Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jul 2, 2025 | 12 comments

Picked by Paul Kupperberg, Paul Levitz, Mark Waid and many other folks you know…

Confession time: Most of Jim Shooter’s work passed me by. Not like I was avoiding iy or anything, it’s just that his career rarely crossed paths with my particular brand of fandom. As a writer, anyway.

I do appreciate, however, that he brought back Two-Face (in a fashion) in 1967’s World’s Finest Comics #173, several years before he was brought back for real by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams in 1971’s Batman #234.

So to pay proper tribute, I’ve tapped a coterie of 13th Dimension regulars and friends to do right by Shooter, who died this week at the age of 73.

“Although I never worked with him, we became table-mates and friends at comic conventions where we were both represented by 4C comics,” said cartoonist Bill Morrison of our MORRISON MONDAYS column. “Kevin Andrew Boyd of the Fan Expo shows had the idea to pair us up for a panel about being an editor-in-chief in the comics biz titled ‘Don’t call me chief!’ and it was so much fun and such a success that we did it two or three more times.

Ken Carson, Jim Shooter, Bill Morrison

“On the first of those panels, I learned that Jim came close to being my boss. In the early ’90s he was somehow associated with people at Welsh Publishing, for whom Steve and Cindy Vance and I created content for the magazine Simpsons Illustrated. When we put out the all-comics annual, Simpsons Comics and Stories, the people at Welsh were talking to Jim about helming a Simpsons comics line. If that had happened, I probably would have ended up drawing Simpsons comics with Jim as my EIC, but instead, Matt Groening decided to start his own company to produce Simpsons-related comics apart from Welsh, and we started Bongo Comics.

“I enjoyed getting to know Jim over the past few years, and I will miss seeing him at cons and swapping stories with him on panels,” Bill added. “But more importantly, the world of comics has lost a giant, and his absence will be deeply felt.”

Artist Des Taylor, of our DESPOP TUESDAYS feature, simply noted: “The Jim Shooter era at Marvel was what got me collecting comics.”

Here, then, is what you could call a Jim Shooter Reader — a selection of stories picked by knowledgeable folks that you can search out, or revisit, as the long holiday weekend approaches:

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PAUL KUPPERBERG, veteran comics writer, 13th Dimension columnist

World’s Finest Comics #163 (December 1966), DC. Eleven-year old me had no way of knowing the identity of the writer behind “The Duel of the Super-Duo” (with art by Curt Swan and George Klein), but I can guarantee there was no way I could have imagined it was a young man from Pittsburgh, who was only three years my senior.

Rereading it today, I still can’t believe 14-year-old Jim Shooter wrote this. In many ways, it’s a typical 1960s, gimmick-driven Mort Weisinger-edited comic book, but it’s laced with ideas and bits that at the time took me aback, like the villain Jemphis’ collection of recreations of the “secret hideaways of great heroes,” a throwaway bit that introduced a universe of superheroes, some of whom would make a brief appearance later in the story.

But the moment that stuck with me most was an exchange between Superman and the bad guy on Page 9, Panel 2, when Jemphis threatens to activate his “Plan B.” To which Superman replies, “What happens when you run out of the alphabet?” The line still makes me laugh.

Godspeed in the next new universe, Jim!

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PAUL LEVITZ, writer, former DC chief and, like Shooter, an architect of the Legion of Super-Heroes

Adventure Comics #357 (June 1967), DC. So many of Jim’s Legion stories of the late 1960s were wonderful, and emotional in large and small ways beyond much of anything DC was publishing. He wrote about fear, romantic love, friendship, and his characters had character. But if I had to pick one favorite, it was “The Ghost of Ferro Lad.” A fake haunting, and then a double twist to the end. Magnificent structure.

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MARK WAID, veteran comics writer and walking encyclopedia

Adventure Comics #369-370 (June, July 1968). I’d be stunned if this two-part Legion story — “Mordru the Merciless/The Devil’s Jury” — wasn’t at the top of many fans’ lists. It left a mark on me as a child for several reasons.

