jkr@gitpyr.UUCP (John Kenneth Riviere) (11/10/85)
In article <8990@ritcv.UUCP> sds5044@ritcv.UUCP writes: >As far as I know Jean Grey does not appear in any FF issue other >than the X-Factor cross over in FF #286. Jean Grey (and the rest of the X-Men of the day) appear in FF #28 & FF Annual #3. I haven't bothered to look much beyond that to verify no other appearances.(I'm not sure what the question was originally, but I know the quote above exclude the references I cited.) Re: Shooter at Marvel: Since noone else has brought this up I feel that I must. There has been a LOT of criticism of Jim Shooter in this newsgroup lately. Certainly Marvel has done some incredibly stupid things lately, and there can be no denying that Jim Shooter is directly responsible for some of these actions. However, everyone seems to be overlooking the fact that Jim Shooter may possibly be, at least partially, responsible for what I now consider to be one of the most active times for comics in the last thirty years. My comics budget is certainly feeling the strain of the numerous titles that are now on the market. Can anyone else here remember back to the chaos that reigned at Marvel during the early to mid 70s? Was anyone in comics doing well at that time? Marvel had seen the end of the Stan Lee era and had gone through Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, Marv Wolfman (I'm sure I've missed someone, maybe more than one) looking for someone to take control of Marvel and keep an even keel. Does anyone remember titles coming out with reprints every other month due to a lack of editorial control which allowed creators to miss deadlines repeatedly simply because the editors didn't have time to make sure that there was something to be printed each month? Certainly there was some brilliant work being done then with Barry (Windsor) Smith, Mike Ploog, Craig Russell, and others turning out some magnificent material. But all of those I've named as well as some others were missing deadlines regularly due to weak editors. Jim Shooter claims (and I don't feel like doing the research to disprove him) that there has not been an unscheduled reprint in a regularly published title during his tenure. First comics has taken this same rigidity regarding reliability of meeting deadlines and has established a solid line of good quality comics. Look at what happened to Pacific and some of the other companies that failed to produce the titles that they had announced. Jim Shooter turned Marvel around when he took over in 1978 (yes, it has been almost eight years, only Stan Lee holds a comparable record for durability at the helm at Marvel). During that time the Epic comics line was established which spawned some excellent work. Almost all of John Byrne's work at Marvel has been done under Jim Shooter (I hope this rumour of Byrne leaving Marvel altogether is untrue, but if it is I guess I will be picking up more than just Superman that I hadn't been following previously). There were only a few stores in Atlanta that bothered to carry new comics in the mid-70s as something worthy of concern to make sure all the titles were being carried. It is hard to find a spot now which is more than a few miles from a comics specialty store. Maybe I am making too much of Shooter's contribution to the field (as a long-time LSH fan I have to admit that I have enjoyed his writing on more than one occasion), but I feel that he helped to guide Marvel (and in turn, the rest of the industry) to a level of acceptance in American society that comics has never previously enjoyed. For myself, I find that Marvel has grown too big to try to keep up with everything they do (at one time I picked up *anything* that Marvel published). However, I don't feel that it is fair to expect that, as a company grows as Marvel has under Shooter, that everything that the company does will appeal to everyone who follows any part of that company's products. Again, I don't like everything that Shooter has done at Marvel, but it seems to me that the posters here on the net are allowing his gaffs to unfairly paint him as being totally irresponsible. As someone else said, if you don't like it, then don't buy it. Vote with your dollars for what you want to see. Don't just complain that you are being ripped off by unscrupulous people who are trying to take advantage of people who feel they must buy everything a particular company produces. Exercise your independance and purchase only those titles that you think are worthy of purchase. End of soapbox. -- John Kenneth Riviere Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!jkr