I had been told, at least a dozen times, to fire Tom. Tom was late. Tom was busy. Tom was distracted. And now, Tom was not doing his best on Spider-Man. Inker Rubinstein quit, annoyed that DeFalco and Frenz were habitually erratic. I scheduled fill in after fill in, affecting sales. Tom and I planned one schedule fix after another, but these efforts were routinely torpedoed by Shooter himself, who'd suddenly send Tom here or make Tom drop what he was doing and work on thus and so. All the while complaining about our near-misses (as I said, I never, not once missed shipping) with Tom, urging me to get rid of him. It was Jim himself who was playing havoc with Tom's writing schedule.
Finally, I came up with an idea: Sensational Spider-Man by DeFalco/Frenz. This would, likely, have been a quarterly special, like Spider-Man Unlimited or some such. Tom and Ron could do as much Spider-Man as they wanted and were capable of doing, and we'd be off the hook for the monthly deadline. Tom and Ron continue to do the work they love, I get out of Shooter's line of fire. I told Jim I was taking Tom off of AMAZING, and creating this other animal for him and Ron. Jim said, fine.
Tom took the news very hard. It ended our friendship, and, I am told, Tom saw Jim's hand n this and threatened to quit. A stunned Shooter appeared at my door the next day, and I knew I was about to be fired. He asked me, and I quote, "Why'd you do that? [fire Tom]" I just stared at him as he stammered and stared at the floor and shook his head and exhaled, and I felt like I was in The Godfather II, the victim of some macabre Corleone plot. What the blessed hell was this man talking about?!? I cleared this all with him before I did it. More to the point, for months he'd been after me to do something about Tom.
I said, "Because you told me to. We talked about this beforehand." To which Jim replied, and I'll never forget this, "Yeah— but I never thought you'd actually do it."