shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 25, 2022 19:57:49 GMT -5
I really don't want this to devolve into a pro-Shooter/anti-Shooter debate. The record seems pretty clear to me that he made some great decisions, some terrible decisions, decisions that arguably saved the company, and decisions that resulted in talent leaving in droves.
Whenever these discussions come up, I always feel the need to point out that, as much as you don't want an incompetent boss at work, having one who is a genius is arguably even worse. Shooter knew he was brilliant, and I believe that was his downfall as an EIC. When you tell a successful writer how to do their job, a level of sensitivity and humility is needed. Walking in and acting like you know better (especially when there is a good likelihood that you actually do) breeds resentment. Shooter certainly wasn't always right, but I think he was right more often than he wasn't. Unfortunately, that means very little when you piss off your staff. Tact means far more than savvy when you are leading others, especially in a creative environment.
Doug Moench is my favorite writer. Jim Shooter is my fourth. I respect both too much to simplify the rights and wrongs.
And New Universe is still a favorite project of mine, more for the potential and big idea behind it all than for what was ultimately done with it after it had been sabotaged so badly.
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Post by spoon on Apr 25, 2022 20:03:42 GMT -5
This sounds like just a general mindset to be willing to try new things and put twists in stories rather than a coordinated plan.
Some of examples don't really fit the narrative. Wolverine didn't adopt his Patch identity until the early issues of his ongoing series and Marvel Comics Presents, in the latter half of 1988. Also, the John Walker storyline in Captain America seems like something clearly intended to have a limited duration. Walker flaws don't make feasible as a longterm Cap; rather it creates a contrast for why Steve Rogers deserves the mantle.
And if anything, the examples of Rodimus Prime and Galvatron are evidence against the thesis. Those were changes adopted in other media, but not so much in the comics. The drive to introduce new characters was toy-driven and implemented in Transformers: The Movie (and in the cartoon episodes that followed). You gotta introduce new Transformers to sell additional lines of Transformers toys. However, the movie takes place in 2005, so it's inconsistent with maintaining storylines that were ongoing. I read Transformers until #50. Although I missed some issues, checking the GCD seems to confirm that Rodimus Prime and Galvatron didn't appear until a one-off story that took place in the future in #43. That was published about 2 years after those character debuted in the movie.
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Post by Chris on Apr 25, 2022 20:25:46 GMT -5
"And others have argued that this all stemmed from Marvel's fear that creators would sue for the rights to the characters they made" Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Writers and artists suing the companies is not exactly unknown in comics history. Steve Gerber - sued Marv Wolfman - sued Gary Friedrich - sued Carmine Infantino - sued Joe Simon - sued Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster - sued twice. Or was it three times? If I recall right, Siegel not only sued DC over Superman, but also sued for the character of Superboy and won. And this would have been right around the time Jack Kirby was talking to lawyers about the possibility of suing Marvel. That's not counting times that heirs and estates of creators have sued. The Siegel estate alone has been involved in multiple lawsuits over the last couple decades, with the result "On April 4, 2006, Federal judge Ronald S. W. Lew issued a summary judgment ruling that Jerry Siegel's heirs had the right to revoke their copyright assignment to Superboy and had successfully reclaimed the trademark to the name as of November 17, 2004." All of this to say, lawsuits were a valid concern for Marvel.
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2022 21:20:45 GMT -5
Interestingly, there was a strong backlash to the rumors of Shooter killing off the Marvel Universe. That led to many of the changes not taking place until years later, and in some cases after Shooter had left. I generally think that change is a good thing. I don’t think that Walt Simonson’s Thor run, or Peter David’s Hulk run, hurt those characters. Some of the proposed changes had either occurred before or were logical story choices, e.g heroes giving up their super hero identities, losing their powers, quitting teams, and even dying. The idea that the old characters would die and be replaced with completely new characters was a bit radical, but if I had been a creator at the time, I would have been highly focused on trying to create a Hulk, or a Captain America, or Thor, for the 80s, and I absolutely agree with Shooter that titles that were struggling needed a complete overhaul if they were going to survive.
The issue, I think, is much like Giordano faced at DC: did they have the creative talent to pull off a complete reboot of every title? Shooter’s idea may have become the norm in comics, but successful reboots remain difficult to achieve. And, of course, some reboots can be extremely damaging.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 25, 2022 21:40:28 GMT -5
I believe what Shooter said he intended was to do a reboot with Marvel's 25th Anniversary, to restart the whole thing. That was given the cold shoulder/nixed and the idea evolved into the New Universe project, which itself evolved over time into the mess it became.
