Shooter in the Foot

Originally published June 18, 1993, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1022

From the first BID collection:

As of this writing, the first issue of Defiant’s new line, Warriors of Plasm, has hit the stands. I haven’t quite been able to slog through it yet; then again, with dialogue like “He must have sensed my nodes tweaking! Stand ready, Zom! I wish to be dripping with splatter gore for my lust-mate!” being delivered by a female with breasts alternating between cantaloupe and watermelon size, it could take a while.

Nevertheless, I did not enjoy writing the following column. Some of that should be self-evident. I’ll explain the rest at the end.

This is, like, so embarrassing.

I missed it.

I flat out missed it.

I come back from Romania, crack open CBG, and find Jim Shooter being pilloried. And I missed the article that kicked it off.

You have to understand: When I get CBG, I first do a cursory skim: read all the short items; save the long stuff for later.  Except, with everything that’s been happening over the past month, I never got a chance to go back and read the lengthy Defiant coverage that uncorked a massive flow of corrections.

Consequently, Messrs. Miller, Byrne, Gerber, Mme. Duffy, et al., have all beaten me to the punch.

Which means I must take another angle, because this can’t be ignored. I shall endeavor to do so, therefore, by commenting not on the CBG piece but other pieces of disinformation that are presently floating around.

The thing that really hurts is that I like Jim. I think he’s got a very clear creative vision, and you’ve got to give him credit for the fact that, like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps going and going.

A lot of people are asking: Does Jim Shooter really believe everything he’s saying? I tend to think so: I mean, he’d have to be out of his mind to lie blatantly in such a public forum, and I hardly think he’s nuts.

The problem, it seems, is that Jim is padding his résumé. This is not a federal offense. Lots of people do it. And most people do so in relative privacy. Jim, however, rather unwisely chose to do so in a public forum, and it’s being seen—not wrongly—as an attempt to rewrite history.

What’s a pity is that this revisionism—indeed, this entire “I am the Greatest” chest-thumping by Jim and his major crony (to whom I shall get in a short while)—is wildly unnecessary. A lot of people admired what he achieved with Valiant. A lot of people thought he got shafted. And a lot of people were rooting for him with the birth of Defiant. He had more good will going for him now than ever before.

And he’s blown it.

If Jim has ever wondered, in the past, why things keep happening to him—why he seems to be in a position of power and suddenly comes tumbling down from it—then this, the greatest and most needless P.R. debacle since Zoë Baird, answers the question beyond any doubt: He’s bringing it on himself.

If only it were limited to CBG. But it’s not. It’s spreading, like a fungus or a rash, poisoning Defiant’s send-off.

I read in amazement, for example, Jim’s four-page presentation of his life story (which was blown up to billboard size at Wonder-Con.) Breathtaking in its pomposity, it intersperses questionable copy with subpar artwork.

We witness, for example, Stan Lee (or his hand, at least) passing off the editorial reins of Marvel to Jim (wearing a pinstripe suit with clashing tie).

Evocative of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Stan’s outstretched hand tells Jim that “Marvel’s in your hands!” and Jim replies, “I won’t let you—or Spider-Man—down, Stan!”

After a number of questionable claims, we learn that “Jim was fired by the ‘bad guys’ for standing up for creators’ rights, which were routinely violated by Marvel at that time. They even attacked his reputation, in order to erode the credibility of his accusations.”

Now, generally, why someone is fired is their own business. But when someone makes a public proclamation of the reasons, then historical footnotes are being invited.

I mean, here I thought that Jim was fired because he managed to hack off just about everyone at Marvel. At one point he wrote a state-of-the-Marvel-union memo (admittedly at the behest of then-owners New World, who wanted his opinions) which thoroughly vilified everyone from Marvel president Jim Galton on down. That memo burned so many bridges for him that his power base was forever crippled.

Creator’s rights? If that was the case, he might have done a better job letting creators know he was on their side and perhaps even gotten them onto his. As it was, one major creator had a party and burned Jim in effigy. Another major name sent a formal note to Mike Hobson, threatening to resign if Jim were not fired. Perhaps Jim considered himself a defender of creators, but there were far too many who were anxious to see him go. At the very least, Jim suffered from terminal communications problems.

