Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art, and business, of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:28] John Barber: Hey, hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one host, John, who is going to do the intro this time. We totally decided before we hit record.

[00:37] David Hedgecock: As we always do.

[00:38] John: Yes. This is the other part of the ‘we’ in question. My co-host.

[00:43] David: David Hedgecock.

[00:44] John: Yeah, and also my good friend. All right.

[00:49] David: You did it.

[00:50] John: Yeah, I'm just trying to prove my point that I'm getting worse at this. I think it should have been your turn.

[00:55] David: I probably could have said something. We can start over, if you want.

[00:59] John: Oh, no, this is good.

[01:01] David: This is podcast gold, John.

[01:02] John: End it right here.

[01:04] David: It will probably be for the best for everybody. We have a lot to talk about this week. A lot happening in the comic book world. We've got San Diego ComiCon coming up in a few weeks—even closer, by the time this podcast airs, and there's been a lot happening.

[01:16] John: Did you want to tackle any of the news bits? I don't know. Diamond—that's something. Is that what you're talking about?

[01:25] David: Yeah. I don't know how true this is, but they were saying that Dynamite—it's about to close its doors. They're owed so much money that they're going to have to cease operations. It's not shocking, in that, if somebody owes you a million dollars, it's very hard to keep your doors open. I don't care what business you are—unless you're Apple. I really feel for Nick Barrucci and his whole staff, but Nick's the owner of that company. He's doing everything right, and he's still about to be crushed. God, it just seems so wrong, on so many levels.

[02:01] John: Absolutely. I can't remember if I’ve ever joked about Nicky Barrucci on here before, but Dynamite is a super solid business, and publishes some cool stuff, and he's got great creators and big licenses.

[02:16] David: And they've been doing really interesting stuff for a good, long time, as far as I'm concerned. I think there was a time where, for me, as a fan, Dynamite wasn't my taste. It felt semi-professional, in some ways, but that certainly was long ago, at this point. It's a worthy publisher doing some really quality work—Thundercats, in the last year or so, Silverhawks—not to mention some of the other stuff they’ve done, before or since. Some of the best covers in the industry are coming out of there, for better or for worse, and I feel like they really did benefit from a lot of the big dogs leaving Diamond, for a moment there, in that they became a bigger player, I think, just by the sheer fact that they're one of the only large-ish publishers left, at Diamond, for a time, but as we've said a couple times on this podcast, when 80% of the marketplace leaves your business, you have a hard time staying in business, and that's what happened to Diamond. When Marvel and DC walked out the door, and then Image, I think, closely followed—I’m not remembering the details of that as well as maybe I should—but Dynamite was left, and Dynamite was a big player, at that point, but it certainly didn't keep the doors open for Diamond, and nor should it have been expected to.

Diamond, obviously, if they're really owed a million-plus dollars, well, that's a lot of money, and obviously they were doing a good business, through Diamond, if that's what they're owed.

[03:43] John: Yeah, it totally makes sense, because if Diamond is taking—well, I don't even know the right way to phrase it. I'm going to say this wrong, in a legal sense—but taking ownership of the books that they have in stock. Diamond acts as a warehouse for a lot of publishers, and if they're taking all the back stock of Dynamite, which they have on consignment, and auctioning that off in a bankruptcy auction, or whatever the deal is, man, that's completely reasonable to have a ton of stock there. It's crazy that Dynamite is in any danger—the publisher of The Boys is in this, during the height of The Boys ever being popular. Wild. Also really sucking in the comics news was the death of Jim Shooter that occurred, which was a thing we wanted to talk a little bit about. You effectively told me—I had just been driving my daughter somewhere, and then I saw the text messages between you and Dave Baker, and I'm like, “What are you talking about?” Because it was like coming into a Twitter discussion five years ago, and when people would just be reacting to something, and you'd try to figure out what they were mad about, or occasionally, happy about. So, yeah.

[04:55] David: That was a bummer. I know that he loomed large on the landscape of my comic book reading, as a kid. So, I think we're going to spend a little time talking about it, right, John?

[05:03] John: Yeah.

[05:04] David: I know that there's probably a lot of podcasts doing discussions about Jim Shooter, and stuff, but I'm hoping we've got a little something to add.

[05:11] John: I don't think I'd be here if it wasn't for Jim Shooter, and I also don't think I ever met him. I mean, I've seen him, I've been near him at conventions, or whatever, but I don't think I ever talked to him. I didn't really have any super desire to do that, not out of anything—just out of—I don't know. What was I going to get from that? Secret Wars #3 was my first—It was the comic that made me keep reading comics. It made me super into Marvel comics, but also going into comic bookstores to get Issues #1 and #2, and all this. I've been reading G.I. Joe and Transformers, and Star Wars, and maybe a couple other things, here and there, but yeah, that was a huge one, for me.

Marvel, today, simply would not exist, if not for Jim Shooter being Editor-in-Chief in the 80s. There's a lot of people that never forgave Jim Shooter for stuff that happened. You can see, a lot of the time, where you usually set that thing apart, and you say, “it’s very sad that the person who was a huge person in the industry died of a terrible disease, of esophageal cancer,” and not have to throw in the comment about how you feel about him, or “I'm not going to talk about how I felt about him,” or something, but there's a lot of people that never forgave him for things that happened. Some that certainly did. I don't mean that, but just the way he reorganized Marvel editorial. I don't know what mechanism there would have been, for my ever having worked there, if that didn't happen, and I don't think he would have ever led into the Marvel Studios stuff without the changes he made there.