Most of the changes you cite occur within a year or two of the anniversary. Some of them, though, I think originated with individual writers, without direction from Shooter; but, I have nothing to back that presumption up. It didn't seem that coordinated, to me; just kind of a lot of people reacting to the market and what was selling. The 80s was a shake-up period, as the growing influence of the Direct Market gave DC and Marvel a place to tailor projects to, with smaller print runs. They were also reacting to some of the things that were happening elsewhere. Alan Moore was making noises with Swamp Thing, which essentially rebooted the character. Crisis made big noises. The Superman and Wonder Woman revamps, the post-Crisis relaunches and changes. There was stuff happening at independent companies that got the notice of the Big Two. Change was pretty heavy in the air.
Look at some of the other things happening: Legion revived the 4th World with The Great Darkness Saga and that was followed up in Legends and beyond, after they kind of sit tight, during Crisis. Swamp Thing is now a plant lifeform with the memories of Alec Holland, not the man turned into a monster. Marvelman/Miracleman reappears and his past stories were hallucinations fed into the sleeping super-being, by his arch enemy, who was actually the scientist who reverse engineered alien technology to create the superbeing. After daredevil becomes a crime comic, Frank Miller does a Samurai-meets-Moebius story and then gets to play with Batman, in his twilight days and make it dark and nasty. Crisis kills off some favorites, replaces some others. First Comics is publishing mature, grittier comics, like Jon Sable, American Flagg and Grimjack. The rise of independent publishers, who offer ownership to creative people draws major name talent. Jenette Kahn pushes for creative incentives and royalties to attract talent. Marvel follows suit. Marvel launches Epic, allowing creative ownership and first refusal rights.
There is a lot of change at multiple levels and you can just as easily say everyone was following the trend, whether because of directives from Shooter, their own decision or just "something in the air."
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 25, 2022 22:11:13 GMT -5
Wolverine didn't adopt his Patch identity until the early issues of his ongoing series and Marvel Comics Presents, in the latter half of 1988. Good call. True. If the intent was to make the character lawsuit-proof, that wasn't going to work. If the goal was to boost sales by shaking up the status quo though, one could argue that this fit in quite well. I've never read the comics, myself, but I always assumed this was Galvatron: I don't know how involved Marvel was in the planning of the film, but they certainly played a key role in the development of the original series and were still officially associated with the film. And whereas every Transformer who appeared prior to the film was an existing toy or unproduced toy design from Japan, everyone introduced in the film other than Ultra Magnus was an entirely new creation, and we know for a fact that at least some of those characters were designed for the film before they were designed as toys (Unicron being the most well-known example, which worked very well in animation but proved utterly underwhelming when translated into a toy, and so the toy was scrapped).
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Post by jason on Apr 26, 2022 8:05:55 GMT -5
More of a cosmetic change, but Marvel dropping the "Marvel Comics Group" banner from their comics and just having "Marvel" be in the corner box (along with the images of the main character(s)) may count too, especially considering it happened around the later half of 83.
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 26, 2022 11:00:31 GMT -5
I'm not sure we've ever really discussed this before. Doug Moench has repeatedly asserted that the reason he left Marvel in 1983 was that Jim Shooter had a plan called "The Jim Shooter Theory of the Big Bang of the Marvel Universe" in which every major Marvel character was going to get replaced or significantly altered in order to boost sales, beginning with Shang-Chi. Moench has also indicated that no one else who was with him at Marvel will back him up and go on record about this. When asked about it in interviews, Shooter gave this answer on several occasions: it's not that he insisted on Shang-Chi dying or his being replaced by a ninja; it's that the mag wasn't selling enough, and that he wanted Doug to try to crank them up. Shooter did throw ideas around... but that's just what they were: throwaway ideas. "I dunno, kill major characters or something... shake things up! Ninjas are big nowadays... can you bring a ninja in?" That kind of stuff. So your assessment that Shooter was just asking creators to shake the status quo seems spot on. Yeah, I remember the changes (most of which I deeply disliked) and the slogan that Marvel printed on the shopping bags used by comic stores : "Marvel comics... Everything old is new again". Bearded and armoured Thor, Captain America (or rather "The Captain") dressed in black, grey Hulk... It all felt a little forced, but it kept things interesting -at least insofar as old fans kept reading to see when the status quo ante would be restored. As a reader, I was fine with the appearance of change, and when something was altered but worked well, I was also fine with the idea of the change becoming permanent. To wit: I loved the design of Four Freedoms plaza, much more than that of the old, beloved Baxter Building; She-Hulk could have stayed in the FF and I'd have been all right with it; Daredevil post-Rebirth life as a disbarred and ruined lawyer, working as sort of a socialist hero, was pretty darn good. On the other hand, I was irritated when Marvel strongly suggested that all those changes were permanent when we readers knew full well that the creators were, at best, testing the water. That the Iron Man entry in the original Handbook of the Marvel Universe was all about James Rhodes and not Tony Stark was just silly; we all knew Rhodey was very likely a temp and that Stark would come back eventually. As for Shooter's grand plan, beyond his original idea or rebooting the MU for its 25th anniversary, I think it mostly meant to keep things from going stale. Which I suppose he can't be blamed for!
