Here's my Valiant story...
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-
JCVaughn
- Is it Dee-no or Die-no? Dunno.
- Posts: 523
- Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:36 am
- Valiant fan since: 1991
- Location: New York
Here's my Valiant story...
This is a long one, but hey, it’s my story and I’m sticking to it:
When Jim Shooter got the heave-ho at Marvel, I thought it was a good thing. After all, that’s what the buzz said. He wanted things done his way or not at all, stuff like that. Never mind the fact that on his watch Marvel produced the Claremont & Byrne run on X-Men, the Miller-Jansen run on Daredevil, Simonson on Thor, and so many other incredible epics. No, I went with the buzz.
And then Marvel jumped on an Acme Rocket Sled downhill. So, if it was so good that he was gone, why did so many comics start sucking so soon after he left? Wish that had occurred to me sooner.
Ah, well.
Not all that long later, I heard he was starting a new comic company named Valiant. Well, I sure wasn’t going to check that out. I mean, it was Shooter, right?
Well, shortly before his departure from Marvel I had moved into my first management position. I had great bosses and as long as I kept it private I could even yell to make my point with them. When things were decided, though, it was “our” policy and not “their” policy I had to enforce with our employees. I might be the deliverer of raises or the wielder of the mighty axe, but I was part of a management team and I took that responsibility pretty seriously… seriously enough to become our in-house personnel and employment law reference guy (this actually plays into the story, so stick with me).
In those days, I shopped at a phenomenal comic shop called Heroes in North Richland Hills, Texas. It’s gone, naturally, but they were smart folks. They gave me comics and told me to pay for them if I liked them, bring them back if I didn’t. In doing so, they turned me from a $50/month customer to a $250/moth customer in short order, and I thanked them for it.
As the early superhero Valiants came out, they tried to turn me onto them. I really wasn’t having any. Then in some publication or another I saw an ad with Barry Windsor-Smith’s cover for X-O Manowar #5. Well, that looked intriguing, didn’t it? At that point, X-O Manowar #4 was on the stands. I thought I’d give it a try.
By the time X-0 #5 came out, I had every superhero book they’d produced to that point. To this day, feeling of discovery and excitement is what I look for in comics and so rarely find. Magnus and Harbinger became my instant favorites.
I became a seriously Valiant fan with that first issue and it only increased as they kept coming. More than just the stories, I read Jim’s editorials and articles elsewhere that at least finally touched on his side of the story from his Marvel days. Given my own job, it was really easy to read between the lines. At the very least I had been wrong about the guy to some extent. Maybe to a big extent.
With the beautiful work I was enjoying and my own experience as a manager tugging at me, I had to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. I decided to interview him. I had been a journalism student, and thought what the heck, I can do that. I called Valiant and spoke with Jon Hartz. He told me that Jim was pretty busy, but he’d do an interview if I had a publication for it. He had me there. I didn’t. I’d have to work on that.
And then something I couldn’t imagine happened. Jim got forced out at Valiant.
Immediately I saw some of the online chatter begin to turn against him, some of it even suggesting how much better the books would be with him gone. In many cases, it was the same folks who had been saying how great Valiant was up to that point. Hmmm.
Well, I didn’t know how to get a hold of Jim, so that plan was dead, but I started interviewing corresponding with creators. Malibu Comics, which had just started up their Ultraverse, asked me to be on their Fan Advisory Network. I met more creators by email and at conventions.
Then Jim started Defiant. My girlfriend, who lived in New York, went to one of the “How To” seminars Jim put on. There she met Clark Smith, Defiant’s marketing director. She told him that I was looking to make the jump from the business world into comics just as he had. He said he’d be glad to meet with me, so I flew up to New York and went to Defiant.
Chuck Rozanski from Mile High Comics was there. I recognized him because the first time I ever saw him I lost my job at Lone Star Comics when he bought the mail order department. He was talking to Jim.
