death of MU
1986-7
http://www.jimshooter.com/
I left Marvel in April of 1987.

That was pretty close to the end of my tenure as Editor in Chief. I was so busy battling with the Cadence Management Inc. jerks who had taken Marvel private and were screwing over the creative people (and everyone else) that I was pretty much out of touch with what was going on in the comics.

Steve Ditko on Spider-Man:
"He refused to work on any books with “flawed” heroes. He had a pretty strict definition of “hero.” Per him, the character isn’t a hero if he or she is flawed.

"I said, but what about Spider-Man? Wasn’t he flawed? Steve said that when he worked on Spider-Man, Spider-Man wasn’t yet an adult. It was okay for a kid to make some mistakes, but…."





[death of MU]

The comic book industry is rife with writers who do not know writing basics, the sort of things Mark Twain cites in his "Nineteen Rules."  Supervision is usually lax and the supervisors often are clueless. So, there is more "freedom" in the sense that some can get away with more self-indulgent, amateurish garbage; and some who don't have basic skills are allowed to fumble their way along blindly. It seems that the only skills the creative management at the two major companies require of writers are a knack for glib patter and "events," or gimmicks.  In an earlier comment, Marc Miyake hit the nail squarely --  they seem to focus on STIMULI, not story. What's the most shocking thing we can do? Break Batman's back! Kill Thor! Make Hal Jordan a villain! Then throw it all away and start over with Ultimate or New 52 so there are new opportunities for shocking stimuli. That seems to be all the companies care about. 

And P.S., too many artists these days can't tell a story even if given a good one. But, they're given carte blanche, as long as they've got some dazzle. 

Seems to me that's a good way to kill an industry.

...
http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/11/question-about-writing-for-television.html#comments
Jim:
Turn on the TV. Watch a show you've never seen before. You'll figure it out. In the first couple of minutes you kind of find out who everybody is and what's going on. Go to any movie, except Lost Highway, and you can pretty much follow it. You might like it, you might not, but you don't feel like you're in the middle of a Swedish movie with no subtitles. But comics?

Mark Miyake:
How many movies have we caught in the middle on TV and understood even if we missed the first half?

There's a craft gap between US "mainstream" comics and mainstream entertainment that has to be filled if the former is to ever become truly popular again

me: Stan and the Old Timers had that skill. Not inspired, but knew the craft.