[06:40] David: It seems like Jim Shooter ushered in the second wave of popularity for Marvel, in a lot of ways. Under the Jim Shooter era of comic books, him, Editor-in-Chief, we got Frank Miller writing and drawing. He's doing Daredevil. The Demon in a Bottle storyline in Iron Man, Jim Shooter was the Editor-in-Chief. You get the Korvac Saga that he wrote himself in Avengers. You get Secret Wars. You get what I think is probably massive in the mid-80s, was the addition of GI Joe and Transformers, as licensed properties. Those are both Jim Shooter and, in fact, Jim Shooter did the pitch for Transformers, which I did not know. He and Denny O'Neil were responsible for the original pitch for Transformers. I think he created the world, Cybertron. He named the planet. Cybertron is Jim Shooter. You get John Byrne on X-Men and Fantastic Four. Jim Shooter famously doesn't lose John Byrne to the competition, and gives John Byrne his own book. At the same time, X-Men doesn't diminish, at all. We go right into another era of fantastic X-Men artists, for quite some time. You get Walt Simonson writing and drawing Thor. All this happens under Jim Shooter's time as Editor-in-Chief.

You can argue as much as you want on how much direct influence he had on those decisions, but I promise you, being an Editor-in-Chief myself, that he had a lot of say on a lot of those decisions, without a doubt. He created the royalty program. His style of management created—as you say, John, the way that Marvel functioned, prior to and then after, were radically different.

[08:32] John: To explain that—and I don't know if this is a thing that is widely known, of all the other stuff that he did—that laundry list didn't include him famously demanding the death of Jean Grey, and then the resurrection of Jean Grey. I don't know. Those are big moments. Anyway. Marvel editorial didn't really have a structure to it, coming out of the 60s. Here's another thing that's actually wild to think about. I was reading a comic called the Marvel Saga. I don't know if you remember this. I certainly do. This is a late-‘85 comic, where it basically takes panels from old Marvel comics and puts them in chronological order, and tells the story of the Marvel Universe, starting with Fantastic Four #1, but it goes back, and it has the bits that John Byrne added later to the story, or whatever—weaves in a little bit of that stuff—and this is under Shooter's […]. “This is the beginning of the 25th Anniversary celebration of Marvel.” Danny Fingeroth mentions that in the editorial, which is so wild to think about, that when this is coming out—not exaggerating. Actually understating this a little bit—a third of the Fantastic Four stories were Lee/Kirby, at this point. So weird to think about that stuff. From our point of view, now, in the year 2000, they'd launched Marvel Comics, and then you've got this book, going back. So, yeah, that was definitely a big, different era, coming into this. All this had happened so recently, compared to the way it seemed when I was a kid, and 25 years ago—when I was nine—was a million years. Might as well have been “the dinosaurs died from an asteroid, and then Jim Shooter became Editor-in-Chief at Marvel.” Although, in 1985, they didn't know for sure that an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs. That was controversial science, at the time.

Anyway, what had happened is, new people would come in to be Editor-in-Chief after Stan Lee had stepped down, as being the editor—He was never actually Editor-in-Chief, but he effectively was. He was the editor. Roy Thomas came and went. Archie Goodwin, really briefly. Gerry Conway. I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out. This is off the top of my head, but what tended to happen, whenever any of those people would leave, is that they would leave and then get a comic that they would write and edit themselves, and that made it hard to organize things within a cohesive editorial structure—if Roy Thomas is hiring the artist and doing his own thing, and editing his own script. So, Shooter put in an editorial structure, similar to what DC had, or what any publisher has, really, and I've always been a big believer in that. That was the thing we talked about, when I came back to IDW, was that we needed more of a structure to it, but that famously, pissed off every one of those ex-Editors-in-Chief, who all went over to DC, and started writing stuff. Marv Wolfman. There we go. There's a big one.

You couldn’t have had Crisis on Infinite Earths, if it wasn't for that move from Shooter, but again, without that level of professionalism and structure—I don't have a better word for it—you wouldn't have had the ability to metamorphose that company into what it became. I mean, somebody, I guess, would have had to have done that, or they would have gone out of business, or something, at some point. It seems like the lunatics running the asylum, up till then, but there's another funny little aspect to it, that everybody looks back, in the time before it, and it seems so chaotic and less corporate, and I think it's been a steady flow of getting more and more corporate, over time. I don't think the Shooter stuff was super corporate, in the way I think it is now, which I think is much more so than it was, when I was there, which was certainly more so than it was, when Shooter was in charge. Anyway, that was my ramble.

[12:13] David: Yeah, it was the beginnings of that system—not the fossilized, indoctrinated version that we seem to have now, that seemingly likes to kill ideas before they ever get started, and reiterate the same old ideas over. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about that. The thing that's amazing about this guy is that, famously, he was a wunderkind. He started writing professional comics at DC at the age of 14.

