Jim Shooter, a hard-driving giant of a comic-book editor who took the helm at Marvel at the tender age of 27, then spent nearly a decade revolutionizing the way superhero stories are written, drawn and sold, died on Monday at his home in Nyack, N.Y. He was 73.
His son, Ben Shooter, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. Mr. Shooter was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last year.
Powerfully built, with a looming 6-foot 7-inch frame, Mr. Shooter dominated the comic-book world for much of the 1980s, reinvigorating an art form that had been in decline by finding new markets and new readers.
Though he was not yet 30 when he took over at Marvel in 1978, he was already an industry veteran. He sold his first comic story, to DC, Marvel’s rival, when he was just 14, and he worked for both companies while still a teenager.
As editor in chief at Marvel, he rationalized what had been a chaotic operation, instituting a coherent editing process and driving his staff to meet deadlines. He pushed into the growing comic-store market, targeting dedicated fans over the casual reader.
And he drove the company further into licensing opportunities, signing the sort of deals for toy and film adaptations that went on to make comics an enduring keystone of American popular culture.
“I honestly think he saved the comics industry,” Harry Broertjes, a journalist who once worked with Mr. Shooter, said in an interview.
Mr. Shooter could be imperious, but he could also be generous, and he welcomed new talent to the Marvel fold. Emerging voices like Frank Miller and Walter Simonson flourished under his watch, bringing a new, more sophisticated sensibility to the genre. He increased pay rates for writers and artists and gave them more control over their creative output.
Marvel prospered in the 1980s. Not only did its sales and profits soar, but it also experienced a long run of landmark releases, among them Mr. Simonson’s work on Thor; Mr. Miller’s work with Klaus Janson on Daredevil; and Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s on X-Men.
At the same time, Mr. Shooter brought a traditional vision to comic-book writing, insisting on simple, straightforward narratives. Among his many aphorisms was “Every comic book could be a reader’s first comic book,” and he made his writers find a way to introduce their main characters in each issue.
His changes were divisive, especially among those who had enjoyed free rein under previous editors, above all Stan Lee, who put Marvel on the map with a new line of superhero titles in the 1960s. Several Marvel veterans left for DC.
“Some people swear by him, and other people swear at him,” Bill Sienkiewicz, an artist at Marvel during Mr. Shooter’s tenure, said in an interview.
In 1986, New World Entertainment bought Marvel’s parent company, Marvel Entertainment Group, and a year later the new owners fired Mr. Shooter. The feelings about his time at Marvel were so passionate that even years later his critics spoke of him in brutal terms.
“From a creative standpoint, Jim Shooter’s Marvel was, by and large, a wasteland of formulaic self-imitation and blatant profit-seeking,” Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon wrote in their book “Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book” (2003).
But he was equally beloved by many artists and fans, who saw the Jim Shooter era at Marvel as the foundation for the efflorescence of comic-book storytelling in the decades that followed.
“Every bad thing you’ve heard about Jim Shooter has a bit of truth to it,” Danny Fingeroth, another Marvel writer under Mr. Shooter, said in an interview. “But so does every good thing you’ve heard.”
James Charles Shooter was born on Sept. 27, 1951, in Pittsburgh. His father, Ken, was a steelworker, and his mother, Eleanor, managed the home.
Jim’s mother used children’s comics to teach him to read, but he hadn’t perused a comic book in years when, in 1963, he found himself in the hospital for minor surgery with a stack of Marvel and DC books to read.
He loved what he saw in Marvel, but he found DC boring. As a challenge, he pulled out the narrative and artistic elements that he admired in Marvel and applied them to stories he wrote using DC characters.
On a whim, he sent them to DC headquarters in New York. The editors liked them so much that they not only published them (with new art) but also hired him to write for the company’s Legion of Superheroes line.
It was good timing: Union strikes and job-site injuries had left his father unable to work, and his family needed the money.
While still in high school, he wrote for DC’s Superman and Supergirl titles, created several new members of the Legion of Superheroes, and in 1976, with the artist Curt Swan, created a story pitting Superman and the Flash in a race — a hugely popular issue.
After being accepted at New York University and offered a job at Marvel, he moved to New York in 1969. He passed on school to take the job, but he quit after a few weeks because the pay was so low.
He returned to Pittsburgh, got a job in advertising and, for several years, completely dropped out of the comic-book world.
About five years later, a group of fans tracked him down and encouraged him to return to New York. Offered jobs at both DC and Marvel, he chose Marvel in 1976. Two years later, he was in charge.
Mr. Shooter’s marriage to Michele Minor ended in divorce. A complete list of survivors in addition to his son was not immediately available.
After leaving Marvel, Mr. Shooter started a number of independent comic-book companies, including Valiant, Defiant and Broadway. Valiant met with some success, but all the companies eventually closed shop. He ended his career as creative editor for Illustrated Media, a company that creates customized comics.
He also became a fixture on the comic convention circuit, where he would give lectures about storytelling. He had a simple message, built around the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet.”
In an economical 27 words and two sentences, he said, you have everything: a character, an action, a climax and a resolution.
“If you can remember ‘Little Miss Muffet,’” he wrote in an essay on his website, “you can remember everything you need to know about the basic unit of entertainment, which is a story.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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