It was the first time I’d seen Superboy (or Superman) actually be afraid of the villain, which spooked me and made the merciless Mordru seem all the more threatening.

It was because despite the Legion’s two dozen members, Jim wisely held the cast to four (plus Smallville natives Lana Lang and Pete Ross), which allowed a lot more character work than DC superhero books in general were doing at the time. (There’s a shot of Duo Damsel crawling through an escape tunnel while ruminating over her love for Superboy that she knows, because she’s from the future, will never come to anything–and it’s such a memorable panel that most hardcore Legion fans recognize it instantly.)

And it was because Jim flat-out fooled me.

The story begins with four Legionnaires in the 30th century on the run from Mordru. They decide to hide out in the 20th century while they plan their strategy–but while there, they come across another, lower-scale menace that takes up the rest of that first chapter and is so interesting and involving in its own right that when the Legion breathes a sigh of relief on the next-to-last page, I did, too — because we’d all forgotten about Mordru, and when he shows up on the final full page, a giant-sized being of immeasurable power, it left me stunned.

I’ve never forgotten that comic, and that “distract the reader from the surprise” swerve is something I’ve tried to emulate dozens of times in my own work.

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JIM BEARD, novelist, historian and 13th Dimension contributor

Captain Action #1 (Oct.-Nov. 1968), DC. At the tender age of 17 (!), Jim Shooter scripted the first two issues of one of the earliest comic book toy tie-in mags, Captain Action. I don’t know exactly how much of a hand he had in the set-up, but there’s something about those two issues that raise them above the standard “we have to do a comic about this toy” type of thing.

There’s some cleverness in the scenes, the dialogue, and yeah, the action that speaks of a writer who’s “into it” and wanted to create something special. Maybe it was because Jim was barely out of his childhood himself at the time or maybe it was because he was already a three- or four-year veteran of the industry then (!), but he took what could have been just another assignment and made it into, in my opinion, one of the best and most memorable tie-ins ever.

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CHRIS FRANKLIN, podcaster and 13th Dimension contributor

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (May 1984), Marvel. With Mattel insisting their new Marvel toy line be called “Secret Wars,” Shooter knew a tie-in comic which was actually relevant to the ongoing narrative of the universe could only benefit both Marvel AND Mattel.

So, he transplanted a group of Marvel’s greatest heroes and villains to Battleworld. And it worked. Nine-year old me met Marvel characters he had only known from afar, and I bought every issue, action figure, vehicle, and playset I could find. That’s synergy.

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FRED VAN LENTE, comics writer, playwright and recurring 13th Dimension character

The Avengers #177 (Nov. 1978), Marvel. I’d argue Shooter’s Avengers run was the best that title’s ever been. His Korvac Saga was one of the best early examples of cosmic-level ensemble storytelling, way before “event comics” were a twinkle in a marketing department’s eye.

He stuck the landing, too, with its climax, The Avengers #177, which I’ve already written about extensively in my 13th Dimension COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH column.

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SCOTT TIPTON, comics writer and 13th Dimension contributor-at-large

Marvel Treasury Edition #28 (1981), Marvel and DC. Co-plotted with Marv Wolfman, this second team-up of arguably the two most famous characters in all of comics has much more of an easy charm than its predecessor, primarily thanks to Shooter and Wolfman leaning into the notion of Superman and Spider-Man having always co-existed in the same universe, as opposed to coming up with a multiple-universe MacGuffin.

Guest stars like Wonder Woman and the Hulk drop in and out, we get to see Doctor Doom and the Man of Steel face off in an epic confrontation, while Spidey saves the day with his brains and not just his spider-powers.

Is it canon? Did it “happen”? Who cares? It’s a great story.

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MORE

— JIM SHOOTER DIES AT 73. Click here.

— 13 THINGS to Love About CAPTAIN ACTION #1. Click here.