[12:40] John: Yeah. He started writing him at 13. They came out when he was 14.

[12:44] David: Okay, there you go. This is an excerpt from an interview he did from a few years back. I can't remember where I pulled it up, but I think I was on comicbook.com, or maybe cbr.cc. This is Jim Shooter speaking. He was speaking about that time when he was the age of 12 or 13. He said, “if I could learn to write this Stan Lee guy, I could sell stories to DC, and Lord knows, they need it. So, that's what I did. I studied Stan Lee's comics and tried to figure out why they were better, and wrote a story for DC using what I learned. This wasn't some kid playing. I had every intention of selling this thing. My experience told me that they seldom had sweeping changes from one issue to the next. So, I made sure not to change too much, but to try to do what they did, but better.” He chose Adventure Comics, starring the Legion of Super-Heroes, as the choice he would target, as he felt that that feature, in particular, could, A, both use the most help, and B, could best be adapted to what 13-year-old Shooter thought was the “Marvel approach.”

That part of history is, I think, fairly familiar to a lot of comic book fans. What I didn't realize, though, was that Shooter didn't know how comics were made, at the time, and DC didn't even credit creators in ’65, when he was doing this. So, in actually, ’65, before he was even 14, he wrote and drew an issue of Adventure Comics and sent it to Mort Weisinger, the editor of the comic. After Weisinger wrote back with some encouragement, Shooter then wrote and drew a two-part story—He drew the comic book, and that was his submission—and did that for some time, until he finally figured out that it was done differently. Jim Shooter's original pitches and scripts weren't bad, at all. He just literally sat down, wrote, and drew the comic book, with word balloons and everything, and sent that in, thinking that's just what you did.

[14:30] John: I'm blown away. That's not how you do comics? Griffith, Andrew.

[14:40] David: You've been lied to your whole career, John. Those Transformer comic books could have been so much easier for you.

[14:46] John: Oh, geez.

[14:47] David: I thought that was fascinating. I didn't realize it, but when you're 13, and it's 1965, what access do you have to how comic books are made? You just see the finished product, and you’re like, “I guess that's what you do.”

[14:58] John: Sure. I mean, even today, when people vaguely know you work on comics, their questions don't come from places of extreme knowledge. They're actual famous comic book writers.

[15:10] David: So, I love that. When he's doing Legion of Super-Heroes and the Super Boy stuff, Legion of Super-Heroes is one of the most popular comic books of that time, leading into the 70s and early 80s. There's hardly anything bigger than Legion of Super-Heroes. So, off of this 14-year-old’s back, Super Boy and Legion of Super-Heroes launches into one of the most popular, bestselling titles—At one time in the early 80s and late 70s, there was five different Legion of Super-Heroes books, all being published at the same time. I mean, Legion of Super-Heroes was as big as any Teen Titans and X-Men, and all that stuff. It was right there playing with it. So, we don't talk about that anymore, because Legion of Super-Heroes, the bloom is off the rose. Nobody talks about Legion of Super-Heroes anymore, because they weren't able to continue, for one reason or another, their dominance—but at that time, it was a wildly popular, very dominant book, in the annals of publishing, of that time, and a lot of that has to be attributed to Jim Shooter, I think. He's working on that book.

So, that's fascinating, in that, this guy had a noteworthy career before he even steps one foot into Marvel. He goes and creates a couple different companies, all of them with varying levels and degrees of success—Valiant, probably being the most famous of them. When he launches Valiant, that company was a massive player, when he was the head of that organization. They were the third largest publishing company in America, from time to time. I think there were times where they outshone Image Comics, which was not an easy feat.

[16:48] John: You could ask some mutual friends of ours about theories about how some of those sales were made, but people we know that created X-Force and starred in Levi's commercials, I think, had some thoughts about some of that, but anyway, another thing wild about Valiant, though, is—do you remember Valiant, when Jim Shooter came onto it, when they started it? They were doing the Nintendo Comics. It was Mario and Zelda comics. That's crazy. That's what Valiant started as. We don't talk about Legion of Super-Heroes. We don't talk about that, at all, and those are, I believe, very expensive on the market, because there's virtually no other Western comics with those characters. I think the most recent was the Donkey Kong comic that I did with Skylanders. I feel like that might be the most recent North American version of anything.

[17:35] John: Oh, absolutely, and I think that's a miracle, if that happened then, and would never happen now. There'd never be a window to do that now. Anyway, but then he bent that, and somehow turned that into the company that was publishing Archer & Armstrong.

[17:51] David: X-O Manowar.

[17:52] John: X-O Manowar, of course. Yes.

[17:55] David: In the mid-‘90s, I mean, they were huge. The speculator market was dying for that stuff, man. The prices on those books were going through the roof. They were very popular books. He had great talent to follow. Barry Windsor Smith, as you mentioned, Archer & Armstrong, and some of the other stuff he did there. He put Frank Miller on a book and let him run wild. He did put Walt Simonson on a book and let him run wild, and he did identify a young David Lapham. David Lapham, before that, I don't even remember what he was doing.

[18:23] John: I didn't know there was a Dave Lapham before that.

[18:27] David: Was it Plasm?

[18:28] John: That was later.

