80s Smackdown: Jim Shooter vs. Jenette Kahn

Speedy-D · January 10, 2013

word booty

bcolflesh · January 10, 2013

His blog:

http://www.jimshooter.com/

is one of the most fascinating comic-related documents I've ever read.

Some of the best parts are arguments in the comments (some reiterated here), that lead to Shooter scanning and posting the actual Marvel internal docs supporting his version of the events.

I have no idea what went on with all the different personality types at Marvel, but I've only seen evidence provided by one person involved, and sour grapes and rumors from others.

Prince Namor · January 10, 2013

Does he have an internal doc to prove this statement in his blog bio: "I accepted the position of Editor in Chief of Marvel Comics under the condition that I would be allowed to improve things for Marvel’s creators."

fastballspecial · January 10, 2013

You mean the royalty program he instituted under his tenure?

Comic Wars does a decent review of him as well as EIC at the time.

DC got the better story content overall I think.

While Marvel got the better structure thanks to Shooter.

Although I would argue Marvel's core books were just awesome during that time.

Logan510 · January 10, 2013

Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that pre Crisis 1980's DC was not doing well sales wise aside from the Wolfman / Perez Teen Titans. In fact I remember at one point Marvel Age magazine was outselling Batman. Post Crisis I would agree that DC really stepped up their game with relaunches of Superman, Wonder Woman, Justice League and books like DKR, Watchmen and Batman: Year One.

John R · January 25, 2013

Here's an interesting, albeit long, article on the Shooter Marvel era.

Prince Namor · January 25, 2013

Marvel HAD to do that royalty plan or they would've lost a heck of a lot of talent, because DC instituted it first. Once DC did it, Marvel really had no choice.

John R · January 25, 2013

Quote from this article.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Several of Shooter’s detractors note that character-creation and sales royalty plans had already been established at DC Comics before Marvel instituted them. This is accurate, but to denigrate Shooter’s achievements in setting up these policies displays an obtuse ignorance of business realities.

Gary Groth, for one, has acknowledged that in 1980 Marvel’s sales were as much as every other U. S. comics publisher combined (TCJ 60, p. 63). No business in that position is going to play follow the leader with a competitor unless it is already inclined to institute the policy. With the sales royalty plan, it was put in place one month after DC’s. Shooter claimed that he had designed it and gotten it approved in principle shortly after becoming editor-in-chief in 1978 (TCJ 70, p. 10). There’s every reason to believe him. Such a policy could easily cost Marvel hundreds of thousands if not millions a year up front. At the time, Marvel was a division of a publicly traded company, and there is no way a policy of that sort could be designed and approved within a month in that environment. I again note that every Marvel newsstand title had high enough sales for creators to be eligible for the royalty plan. Less than a quarter of DC’s line was eligible for theirs, and people at Marvel knew it. This was going to have a far greater impact on Marvel’s short-term bottom line than it would on DC’s. It seems a miracle that Shooter was ever able to put it in place."

Prince Namor · January 25, 2013

That's exactly how I'd manipulate the story if my overall goal was to be remembered as some kind of visionary comic company guru.

jimjum12 · January 25, 2013

.....if she heralded the Vertigo line, that cannot be understated. It was the single most significant event since the inception of the Marvel Universe. ....IMHO :foryou: GOD BLESS....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

Logan510 · January 25, 2013

I don't know about that. Have you ever seen the details of DC's royalty plan?

Prince Namor · January 25, 2013

No, I haven't seen the details of either plan.

Logan510 · January 25, 2013

This is from memory, so don't quote me, but I recall that the DC plan called for high enough sales that only a very small handful of titles ( think New Teen Titans ) were eligible to receive royalties.

Prince Namor · January 25, 2013

That was from Shooter's recollection.

He repeats these stories over and over as if they are 'facts' as a way of giving some sort of veracity. Propaganda for Shooter's sake.

Let's take a look at some of what he said:

"By the time I finally got Marvel's board to agree to allow a royalty program (and that was a tough sell), DC had already announced theirs. Easy for them. Only three or four DC titles sold enough copies to qualify for royalties under their plan, and one, Superman, just barely, because royalties started after the first 100,000 copies. Teen Titans was their number one book and it sold roughly 175,000 a month. So, their exposure was minimal."

Interesting numbers, that I'm not sure where they come from. Comichron doesn't have numbers from this period, so I if you're willing to take Shooter's word for it, I guess it might seem to make sense.

At other times he has included Warlord as the other 'best selling' DC book at the time, but never Batman, which seems odd. Lately he hasn't been using Warlord as an example.