He cites the same reason for his departure from Valiant: creator’s rights. Now I’ve heard a lot of reasons, from all sides, as to why Valiant kicked Jim loose. And as close as I’ve been able to determine, the only creator whose rights were being screwed with was Jim.

After this we’re treated to more subpar artwork, featuring Jim raising his fist in defiance (naturally), protesting his fate and/or promising that he shall ultimately triumph. Well, not with too many more overblown “résumés” like this, he won’t.

The most curious claims are that Jim was “a major contributor to the development of the Comics Direct Market.” This immediately caught my attention. I was there during that time, and the main things I remember were that (a) Jim was constantly at loggerheads with direct sales department head Carol Kalish, (b) Jim frequently said that the sales department served no purpose and that the comics would sell themselves without the efforts of the sales department (a sentiment echoed twice in his résumé when he says that “All we had to do was tell great stories”) and (c) Jim pointed out a number of times that comics had been around long before the direct market—i.e., comics did fine before direct sales and would presumably do fine if direct sales went away.

What caught my attention even more was an interview in Capital City’s May 1993 Internal Correspondence, in which Jim explains his recollections of the origins of the direct market. He describes how instrumental he was in developing and catering to the direct market, to the point where he even includes himself into the development of Marvel’s cash register program, in which Marvel sold cash registers to direct retailers.

This I found particularly bizarre. Carol was the one who came up with the idea of the register program, after her many trips to retailers discerned the repeated absence of this fundamental piece of in-store equipment. And I was the one who contacted register companies, came up with which models to sell, and learned how to operate them.  Now if by “We did all that,” Jim means Marvel Comics, then fine. But that’s not remotely the way it comes across—and since Jim is a journeyman wordsmith, he should be aware of what he’s saying.

In the same interview, he credits Marvel’s expansion into the direct market to himself and Chuck Rozanski. The Internal Correspondence editors, in a lengthy footnote, immediately point out the inaccuracy of Jim’s recollections. But the connection between Jim and Chuck is a bond that remains to this day—and one that served to send me absolutely ballistic not that long ago.

Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics and I go back quite a few years. I remember vividly when Chuck, through his distribution outlet “Alternate Realities,” was returning box upon box of Marvel Comics claiming that they were damaged and unsalable. Not only was his damage return rate many times higher than any other distributor, but the books he returned were of such pristine mint quality that other distributors who happened by the office when Chuck’s “returns” showed up would snap up entire boxes.

When Carol and I (as her assistant) cracked down on him, Chuck retaliated. He told all his subscribers to write letters of protest to me (since I was the one checking over the books), falsely claiming that Marvel had revised its damage return policies. And his “Mile High” subscribers sent me a bunch of letters, variously questioning my sanity, my parentage, and my suitability to do my job. It was the first fan mail I ever got.

Even with Carol long gone, Chuck has apparently managed to nurse a grudge against her, and it came bubbling forth last month in his newsletter, N.I.C.E. News Monthly.

In his opinion column, he put forward a theory as to how, in his judgment, Marvel had become a second-rate market force. And in the course of this dissertation, he managed to pin all the blame on Carol, stating that she had single-handedly caused the downfall of Jim Shooter, the editorial emasculation of Tom DeFalco, and—apparently—precipitated the ruin of Marvel Comics and perhaps even the Western World.

If you thought that Jim was busy absolving himself of any blame for his misfortune, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve perused the gospel according to Jim’s leading acolyte, Chuck Rozanski.

As far as Chuck is concerned, Jim Shooter was a helpless victim at the hands of the demonic Carol. Carol allegedly “used her guile to exploit the weaknesses in Shooter’s interpersonal skills,” driving wedges between him and creators and ultimately causing his downfall. Supposedly this lesson was not lost on Tom DeFalco, who (in Chuck’s view) tremblingly toed the line, afraid of incurring the Wrath of Kalish. Carol ostensibly wanted nothing but to be president of Marvel Comics, steamrolled over everyone who stood in her way, and—when she died short of her goal—left Marvel rudderless.

