I rather enjoyed the Korvac storyline.

As for giving art direction, it would seem a better management style to know your strengths and listen/compromise with the talent.

Enjoyed the Graviton/Ultron/Count Nefaria run. That was Shooter at his writing best.

The rest of his 70's AVENGERS run became unenjoyable.

His second go round on the AVENGERS is best left unsaid, as he destroyed Henry Pym as a character and that damage is still there to this day.

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That really is a bit harsh. Shooter's first Avengers run was good in my opinion. Graviton, The Bride of Ultron, Nefaria and Korvac are gold standard Avengers storeis.

His LOSH work and Valiant runs are good as well.

But I did read both his Secret Wars and his Star Brand and the whole wrongheaded New Universe concept was his baby. When you lecture some of the best talent in the business about how good stories work and simultaneously produce that level of dreck a reality check is much needed IMHO.

And as always, it wasn't his fault. It's always someone else that got it wrong, drew it wrong, interpreted it wrong. Every creator he had major problems with (which were most of them) was under the wrong impression, had the wrong idea, it was always a big misunderstanding in retrospect. You can see the pattern. Everything that went right, thanks to him. Everything that went wrong, misunderstanding.

There's not any real value in that, hero of his own story to the extreme. And I say that having read most of his blog (which is very entertaining) and interviews. I do enjoy his insights and he is (was) right about some stuff, but when you take it all in it just doesn't add up IMHO.

 

You write a sentence like that, you'd better make sure you've read everything he wrote. Everything.

Conceded. I was thinking about the stuff he wrote while being EIC at Marvel, should've clarified that.

Shooter's Avengers runs are horrible. Korvac was a mess with a lame ending. Turning Nefaria into Superman? Yuck! And he never, ever, had a clue how to write Hank Pym. Secret Wars was the series I didn't want to read, but felt "forced" by all the tie-ins. Nothing good to see there! You think I'm going to read Secret Wars II or Star Brand? Nah. I've had enough.

I do understand that every writer has fans. Read what you enjoy.

I consider Shooter's first Avengers run to be one of Marvel's greatest ever. His run really took that title to the next level. Before him, Englehart seemed to only focus on the Vision and his pet project Mantis. Conway's short run was basic superhero-fare where the characters are almost interchangeable. Then, in comes Shooter with distinctly character-driven Avengers stories.

We have Vision and Wonder Man air out their dirty laundry, then going through a trial with their brother in one of the GOAT single issue stories. Next up, Ultron is elevated from basic killer robot to one of the Avengers top 3 villains. That's followed by one of the most memorable Marvel slugfests against a previously forgettable Nefaria. Then there's an Avengers survivor mystery and a big event where all members are involved. I'm not big on the ending, either (except for the bus ride), but sometimes the race is more interesting than the finish. Hey, the Kree-Skrull War fizzled out, too.

Besides that, all the characters start getting their share of development. That's including the big three, who hadn't done anything interesting in the title in years. Shooter is the first to introduce the Cap/Iron Man rivalry, which is now a seminal Avengers building block in both comics and movies. Simon develops a fear of death, Beast turns into a ladies man, etc. Even the Pym stuff at this point isn't any more offensive than it was in the Yellowjacket debut story.

Shooter's 80s output is more hit and miss. SWII is probably the worst thing I've read from the Marvel of that era. Maybe his EIC duties didn't allow him to put enough effort into the plots anymore?

I wouldn't blame Shooter too much for destroying Hank Pym, either. Yes, the abuse angle was terrible, but later Avengers writers redeemed Hank pretty completely. It's only the 00s deconstructionists that finally ruined the character.

Shooter has written quality stuff. The Death of Ferro Lad story holds up well, or at least it did last time I read it. And his WHAT IF? story "What If The Avengers Had Never Been?" is a classic.

Shooter wrote a lot of fine stuff for DC in the 60s.  Not just the Legion, but a lot of clever and creative Superman stories that fit the Mort Weisinger formula but also managed to push the envelope in small ways.  I guess how much a person enjoys them depends on how much of a classic DC fan you are, but I personally love that era of Superman and Shooter was a standout writer of the period.

Shooter's return to the Legion in the 70s was hamstrung by editorial edict that he not only couldn't write continued stories, he was rarely even allowed to write full-length tales.  Even so, he did a fine job at something that's a completely lost art now... writing 6 or 12 page stories that were solid and entertaining.

Like Harri, I'm a big fan of his first crack at Avengers (though I think it's not quite as good as the Englehart run that preceded it).  Still, there was some extremely good work in there, at least until the interminable Korvac story that seemed to go off the rails and display some of the traits I dislike in his later work.  I also really like his short stint on Daredevil around the same time.

I can't think of much of anything by him that I enjoyed after he became EIC though.  Perhaps his attention was too divided to focus on the writing or perhaps there was some other reason, but for me that's the jumping-off point, at least as far as his Marvel work is concerned. 

I did enjoy his third stint on the Legion (from about 12 years ago) though in that case he was stuck with a silly rebooted version of the team rather than the characters he'd written and created years earlier.  But he did a decent enough job making lemonade out of those lemons.