A giant has passed. Jim Shooter, former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel from back when I started reading comics, legendary kid genius writer of Legion of Super-Heroes, and a personality larger than life - passed on June 30th, 2025.
For those who don't know, Shooter landed a job at 13 or 14 writing Legion of Superheroes stories after sending in a spec script to National Comics (before it was DC). He went on to write some of the biggest Legion stories there ever were before he was out of high school. He introduced the Fatal Five, Shadow Lass and more. He killed off Ferro Lad!
As editor-in-chief at Marvel, he introduced Dazzler, Power Pack, GI Joe, Transformers and oversaw some classic work on X-Men, X-Factor, Avengers and other characters.
After Marvel, he founded Valiant comics, and worked for several comics companies over the years, including returning to DC for about a year on Legion.
In the heyday of Twitter, he did as some creatives did and began chatting with fans and sharing wisdom - until it became obvious it wasn't worth doing. It was nice while it lasted.
He meant a lot to me as the guy pulling the strings at Marvel when I first picked up Marvel comics. And again as an adult as I discovered Legion for myself - really only 20 years ago. To some of his own generation, he was a controversial figure. I don't care. We're still reading the comics he oversaw and wrote, and a generation of us came to comics under his watch.
You gave a lot of us mythology, stories and inspiration, and you'll be missed, sir.
1 comment:
Well said. To me, 80s Marvel is the Camelot of comic book history. Just loved it.
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