I met Brady Darvin, who I’d end up working just a bit more than a year later at Gemstone Publishing, as well as JayJay Jackson, Joe James, Pauline Weiss and a few other people.
Clark and I had a great conversation that started with him telling me that he didn’t have any work for me. I said that was fine, I really just wanted to pick his brain. I left with my first freelance assignment, a feature article about why comics weren’t just for kids anymore. It’s a no-brainer now, but back then it was still a reach for mainstream magazines. Rolling Stone almost bit on it, but in the end they passed, but I still got to do it, get paid for it, and interact with them.
And as corny as it is, I still have a photocopy of the check.
Clark introduced me to Bob and Carol Overstreet, and I started writing almost immediately for Overstreet’s Comic Book Monthly. One of my first pieces was an article on the then-upcoming event mini-series Schism. [Schism is, of course, a complete subject unto itself.]
The article came out in time for the San Diego Comic-Con in 1994, the first one I attended, and I even got to sign a few autographs, which was a completely weird experience.
I did an interview with Defiant contributor Art Holcomb for the second or third Defiant newsletter, which sadly never came out, but led to a good friendship, which is sort of a recurring theme in my comics career.
Then Defiant, too, was gone.
And then came Broadway.
By that time I had bailed on my old career and gone to work at Gemstone Publishing, home of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. There I got interview lots of people and become friends and eventually peers with many of the creators who influenced me.
There’s a line in Fatale #2, something like “Vaughn, you’re in command here.” That was the day I visited them at their offices, covering it for Overstreet’s Fan.
Then they were gone, too.
I was beginning to think that I’d never get to work with Jim. He was never far from comics, but he wasn’t actively working in the industry either.
In 1999, my friend Jim Kuhoric (Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, Dead Irons) told my pal Mark Haynes (later my co-writer on 24) and me that the company that published his Battlestar Galactica comic was for sale. We made a deal for it. Keep in mind, this is about three years before everyone in Hollywood decided at the same time they were going to remake Galactica, so it was about five years before it was really cool to have the license.
Still, we decided we were going to start a second title. The first person I asked to write for it was it was Jim Shooter. And of course he delivered a great eight-page story. The whole issue turned out great.
And then we sort of cratered. (Maybe it’s me?)
For several years, Jim was around the edges of comics, working elsewhere in the entertainment field, but I think this has afforded many an opportunity to look back and see what a tremendous force for good he has been in the industry.
I don’t have any grudge against the people who worked for him and don’t like him. As I learned myself, when you’re the boss and you control livelihoods, some people are just not going to like you. That goes with leadership and that's just how it is. What I continue to dislike, though, is the people reciting things they’ve heard from other people who heard something third or fourth hand as reasons not to like his work.
What the intervening years have afforded me is the ability to get to know the guy. To hang out with him and talk baseball, football… and oh, yeah, comics. There's a lot more to it, but I've bored you enough for now.
Even though I'm not a major Legion fan (really, except for Jim and Paul Levitz's runs, it's never been my cup of tea), I was so psyched by his return to to Legion and so disappointed by how it ended, but... at least Jim Shooter was solidly back in comics.
While I was in San Diego for Comic-Con this year, Jim dropped me an email. He told me that he was coming out and that it was hush-hush until Saturday, I knew there was a cool announcement coming. Seeing the reactions of fans and other professionals Friday night as we just sat in the bar and talked comics was something I will always remember.
And I’m trusting that his return to Magnus and the other Gold Key characters will be, too.
When Jim Shooter got the heave-ho at Marvel, I thought it was a good thing. After all, that’s what the buzz said. He wanted things done his way or not at all, stuff like that. Never mind the fact that on his watch Marvel produced the Claremont & Byrne run on X-Men, the Miller-Jansen run on Daredevil, Simonson on Thor, and so many other incredible epics. No, I went with the buzz.