[18:30] David: That was later. Anyway. So, yeah, he knew what he was doing, and I think if you look at any phase of his long career, some pretty big tent poles—not too many people, if anybody, can have the career path that he had, and have as much influence across a couple different companies, the way he did. So, it's sad that he's gone. I know that he wasn't always loved, but I do think that he should be admired for some of the things that he did do. I found this, John. I don't know if this is true or not, but I think it is. It seems like it's real. It's dated October 18, 1984, and I think this might be why he's not as beloved, in some ways.

[19:20] John: Oh, God. Is this the memo?

[19:22] David: Yeah, it's the memo. This is a cadence internal correspondence from Shooter to the editors. Subject: Comics. “Effective immediately, start doing good comics. I realize that this directive reflects a substantial departure from previous company policy, but please try to comply.” That might be one of the reasons why he's not as well beloved as some would think, in some of his accolades.

[19:53] John: Not going to name names on this—April 15 was the day Jim Shooter was let go. I know that because there were people that celebrated that day, when I was at Marvel, and now it's just going to go back to being tax day.

[20:07] David: That's fantastic. I found this one. This is from Chris Claremont, John. A little reminisce from him. “I have no pictures, but more Jim Shooter stories than one can shake a stick at. I think the best is almost 50 years ago, when Jim was Editor-in-Chief and I, among others, were talking about Spidey’s possible guest stars for a team up. I mused that it would sure be cool to guest the newly-premiered, “not-ready-for-prime-time” players. So, Jim said, ‘Why don't you call them?’ And I said, disbelievingly, ‘are you serious?’ And Jim says, ‘why not?’ So, I did, and they don't believe a word, but then they, being Saturday Night Live, call back Marvel Comics, and Jim tells them who he is and what we're doing, and long story short, in hardly any time at all, we have a deal with almost the entire original cast, and then at some point later, Jim calls me and asks what I'm doing, and I say, ‘I'm working, of course. Why?’ And he says, ‘Well, John Belushi is going to be here in 30 minutes, and I'll be there in 25,’ and I was like, ‘he is?’ and ‘that's great,’ and then Shooter has his moment. John Belushi tells me I'm really funny. I thank him, telling him, ‘thank God, because he has no idea how hard it is to write comedy.’”

So, Chris Claremont tells John Belushi, “he has no idea how hard is write comedy, because he has no idea how to write comedy,” and Belushi looks at Claremont like he's a dope, because, of course, he writes for the show, Saturday Night Live, and then Jim Shooter reaches over John’s head—Jim Shooter is famously a super tall guy. He's 6’7”—reaches over John's head, and whacks Chris Claremont on the back of the head, says, “don't worry, Belushi. We only let Chris out on special occasions,” and Belushi laughs, and then Claremont says, “Jim could be boss. He could drive you crazy, but he could also save your butt and do you a serious solid. You could love him. You could hate him. Often, you did both.” So, I thought that was pretty good.

[22:15] John: That's pretty funny.

[22:17] David: This one is from Fabian Nicieza. Not much to this one, but I liked it. “I wish nothing but peace for a man who rarely seemed at peace. He was instrumental in my career, and I thank him for that. Though he was complicated, I believe Marvel, the direct market, and possibly, the industry itself might not exist today without what Jim Shooter did as EIC.” I thought that was a nice little encapsulation of what I've always heard about Jim Shooter.

[22:40] John: No, I think that that summed up much more eloquently than I did my whole rambling thing.

[22:46] David: Here's one from JM deMatteis. We have to have him on the show and have him say his name. Just that. Okay, so this one from JM deMatteis. “I'd sent some samples over to Marvel, which eventually ended in Shooter's lap. Jim, who I'd also interviewed for a comic-centric piece I wrote for the SoHo weekly, saw something in my work and was open and generous with feedback, insight, and encouragement. Shooter was an intimidating figure, unusually tall, and very commanding, with a long resume in the business. He started writing comics professionally when he was 13. He was also a superb editor with a deep understanding of story, who was able to communicate that understanding with force and clarity, and soon became the next professor in my comic book college experience.” I thought that was interesting. A guy like JM, who's been in the industry for so long, has written so many quality books, one of the architects of the Bwa-Ha-Ha Justice League, talking about him.

Here's another one, from Wendy Pini, from ElfQuest. “First time I met Jim Shooter was in the mid-70s at some industry party.” She puts in parentheses, “(I remember dancing with Neal Adams),” which I found interesting. She says, “I looked up at Jim and kept looking up, and up, and up,” and she says, “‘You're beautiful,’ I blurted. ‘So are you,’ he shouted over the music. Flash forward, some years later, ElfQuest is well established. Richard and I are visiting folks we know at the Marvel bullpen, including one of our favorites, Marie Severin. She was an absolute hoot. In marches Jim Shooter, looking frazzled. He starts to say something to Marie, then looks at me, and says, ‘Wait, you're an artist, aren't you? Ink this,’ Whereupon he thrusts at me a gorgeous, romantic Doctor Strange page, penciled by Gene Colan. Turns out the issue was running way past deadline, and Jim had to get pages finished that day, by as many loose hands as he could find. I'm not sure what Richard did with himself”—Richard, being her husband—“Richard did with himself during the two hours or so it took me to ink the page in Marie's office, but I do remember, Jim was satisfied and made sure I was paid on the spot.” I like that one.

