Jim Shooter Launches His Own Blog

Last week, Jim Shooter launched his own website/blog, and it only took a few days to get to the really juicy stuff. Before taking the reigns as Marvel Comics' Editor-in-Chief in the late 70s, or launching Valiant Comics a decade later, Shooter made a splash at DC Comics as the 13-year-old writer of the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics, for which he also provided pencilled page breakdowns.

While his time at Marvel saw creative highs for the company (Claremont/Byrne's Uncanny X-Men, Frank Miller's Daredevil, Walt Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars, and the Epic imprint to name a few) and innovations for creators' rights, it was also not without controversy. Shooter had heavy control over story and was quite taskmaster when it came to deadlines, which ruffled the feathers of many creators working for Marvel at the time.

Now, with the benefit of some hindsight, Shooter has taken to sharing his thoughts and experiences with the masses. One of his latest pieces concerns regrets he has over missing out on his youth thanks to his duties as a teenaged comic book writer under DC editor Mort Weisinger, whose reputation as a dominating editor would be rivaled by Shooter's years later. Reading Shooter's recollections of those times very much inform the path and philosophy his career would later take; being impressed upon by Weisinger at such a young age impacted not only his work ethic, but his approach to the work itself. Clearly, being 14 and taking a flight from Pittsburgh to New York to deliver pages to DC Comics because the mail simply is not fast enough is going to have some lingering effects.

If this first week is any indication, Jim Shooter's blog is going to be one to keep an eye on as a history of the comic book industry from someone who was influential in shaping it.