Are Marvel comics actually the best they've ever been?

[ed2962]

Marvel transitioned well from Shooter to Defalco I think. Don't know about Valiant. Defalco honored stare decisis where he largely consolidated and built on Shooter's legacy rather than overturn it.

Jim Shooter was divisive and polarizing. Some (Priest, Stern, Starlin and others) liked him a lot, and others (John Byrne especially) didn't, while the likes of Claremont are more mixed. There were reports that some Marvel writers cheered when they heard him getting kicked out.

The real reason for his departure was that he got into a grudge fight the Marvel President and it spilled into the papers and that got him fired.

It's a common truism that Jameson and the Daily Bugle tend to be written or cast as stand-ins for Marvel Editorials, but in my view no Marvel EIC is most like Jameson than Shooter. Not even Stan Lee (who was laissez-faire and hands off when it came to editing stuff). The same divisiveness, the same mix of insight and weirdness. He wrote a brilliant crossover like Secret Wars I and then wrote a bad sequel like Secret Wars II. This is the guy who tried to make Dazzler into Marvel's flagship character and protagonist of Marvel's first attempt at a feature film.

And of course Shooter could be hard and tough but also generous. He got royalties for Marvel's writers and editors.

I would characterize the last two things slightly differently. The Dazzler thing was originally going to be a multi-media cash-in on the disco craze with merchandise on every front including comics. Marvel was just going to be part of it. When the movie and record companies pulled out cuz the trend was dying Marvel kept the character.

Marvel started royalties after DC and a couple of indie companies, but supposedly the deals were better at Marvel.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Secret Wars '84 is the Marvel version of Transformers' "To Sell Toys."

People nowadays think the Transformers cartoon of the 80s was a classic, and Secret Wars '84 is also a classic.