[24:46] John: Wild.

[24:47] David: In the reminiscence, Wendy Pini, or maybe her husband, shows the page that she inked. It is a perfect marriage of Gene Colan and Wendy Pini. If you had not said who the artists were, John, you would have been like, “that looks like Gene Colan, inked by Wendy Pini. That's never happened. That's not real,” but it totally looks like it. It's crazy.

[25:09] John: Gene Colan is probably the hardest artist to ink.

[25:13] David: He's got to be. It's a gorgeous page, and to think that she just knocked that out while sitting in Marie Severin’s office. I’ve got to imagine, Marie Severin just handed her some crow quill pen and some ink, and then like, “I guess, you're inking, too.” She's just doing it in her lap, or something. That was wild.

This one was good. Steven Grant—do you remember Steven Grant? Also longtime columnist at CBR. “All I really have to say about Jim Shooter is, he had his up moments and his down moments, and I saw plenty of both of them. So long, Jim.” I thought that was pretty good.

[25:49] John: There's a couple people in my life that I would—whatever else they accomplished later on—I would have to say something like that, if they ever pass away. There's a couple things I won't let go of, and it's fascinating to see that. Anyway. Sorry.

[26:03] David: Are you telling me, that's what you're going to say when I pass, John? Is that what you’re trying to get to?

[26:08] John: Oh, yeah.

[26:10] David: You’re like, “It's going to be easy to say bad things about you, Hedgecock.”

[26:14] John: Here's the thing I won’t say. I won't say that you were bad at reading between the lines.

[26:22] David: This is a good one. Do who Eric July is, John?

[26:24] John: No.

[26:25] David: He's the owner/publisher, I guess, of the Rippaverse online comic book company.

[26:31] John: Yes, yes.

[26:32] David: They famously crowdfund a lot of their stuff. They made millions of dollars on just a couple comic books. Anyway, I thought it was interesting, he had “RIP to Jim Shooter. He's always been my personal GOAT—greatest of all time—when it comes to Editors-in-Chief, and I'm incredibly grateful I had the chance to learn from him and absorb his wisdom, over the last year.” So, I thought that was interesting, that Eric had spent some time with him, and obviously, had maybe learned a trick or two from him. That's the general sentiment that I was finding online. A couple of the little stories were interesting. I thought it was important to try to find some stuff from people who actually had known him and spoken with him, and had real opinions about him.

[27:12] John: Yeah. It's hard to find anybody from that era that looms as large as that, I think. At DC, you had Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz coming in and doing a similar thing, in the sense of trying to simplify things, trying to bring in new readers into comics—simplifying in the sense that Crisis on Infinite Earths was meant to simplify the complexity of the universe—but also to be publishing Dark Knight Returns, and then Camelot 3000, and stuff like that, and Levitz was definitely coming from comic fandom, coming from Legion of Super-Heroes. Shooter was both of those things, put together. There's a bunch of things you would say about Shooter, where it's like, “that's what happens in a business person comes in,” but he came from comics. He came from writing Legion of Super-Heroes. He didn't really stop writing. I mean, he was definitely writing past when he was Editor-in-Chiefing, by a wide margin.

I’ve always thought there's a certain idealized Jim Shooter idea, which is “really dumb, super awesome, if you're a kid, and then, actually, pretty awesome.” I don't know if that makes sense, but the two that spring to mind—I actually don't know if the second one is a Jim Shooter idea. I think Bob Layton was key in that, but I also think Bob Layton was engineering a Jim Shooter idea. There's several times where Bob Layton executed Jim Shooter-type ideas—X-Factor being one of them. “What if it was the original X-Men, but they had to hunt mutants?” Oh, that's really cool, until you think about it for five seconds, and then you're , “how is Captain America letting these guys go out and kill mutants, and advertise on TV? Why doesn't Captain America stop them? Why doesn't Spider-Man stop them?” That was a comic that really got me into the X books. That was a huge one, for me. X-O Manowar is actually another one, where it's “what if Conan was Iron Man? What? Well, that's pretty awesome, actually. That's great.” That mental flipping through these things, but none ever more so than Secret Wars, which, as a kid, was incredible, and it's this idea that all these Superheroes get plucked out of their comics, put on a world, and told to fight each other—all the stuff you want from Superheroes, when you're a kid, and not the nonsense about them having to get jobs, or whatever. I’m joking, because that's the cool part about Spider-Man, and it's definitely the appealing part of a lot of those heroes.

[29:33] David: Not for me, man. I want the flighty fight. I want the costumes and the fighty-fightness.

[29:37] John: I was looking at my Secret Wars book here, and the cover of the one I’ve got is called, “the Crisis within,” because the Crisis on Infinite Earths was coming out, at the same time—not that I knew anything about that. So, that didn't have an impact on me, but it's Spider-Man fighting the X-Men, who I only knew from one issue of X-Men that terrified me as a kid.

[29:58] David: What? It terrified you?

[30:00] John: Have I ever told this story?

[30:03] David: I don't know if you have, but if you have, I forgot. Tell it again.