At first I was willing to attribute all of this to Chuck’s fevered imaginings. I was certain that Jim had too much class to try and pass the buck that way. Certainly, I reasoned, there would be no way that Jim would hold himself completely blameless in not one, but two major career mishaps.

Now, though, I’m not sure.

Either way, Chuck has put forward a conspiracy theory that would give Oliver Stone the giggles.

So now one of the “bad guys” in Jim’s résumé is named. Carol Kalish got Jim Shooter fired from Marvel with her “guile.” Curiously, Chuck doesn’t bother to explain to his readers how Carol managed to reach not only across companies, but from beyond the grave, to get Jim ousted from Valiant.

No, he’s too busy displaying his staggering ignorance of Carol’s career goals. Carol was so determined to be president of Marvel that, during the height of Jim’s reign at Marvel, she was ready to accept an offer at DC. She had one foot out the door and her hat on, but Marvel coaxed her back because they valued her contributions.

His scenario for her actions at Marvel once Tom took over are even more ludicrous. During the last year or so of her life, she wasn’t even involved with marketing main-line Marvel editorial. She was busy developing a line of religious books, Civil War comics, and “greeting card” comics to expand Marvel’s market. I’m sure Tom would hardly share Chuck’s characterization of his quaking in terror at Carol’s presence—especially considering that, during the time that Carol and Tom’s paths did overlap, Tom did not hesitate to shoot down any series concepts put forward by direct sales, if he didn’t want to do them editorially.

Furthermore, if Carol had been around another six months, she most likely would have been gone from Marvel entirely. She was all set to start her own publishing firm. So much for her plans to rule Marvel Comics.

Certainly this is not historical revisionism on par with, say, those who claim the Holocaust never happened (annoy a Jew, get a Nazi metaphor; happens every time.) But Jim Shooter and Chuck Rozanski are trying to remake the world into a place where dark and sinister beings indulge in evil doings, and the proud warriors are being overwhelmed. Jim Shooter, Chuck Rozanski—two voices of reason and truth in a universe of malevolence. In short, a comic book continuum.

I am very, very afraid that Jim is going to be rather hurt by this column. I think he has viewed me as a friend, and I have been. Certainly I’ve leant a sympathetic ear on several occasions.

It is in that spirit, Jim, that I say this: You had it made. You had managed to portray yourself as an underdog, gaining support and sympathy even from those who couldn’t stand you previously.

And now you’re botching it.

All you had to do, in your own words, was “tell great stories.” But in the comic books, for crying out loud. Not in your press release. Not in your résumé.

The American public has little patience for those who blow their own horn too loudly. It is far better to err on the side of being self-effacing than on the side of “I’m the greatest thing since the creation of fire”—particularly when you’re trying to start up a company.

As it is, I find myself looking at the Defiant symbol with a new view. The solitary illuminated window, indicating—it now appears—that the lights are on, but nobody is home. Furthermore, the castle tower itself makes me think of the matching chess piece. The one that’s sometimes called the castle, but is also commonly referred to as the rook.

Someone is being rooked here, Jim. You, the readers, all those whose participation in Marvel Comics and the direct market growth is being usurped by you.

Pick up your rook, move it back a square or two, and take stock of the board—before it’s too late. Before you’ve maneuvered yourself right out of the game.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at To Be Continued, PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

***

Footnotes from the BID book collection:

1) When Chuck wrote his original revisionist look at Marvel history, I was so incensed that I wrote him a letter so filled with fury that I never sent it. If not for Chuck’s original piece, I might never have written this one.

In response to the above, Cat Yronwode wrote a guest editorial for CBG that made my column look like a love letter. In that same issue a response ran from Chuck, which basically claimed that he was actually trying to compliment Carol because he hated her so much. Yes, you read that right.

2) John Byrne wrote in and said, “Score one for Peter.” It was one of only two instances where he openly agreed with me.