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Back on September 12, 2009, I hinted at an April 20, 1976 memo from Sol Brodsky that somehow related to Jim Shooter. And ever since then, every couple of months, Sean Howe, the guy who’s writing that history of Marvel in the ’70s, has emailed to tell me that he really wants to see that memo. So I figure it’s time I put him out of his misery.
But I’m afraid that for most of you, the memo (I almost typed “email,” which shows how much difficulty I have in looking back so far into the past) will be anticlimactic. Because there won’t seem to be anything intriguing about it at all. For some small number of you, though, it will open a mystery for which I have no answer.
As you can see, Sol’s memo states that Jim had resigned his position as Associate Editor, and that his last day would be May 6, 1976.
But (you might be asking yourself) how can Shooter be quitting? Didn’t he hang around to later take over as Editor-in-Chief in 1978?
Why yes. Yes, he did.
And if you are one of the few who knew that factoid, you probably wish I could explain the meaning of this memo. Well, I can’t. Too much time has passed.
Did Jim quit, take a hiatus from his employment at Marvel, and later return to eventually ascend to the position of Editor-in-Chief? Or did he instead just threaten to quit for some forgotten personal or political reason and get talked out of it, so there was no break at all? I seem to recall the latter, but my memory is so hazy it could just as easily have been the former.
And so I hand this memo over to the care of the corps of truly dedicated Marvel historians out there to figure out what it truly means.
Which may just mean I’m handing it over to Sean and Sean alone. But that’s OK. As I’ve said before, the truth wants to be free.
I was curious about this too, Scott, so I asked around to some folks who were there back then, and here’s what I found out:
“Jim was tired of being passed over by Len, Marv and Gerry when they became EIC and promised Jim that he would be next in line.
Shooter left. Then, when nobody from Marvel called and begged him to come back, he contacted Stan and gave some sob story so Stan asked Archie to re-hire him.
Archie brought him back as his Associate Editor and right away Jim began undermining Archie at every chance until Archie exploded one day in Stan’s office when Jim was going off on how bad Moench and Mantlo were. ”
It’s a subjective interpretation, of course, so take it in that context.
Tom B
Thanks for that! Glad to see that my hazy memory may not be quite as hazy as I feared.
Interesting reply from Brevoort. It would be more interesting still if it were raised at Jim Shooter’s blog, where so far he’s answered all questions in a straightforward way. As opposed to innuendo here.
I’ve checked into this. The truth is that Shooter had a terrible experience working with Gerry Conway, who was editor-in-chief at this time. That’s why he gave notice. As it turned out, Conway gave notice simultaneously because he realized he couldn’t handle the job. When Shooter found out Conway was leaving, he asked to stay on and did so.
I sincerely doubt Shooter was upset about being passed over when Conway took over from Wolfman. He’d been on staff at Marvel for less than four months when the above memo was written.
Michelangelo Cicerone
I recall seeing a Jim Shooter writing credit on several late-’76-dated issues of Superboy (& the LSH) … don’t know if that has anything to do with the posted memo but, at the time, it seemed like a lot of talent kept alternating between the big two every year or so.