[30:05] John: I forget the issue number, but it's the Paul Smith/Claremont run, Jim Shooter Editor-in-Chiefing. So, it's applicable here. It's the end of the Brood Saga. It opens up where the New Mutants are sitting in the X Mansion, watching Magnum PI—because that was a running thing, at that point, is how much they like Magnum PI—So, from my point of view, it's these kids sitting there watching Magnum PI—Then the window blasts open, and these characters come in. One of them's got claws coming out of his hands. One of them looks a like devil with a tail that can disappear, a lady with a white streak in her hair, this other lady that can control the weather, a big metal guy. The most normal one is a dude wearing all black, with one eye, shooting lasers out of his eye, and they attack the kids, and then this bald guy rolls out from upstairs, flops forward, and wings sprout out of his back, and he turns into an insect that they fight, and then the one with the claws is about to kill that guy, and then the guy dressed in all black tells him not to, and then in the process of it, says the word “Damn,” which I had never seen in a comic book before. So, yeah, I mean, it was wild. I was like, “whoa, I don't know what this is about, but nope.”

[31:20] David: Well, how old were you?

[31:21] John: Must have been seven or eight.

[31:24] David: That’s one of those “this is not appropriate for me to be reading, mom” moments.

[31:29] John: Picking it up from the front of the Jewel supermarket in Elmhurst. It's a fine cover. It’s one of the worst covers of Secret Wars, because Secret Wars are just Grand Slam level covers the whole way through. This one's just fine. I don't even know what attracted me to it.

[31:45] David: Tell us what you've got there, John. You're looking at it, but you haven't described it to anybody.

[31:49] John: I was looking at the Secret Wars paperback. I'm sorry. Secret Wars #3. I think I mentioned it earlier in this podcast. You didn't take notes, everyone? Come on.

[32:00] David: Is it just Issue #3 you’re looking at?

[32:02] John: Well, I mean, that's the one I’m really focusing on. I've got the whole paperback. #3 was the one I picked up on the stands.

[32:08] David: Oh, you're looking at the cover to Issue #3 inside that trade paperback.

[32:12] John: Yes, I was. Sorry.

[32:13] David: Okay, gotcha.

[32:14] John: Yeah. I immediately had a crush on The Wasp. The first appearance of Titania.

[32:119] David: Oh, really? I didn't remember that.

[32:22] John: Yeah. She's no longer Skeeter [MacPherran]. Dr Doom hands her the leather dog collar that she then wears from then on. This is a comic designed to get kids to read Marvel Comics, and it's the comic that got this kid to read Marvel Comics. It’s Titania—

[32:42] David: Putting on a dog car.

[32:46] John: But, I mean, don’t you remember a costume? It’s leather with spikes.

[32:52] David: Dominatrix-esque.

[32:55] John: Very, yes.

[32:58] David: Perfect for the nine-year-old reading audience. That comic has always been a little horny, John. That’s just how it is.

[33:07] John: Between fighting the X-Men, fighting Spider-Man, and they were the bad guys. So, it was a total entry for me, because obviously I knew who Spider-Man was. I liked him from the cartoons and then The Electric Company, and everything.

[33:18] David: The thing that blows me away about about Secret Wars is, there's a lot of interesting first, in and around that book. This is the first maxiseries. I don't know if it was the first miniseries, but certainly the first miniseries at Marvel, I believe.

[33:30] John: No, I think there was a miniseries before then.

[33:32] David: There was? The first big crossover event, maxiseries-style thing. It all came from just a dumb toy idea. I think Mattel famously wanted to have an action figure line, like the DC Superpowers Collection, and to have a comic book to promote it, and what I found was that, and I don't know if it's true, but Mattel was just like, “hey, we've done some testing, and kids really the word ‘Secret’ and ‘Wars.’” Is that really how that happened? And Jim Shooter was like, “okay, Secret Wars. We'll do that. That's what we're going to do.” I don't know if that's real, but if that is, that's wild. The thing that's crazy about it is that they were right. Secret Wars was such a great name for that book. Totally, as a kid, I was dying to find out what that was.

[34:29] John: Yeah, it's the thing that Marvel still has its future banked on, is the success of the next thing in Secret Wars. The funny thing about that is, DC has their Superpower line. So, they make a tie-in comic about these characters, and it's a totally side, out of continuity DC comic. At the same time, DC has Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is their 12-issue series. It was coming out around the same time as Secret Wars. I mean, they overlap, but the Superpowers line was drawn by Jack Kirby. Yeah, it is wild that they do this big inter-company crossover, written by the Editor-in-Chief. The other ones had Jack Kirby doing their toy line.

[35:07] David: Man, 1984 was a wild time, John. A lot of the things that you said about Shooter, though, that his concepts were childlike, and then stupid, and then ultimately, awesome. However you put it—that was a little dumb—but if you look at Secret Wars on the surface—okay, it's the biggest heroes and villains in the Marvel Universe, and then they all get thrown on a planet called Battleworld, and then they're forced to choose sides in this giant cosmic fight that's orchestrated by some weird, mysterious entity that we learn is the Beyonder, and that's Secret Wars. It sounds like a nine-year-old is going to eat that up, and it also sounds really ridiculous, and then when you really, fully see it realized, you’re like “No, that's actually pretty cool.” A perfect journey there.

