Daredevil, Walt Simonson’s Thor, and Roger Sterns’ Amazing Spider-Man and introduced readers to the concept of a company-wide crossover with Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions and Secret Wars, offered his take on current state of the industry while speaking with the titular host of the Tony The Toy RAT YouTube channel, Tony Mendez, during last month’s 2024 HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC.
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Directly asked by Mendez “How do you feel about the state of the comic book industry today?”, the comic book veteran bluntly replied in turn, “I think they forgot what business they’re in.”
“I think that you know, I don’t care if you agree with every word they say, nobody wants to read propaganda,” he argued. “It’s just boring and there’s an awful lot of retconing going on. Like I said, I respect the intent of the creators, and Jack Kirby never intended for Thor to be a girl. And Joe Simon and Jack Kirby are spinning in their graves because they turned Captain America into like a Hydra guy or a Nazi or something and [revealed that] he always was. That’s just wrong. I mean, don’t do that. Stay true to the character. “
Drawing from his own past experiences in support of his point, Shooter then recalled, “I used to show people old Lee and Kirby books from the 60s. I had a new writer, let’s say, on Captain America, and I’d go through the first appearance of Captain America – I think it was Avengers #4 – and he comes back and very clearly, there’s one panel where they’re fighting Sub-Mariner, and for some reason, Captain America doesn’t remember Sub-Mariner from World War II.
“But Sub-Mariner takes him by surprise and he has him by the belt, in the small of his back, and he’s raising him up over his head to dash him to death on the rocks,” he continued. “So here’s Captain America, upside down, being held by his belt, about to die, and his thought is ‘He’s stronger than I am, but I’ll find a way to out-maneuver him!’ That’s my guy. I mean, just boundless courage, never say die. He’ll find a way.”
“So I’m trying to explain this to the guy, and then right away they start writing him like he’s Captain Republican or something – and he’s not,” further detailed Shooter. “He represents the ideals of America, not any political stance. But I try to work with the guys and some of them got it. Roger Stern got it. He nailed it. As a matter of fact, I think he’s one of the best writers we had. We had some really good ones, you know, we had J.M. DeMatteis, we had [Chris] Claremont, of course, we had Simonsons, both of them, Larry Hama, David Michelin. Really talented people and so the ones who really care about it, they got it. And they did what they did with this sculpture, which is to make it true to the original creation.”
From there, Mendez pressed the comic creator as to what he thought was needed “in the comic book industry to pull us back to a golden age? The new golden age.”
To this end, Shooter asserted, “Well, somebody who knows what he’s doing has to be in charge. Where’s the next Stan Lee?”
“That’s it,” he affirmed. “And it has nothing to do with the indies – a lot of them are really interesting, they have really interesting properties and good ideas, stuff like that, but most of them have no training whatsoever, and so they’re hard to read or they’re not structured right or it’s just not or it’s just not as good as they could be. And the majors, or what used to be the majors, they’re pretty small now, they do have some really good talent, but they don’t have anybody steering the ship.
“And so basically each guy, he does what he wants,” Shooter posited. “You know, Bendis, nobody tells him anything, he just turns stuff in and they process it through. Or Geoff Johns, you know, or any of those guys. I used to have editors!”
“Larry Hama taught you stuff!” he exclaimed. “Larry Hama, if you needed help, he helped you, – well, unless you have Walt Simonson, he just didn’t need any help [laughs]. Nowadays I think they’re more like expediters, just processing stuff through. I don’t see anybody teaching these days.”
Met by the inquiry from Mendez “Is that because you feel like the reader today isn’t really immersing themselves in the storyline or they just overly concerned with the imagery?”, Shooter declared, “Those guys, they’re just doing stuff that isn’t good.”
“It just isn’t good,” he opined. “And that has nothing to do with readers, or too many indies, or whatever. It has to do with, you know, they don’t know their craft and they’re kind of wrong-headed because they forgot they’re in the entertainment business’ and they’re not focusing on that first.”
“I mean I don’t care if you have something to say on some social justice issue, fine,” he concluded. “Let the character say it, right? Don’t you say it. If it’s you preaching at the reader, or if it’s the company preaching at the reader, that’s propaganda and you don’t want to read it. If a character states a point of view, that’s fine, that’s the character’s point of view.”
Drawing his thoughts on this particular topic to a close, Shooter ultimately reiterated, “I think that if they get get somebody in there who knows what they’re doing, and sort of steers the ship, that’ll be good.”
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