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Post by jason on Apr 26, 2022 15:37:31 GMT -5
I've never read the comics, myself, but I always assumed this was Galvatron: I don't know how involved Marvel was in the planning of the film, but they certainly played a key role in the development of the original series and were still officially associated with the film. And whereas every Transformer who appeared prior to the film was an existing toy or unproduced toy design from Japan, everyone introduced in the film other than Ultra Magnus was an entirely new creation, and we know for a fact that at least some of those characters were designed for the film before they were designed as toys (Unicron being the most well-known example, which worked very well in animation but proved utterly underwhelming when translated into a toy, and so the toy was scrapped). It's actually (A Very off model) Menasor (Menasor debuted in said issue).
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 26, 2022 15:39:18 GMT -5
It's actually (A Very off model) Menasor (Menasor debuted in said issue). Wow...
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Post by spoon on Apr 26, 2022 17:51:06 GMT -5
I've never read the comics, myself, but I always assumed this was Galvatron: I don't know how involved Marvel was in the planning of the film, but they certainly played a key role in the development of the original series and were still officially associated with the film. And whereas every Transformer who appeared prior to the film was an existing toy or unproduced toy design from Japan, everyone introduced in the film other than Ultra Magnus was an entirely new creation, and we know for a fact that at least some of those characters were designed for the film before they were designed as toys (Unicron being the most well-known example, which worked very well in animation but proved utterly underwhelming when translated into a toy, and so the toy was scrapped). I'm not sure which Transformer that supposed to be on the cover since it's doesn't look particularly similar to any character in the story, but Galvatron doesn't appear in Transformers #22. The story takes place in the present and Megatron appears in the story.
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Post by chaykinstevens on May 3, 2022 16:15:24 GMT -5
The origin of this thread idea was my reading the 1985/1986 Hulk stories. #324 is the big one everyone knows where Hulk goes gray again, but then we don't see the Hulk for half a year after that, Bruce claiming he can control the creature now, and Rick Jones conveniently becoming a green Hulk in his absence. Then, suddenly, Al Milgrom leaves the title, and the very next issue Peter David has the gray Hulk front and center, the Rick Jones Hulk departing very soon after. The whole thing smacks of tension between Milgrom and Shooter, Shooter presumably pushing for the gray Hulk, and Milgrom presumably resisting and pushing for the Rick Jones Hulk instead. The grey Hulk didn't go missing for 6 months after #324. The two Hulks fought in #326, and the grey Hulk starred in Peter David's debut fill-in in #328. Perhaps they wanted to test whether one or other Hulk or both together would sell the best. Before he fell out with Jim Shooter and departed for DC, John Byrne had intended to reboot the Hulk to his favourite version, from Avengers #3, by killing off the Hulk, who had been separated from Bruce Banner, then having Banner become a new Hulk. I think Byrne's drawing in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe v2 is the only one that made it into print.
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Post by badwolf on May 3, 2022 16:53:40 GMT -5
Not sure I like that idea, but maybe he could have made me like it, I dunno.
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Post by chaykinstevens on May 3, 2022 17:26:13 GMT -5
The Hulk in Avengers #3 doesn't look much like Byrne's drawing in the handbook to me. Maybe I misremembered and it was Incredible Hulk #5 that was Byrne's favourite.
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Post by commond on May 3, 2022 17:39:21 GMT -5
I think it was supposed to be The Hulk from Avengers #1.
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