[36:02] John: I think it's a giant watershed moment, in the eras of Marvel. To me, there's the early stuff, where it's Stan Lee in charge, and Kirby, and Ditko, and Don Heck, and John Romita—that era of stuff—and then you got into the 70s stuff, especially once you got the post-Steranko page layouts, where stuff wasn't following this grid that Kirby and Ditko, and everybody, used, and you had wild panel designs, and you had, I would say, probably more of the Marvel creators taking acid and writing their Adam Warlock stories than you had previously. It got very autour-y. Think about it. With movies—and that was true in the 70s as well—There'd been this studio system that was very much like Golden Age comics, of artists as interchangeable pieces in a weird way—by the 70s, you had Jim Starlin doing his Thanos stuff. You had Master of Kung Fu, with Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy. Howard the Duck, all this weird stuff that was very esoteric, very complicated to read, in terms of, “what panel do I read next?” Complicated to read, on that level, and also complicated to read because it's dealing with these giant issues of death and identity, and stuff, in these bombastic 1970s ways.

I love the runs of Avengers in the 70s, but you can see the Avengers straining under the weight of the of the concepts that Steve Englehart is putting in there, and a lot of it doesn't age super well, but at the time, that's got to have been really interesting. I just read the original Jaws book, that Peter Benchley wrote. I've seen the movie a zillion times. Never read the book, and there's just these parts of it where it hits you of, “man, shit was weird in the 70s.” It's so foreign to the world I grew up in, in some ways, and there's other ways where I love all the stuff from 1972–the Ziggy Stardust, Elric of Melniboné, Cabaret, all these things, but it's so weird. The era I grew up in, there weren't movies like that. The big movies were Top Gun and Return of the Jedi. The Rambo sequels, especially First Blood, you could almost have made as a 70s movie. The difference between Rocky 1 and Rocky 4 is the difference between those, and Rocky 1 is a commercial, make-money movie. I don't mean that an insulting way, but I mean that was a movie made for an audience, not a super autour-y thing that happened to get popular, I would argue. Rocky 4 was just pure 80s Hollywood test marketing, and “who do we not like? The Russians. So, we’ll find a Russian.”

I'm not trying to even slam any of that stuff. That's the stuff I grew up with, and Secret Wars is exactly that. There's a bunch of cosmic stuff going on here. There's the Beyonder, there's the other worlds, but there's none of the weirdness of Jim Starlin’s cosmic stuff. It's absolutely absent. There's none of the weirdness of his storytelling. There's no drug-induced two-page spreads. There's no “influenced by Heavy Metal Magazine” sections in this stuff, and that was the stuff you'd see, feeding right into a lot of those guys, and there did become an outlet for that stuff at Marvel, with Epic Illustrated, and I don't mean to say that none of that was happening there, but none of that was happening in Secret Wars. Famously, all mid-shots, famously “make sure you see the feet on every page.” The roller skate rule—“if you can't see the character's feet, how do you know they're not on roller skates?”

The storytelling is absolutely clear. Never a question of, “what do you read next?” Ton of dialog, explaining everybody. One of my favorite Shooter stories was him not wanting the line in Daredevil: Born Again. There's a line, when the Avengers show up, where you see Captain America, and the caption says, “he has a voice that could command gods, and does.” It's one of the greatest lines that Frank Miller ever wrote. Shooter wanted it out. He wanted it to be, “he's Captain America, shining emblem of justice,” or whatever, and they just didn't make the change. They just didn't change it, put it out. So, Shooter would get into these specific rules, and occasionally it'd be absurd, and you'd wind up with these, “everybody knows us, because we're the Avengers, and we're famous, but just in case, I'm the Wasp”—it's the characters introducing […] to each other. You are 25 years into the Marvel Universe. They do know each other. 

[40:39] David: I think, ultimately, the downfall of Jim Shooter at Marvel was that sales started to dip. I think that probably was […]. I do think that there was a changing of the ownership, too, that caused some friction and problems for him, ultimately, if I recall correctly. I think if either the New Universe launch—which we've gone in detail, John. We have a couple dedicated podcasts about the New Universe.

[41:05] John: See Season 1.

[41:07] David: More about the New Universe than any other podcast in the history of podcasts. I have to think that's true. Anyway, if New Universe or, alternatively, Secret Wars II, if either one of those had had the level of success that Secret Wars had, I bet Shooter would have lasted a few more years at the helm there, which would have been interesting, because potentially, he would have been there at the launch of the late-80s/early-90s, where you get the next iteration of superstar artists and writers—Well, artists, really—which would have been interesting to see how he handled that. I guess you can see how he handled that in Valiant. He didn't really handle it that well. He's got Bob, Perlin, and I guess, Barry Windsor Smith.