And then Marvel jumped on an Acme Rocket Sled downhill. So, if it was so good that he was gone, why did so many comics start sucking so soon after he left? Wish that had occurred to me sooner.
Ah, well.
Not all that long later, I heard he was starting a new comic company named Valiant. Well, I sure wasn’t going to check that out. I mean, it was Shooter, right?
Well, shortly before his departure from Marvel I had moved into my first management position. I had great bosses and as long as I kept it private I could even yell to make my point with them. When things were decided, though, it was “our” policy and not “their” policy I had to enforce with our employees. I might be the deliverer of raises or the wielder of the mighty axe, but I was part of a management team and I took that responsibility pretty seriously… seriously enough to become our in-house personnel and employment law reference guy (this actually plays into the story, so stick with me).
In those days, I shopped at a phenomenal comic shop called Heroes in North Richland Hills, Texas. It’s gone, naturally, but they were smart folks. They gave me comics and told me to pay for them if I liked them, bring them back if I didn’t. In doing so, they turned me from a $50/month customer to a $250/moth customer in short order, and I thanked them for it.
As the early superhero Valiants came out, they tried to turn me onto them. I really wasn’t having any. Then in some publication or another I saw an ad with Barry Windsor-Smith’s cover for X-O Manowar #5. Well, that looked intriguing, didn’t it? At that point, X-O Manowar #4 was on the stands. I thought I’d give it a try.
By the time X-0 #5 came out, I had every superhero book they’d produced to that point. To this day, feeling of discovery and excitement is what I look for in comics and so rarely find. Magnus and Harbinger became my instant favorites.
I became a seriously Valiant fan with that first issue and it only increased as they kept coming. More than just the stories, I read Jim’s editorials and articles elsewhere that at least finally touched on his side of the story from his Marvel days. Given my own job, it was really easy to read between the lines. At the very least I had been wrong about the guy to some extent. Maybe to a big extent.
With the beautiful work I was enjoying and my own experience as a manager tugging at me, I had to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. I decided to interview him. I had been a journalism student, and thought what the heck, I can do that. I called Valiant and spoke with Jon Hartz. He told me that Jim was pretty busy, but he’d do an interview if I had a publication for it. He had me there. I didn’t. I’d have to work on that.
And then something I couldn’t imagine happened. Jim got forced out at Valiant.
Immediately I saw some of the online chatter begin to turn against him, some of it even suggesting how much better the books would be with him gone. In many cases, it was the same folks who had been saying how great Valiant was up to that point. Hmmm.
Well, I didn’t know how to get a hold of Jim, so that plan was dead, but I started interviewing corresponding with creators. Malibu Comics, which had just started up their Ultraverse, asked me to be on their Fan Advisory Network. I met more creators by email and at conventions.
Then Jim started Defiant. My girlfriend, who lived in New York, went to one of the “How To” seminars Jim put on. There she met Clark Smith, Defiant’s marketing director. She told him that I was looking to make the jump from the business world into comics just as he had. He said he’d be glad to meet with me, so I flew up to New York and went to Defiant.
Chuck Rozanski from Mile High Comics was there. I recognized him because the first time I ever saw him I lost my job at Lone Star Comics when he bought the mail order department. He was talking to Jim.
I met Brady Darvin, who I’d end up working just a bit more than a year later at Gemstone Publishing, as well as JayJay Jackson, Joe James, Pauline Weiss and a few other people.
Clark and I had a great conversation that started with him telling me that he didn’t have any work for me. I said that was fine, I really just wanted to pick his brain. I left with my first freelance assignment, a feature article about why comics weren’t just for kids anymore. It’s a no-brainer now, but back then it was still a reach for mainstream magazines. Rolling Stone almost bit on it, but in the end they passed, but I still got to do it, get paid for it, and interact with them.
And as corny as it is, I still have a photocopy of the check.