"Unless sales increased dramatically, their program would cost them almost nothing. As I've mentioned before, Vince Colletta once showed me three DC royalty checks that did not total one dollar. They were hoping that their plan would help them steal talent from Marvel, which would theoretically boost sales, in which case they'd be happy to pay out some royalty money."

That's the point of putting together an INCENTIVE plan. Do your best work, sales increase, you get paid more.

And Vince Colletta? An INKER, who did minimal work for DC. You mean his royalty checks for Batman Family weren't outstanding?

Clever choice.

"Meanwhile, at Marvel, our line AVERAGE was over 200,000. EVERY Marvel title would pay royalties from the inception of our plan, assuming we matched DC. Even Dazzler sold 140,000 copies a month. From inception, if sales stayed the same, our plan would take around a million dollars off of the bottom line. Make that make sense to a room full of business sharks who don't give a rat's about anything but the bottom line, I dare you. But I did."

So Jim Shooter, talked Marvel into taking a MILLION dollars off their bottom line to give to creators, with a promise that sales would go up.

Sounds amazing.

I'd love to see an internal document proving that.

"Instituting the plan was delayed for years, for several reasons. For one, because of Kirby's legal threats, our lawyers at K&K advised against it, on the grounds that royalties, or royalty-like incentives implied a creator ownership, or ownership stake in the work, which might bolster the claims Kirby's lawyers were making."

Liar. Kirby wasn't making legal threats. He just wanted his artwork back, as DC was already doing. Shooter's been exposed on this lie and yet continues to make it.

Presented again, is a great example of one of the few people taking Shooter to task (in this instances over his LIES concerning Kirby) and exposing his 'facts'. However you may feel about Gary Groth, he does his due diligence on this topic and it's worth reading:

JIM SHOOTER: Groundhog Day in the Land of the Apocryphiars

And his original tour-de-force on the topic:

JIM SHOOTER: Our Nixon

Featuring original quotes you may have forgotten (because unlike Shooter, they haven't spent their life constantly repeating them)

Frank Miller: (Shooter's biographical account is) "shameful" and "outrageous", (Shooter's claim that) "he spent his career fighting foe creator's rights is outrageous".

John Byrne: "(Shooter) told me more than once that if he had his way there would be no credits on the books. That creative freedom at Marvel under Shooter meant constant rewriting and redrawing until things were done HIS way".

Steven Grant: "(Shooter) didn't feel strongly about 'royalty payments' until numbers of Marvel talent, such as Frank Miller, were about to move to DC, which had just initiated it's own royalty system".

Shooter keeps repeating many of these lies, in the hopes that people will begin to see them as fact. He's obviously concerned about his place in history.

Zonker · January 26, 2013

But Vertigo was an almost-accidental creation. By the 1990s they noticed they had a collection of non-super-hero comics creating a buzz, and attracting a non-traditional comics buying demographic: arty/alternative/avant-garde & especially female. Titles like Swamp Thing, Sandman, Hellblazer, Animal Man were already launched within the DC Universe, and not from what I gather ever intended to be a new imprint. They were all part of the larger "mature readers" line from the 1980s that also included series like Vigilante, The Question, and the post-Longbow Hunters Green Arrow series.

What would be interesting to know more about is the original strategy behind seeking out UK writing talent, beginning with Alan Moore's assignment to Saga of the Swamp Thing. Because that British Invasion of Moore, Morrison, Gaiman and their many followers really was a game-changer for US comics. Prior to then, US comics were largely written by fanboys-turned-pros, typified by Roy Thomas and those he hired (Conway, Wein, Wolfman) and DC counterparts such as Paul Levitz, Martin Pasko, Jack C. Harris. Did Jenette Kahn recognize this as a problem that needed to be solved by importing fresh blood from England? Or was that just a happy accident due to the coincidental rise of a new generation of English comics talent given voice through the publication of Warrior Magazine in the UK?

Prince Namor · January 26, 2013

Len Wein hired Alan Moore to write Swamp Thing based upon his work in 2000 A.D., though by the time he would've started it, he was already writing Marvelman (Miracleman) and V for Vendetta for Warrior Magazine.

The success of this must have led to Karen Beger's 'talent scouting trip' to the UK in 1987 where she recruited Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, and Grant Morrison. She "found their sensibility and point of view to be refreshingly different, edgier and smarter" than those of most American comics writers."

Marvel may have SOLD more comics during this period, but in hindsight, the most important comics of the time, the ones that have a chance to actually be remembered and re-read 50 years from now, almost all came from DC.

Jenette Kahn's strength, almost a polar opposite of Shooter, was that she gave creators the power to create with very little interference. What it produced is very telling.

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80s Smackdown: Jim Shooter vs. Jenette Kahn

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