[41:54] John: That was always a weird thing about Valiant was, it was so not-Image, in the art style, and everything else was starting to look that, and Valiant really didn't. There definitely wouldn't have been the laissez faire attitude that DeFalco had, with the way some of those artists were drawing stuff, and I mean that, really, in both people's credits. I get why both of them would do that. I think you and I would probably agree that you shouldn't get in there and interfere with Todd McFarland drawing seven vertical panels on a page, and having to script that, because they look awesome, or making Liefeld draw feet, because f*ck it, that's not what it's about. It's about the kinetic energy and the cool action, the dynamism, but I have a real tough time imagining that stuff happening under Shooter. I think there's also that hubris that happens, when somebody has a tremendous success, and then they, at some level, internalize that the success was due to them, and that everything that they do is going to be that level of success, because Secret Wars, as weird as it all sounds, it does add up to something, in a way that Secret Wars II doesn't, and the New Universe didn't. It's easy to look back on that with hindsight and be able to say that “this worked and that didn't,” but everybody on the ground was saying that about New Universe, too, as I understand it. This wasn't a thing that everybody was going into it, thinking, “this is the home run. This is the thing that makes it happen,” but they probably were saying the same thing about Secret Wars, and they were all wrong.

[43:19] David: Yeah, I'd be curious to know that. It’d be interesting to know if the same pushback and feedback was happening around Secret Wars as it did around New Universe stuff. I've got another one for you, John. This is from Valiant. This is two or three iterations of Valiant ownership management removed from the Jim Shooter era, but I thought it would be worth just reading, and it was nice that they did acknowledge their past and acknowledge Jim Shooter. So, this is from the Valiant social media post. So, it's going to be a little corporate. “Remembering Jim Shooter, legendary writer, editor, and Valiant Comics founding father. The comic book industry has lost one of its most influential architects. Jim Shooter, visionary writer, transformative editor, and co-founder of Valiant Comics, passed away this week at the age of 73. Shooter's trailblazing career began when he was 13. His early talent drive launched a legendary trajectory, culminating in his appointment as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics, during a pivotal era. There, Shooter oversaw the rise of fan favorite creators and launched the groundbreaking Secret Wars, the first true crossover event, reshaping the business and storytelling of comics for a new generation. After Marvel, Shooter embarked on arguably his career's crowning achievement”—Of course, they say that—“by co-founding Valiant Comics, assembling a powerhouse creative team, including Bob Layton, Barry Windsor Smith, David Lapham, and Don Perlin. Together, they redefined what a publisher could achieve, building a rich, cohesive universe, with more grounded superhero characters.” That is one of the things about the original universe, from that era, that I forgot about—how tightly connected their books were. They really were trying to make a cohesive universe. That seemed be their big thing. “With Valiant, Shooter was the first to create a connected universe from the ground up, with sometimes dark and edgy storylines that took bold risks. Shooter co-created many of Valiants most enduring characters: X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Archer & Armstrong, Eternal Warrior, Peter Stanchek, Toyo Harada, and the supernatural icon, Shadow Man.” I didn't realize that he created all those.

[45:24] John: I didn't realize anybody created one of those.

[45:29] David: “Shooters’s editorial philosophy was simple and uncompromising—story comes first. His keen eye for talent and demand for clarity, structure, and emotional resonance helped shape generations of creators, and brought readers some of the most memorable comics of the past half-century. Jim Shooter's influence still resonates across the industry. The worlds he built and the characters he helped shape continue to live on in comics, in media, and in the imaginations of fans everywhere. His legacy endures, not just in his creations, but in the path he helped pave for storytellers, in general. His many creations boldly continue today, to further inspire generations of young comic fans. Rest in power, Jim. Your legacy is eternal.” I thought that that was nice little tribute.

[46:08] John: Yeah. He didn't pass on a lesson of brevity to those guys.

[46:14] David: Now, now. Well, John, anything else on Secret Wars or Jim Shooter? I feel we did a pretty good business there.

[46:23] John: No. It’s a big legacy, and the trajectory of comics would have been very different without Jim Shooter.

[46:29] David: Yeah. Sorry to see him pass, but I appreciate the legacy he left behind, and I think, much like you, under his editorial leadership, some of my all-time favorite books were created, and some of my all-time favorite creators honed their craft. So, grateful for the time he spent in the comic book arena. I think we're done, John. What do you think?

[46:49] John: Yeah.

[46:50] David: Thanks everybody for coming. I hope you enjoyed that little reminisce—Is that what you'd call that? Our little tribute to the late great Jim Shooter. Sorry to see him go. Appreciate everything he did for the comic book industry. Join us next week, and we are not going to talk about anybody that has passed away next week, John. We have been doing too much of that. So, if you want to talk about Michael Madsen, then we need to do it right now, because I don't want to do that next week.

[47:12] John: One of my friends got a cameo from Michael Madsen, who also died today, and I just saw it. He just sent it over a text chain with a bunch of my old friends from high school. Michael Madison recorded it in his hot tub.

[47:23] David: Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs is one of my all-time favorite performances of any actor, ever. I adored him in that movie, and he could do no wrong after that, as far as I was concerned. So, anyway, we're not going to talk about any more of that stuff. Next week is going to be relatively new stuff, right, John?

[47:40] John: Sure. Nobody die.

[47:42] David: Join us next week, folks. We’ve got some cool stuff for you. Like and subscribe, and we'll see you next week on The Corner Box. Bye.

[47:48] John: Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates, and links at www.thecornerbox.club, and we’ll be back next week with more from David, and John, here at The Corner Box.