Clark introduced me to Bob and Carol Overstreet, and I started writing almost immediately for Overstreet’s Comic Book Monthly. One of my first pieces was an article on the then-upcoming event mini-series Schism. [Schism is, of course, a complete subject unto itself.]
The article came out in time for the San Diego Comic-Con in 1994, the first one I attended, and I even got to sign a few autographs, which was a completely weird experience.
I did an interview with Defiant contributor Art Holcomb for the second or third Defiant newsletter, which sadly never came out, but led to a good friendship, which is sort of a recurring theme in my comics career.
Then Defiant, too, was gone.
And then came Broadway.
By that time I had bailed on my old career and gone to work at Gemstone Publishing, home of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. There I got interview lots of people and become friends and eventually peers with many of the creators who influenced me.
There’s a line in Fatale #2, something like “Vaughn, you’re in command here.” That was the day I visited them at their offices, covering it for Overstreet’s Fan.
Then they were gone, too.
I was beginning to think that I’d never get to work with Jim. He was never far from comics, but he wasn’t actively working in the industry either.
In 1999, my friend Jim Kuhoric (Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, Dead Irons) told my pal Mark Haynes (later my co-writer on 24) and me that the company that published his Battlestar Galactica comic was for sale. We made a deal for it. Keep in mind, this is about three years before everyone in Hollywood decided at the same time they were going to remake Galactica, so it was about five years before it was really cool to have the license.
Still, we decided we were going to start a second title. The first person I asked to write for it was it was Jim Shooter. And of course he delivered a great eight-page story. The whole issue turned out great.
And then we sort of cratered. (Maybe it’s me?)
For several years, Jim was around the edges of comics, working elsewhere in the entertainment field, but I think this has afforded many an opportunity to look back and see what a tremendous force for good he has been in the industry.
I don’t have any grudge against the people who worked for him and don’t like him. As I learned myself, when you’re the boss and you control livelihoods, some people are just not going to like you. That goes with leadership and that's just how it is. What I continue to dislike, though, is the people reciting things they’ve heard from other people who heard something third or fourth hand as reasons not to like his work.
What the intervening years have afforded me is the ability to get to know the guy. To hang out with him and talk baseball, football… and oh, yeah, comics. There's a lot more to it, but I've bored you enough for now.
Even though I'm not a major Legion fan (really, except for Jim and Paul Levitz's runs, it's never been my cup of tea), I was so psyched by his return to to Legion and so disappointed by how it ended, but... at least Jim Shooter was solidly back in comics.
While I was in San Diego for Comic-Con this year, Jim dropped me an email. He told me that he was coming out and that it was hush-hush until Saturday, I knew there was a cool announcement coming. Seeing the reactions of fans and other professionals Friday night as we just sat in the bar and talked comics was something I will always remember.
And I’m trusting that his return to Magnus and the other Gold Key characters will be, too.
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comicsyte95
- It's Porktastic!!!
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vikingspawn
- Clinkin' bottles with Aram
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Draco
- Well I think I talked enough poop...
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JCVaughn
- Is it Dee-no or Die-no? Dunno.
- Posts: 523
- Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:36 am
- Valiant fan since: 1991
- Location: New York
Shooter's Battlestar Galactica story
Galactica: The New Millennium #1.vikingspawn wrote:Awesome post! Keep them comin!
There was a Jim Shooter penned Battlestar Galactica comic????
Which & where??? Must find!
I can probably help track a few down.
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Rufusharley
- donkey-shorts!..uhh i mean..danke schön!
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Daniel Jackson
- A toast to the return of Valiant!
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96Valiantfan
- You gotta have Faith!
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JCVaughn
- Is it Dee-no or Die-no? Dunno.
- Posts: 523
- Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:36 am
- Valiant fan since: 1991
- Location: New York
Thanks to you and everyone else for the welcome. Much appreciated.geocarr wrote:Thanks for posting your story! Sounds like you have had some uber cool experiences with otehrs inthe industry. Welcome to the board!
I have indeed been richly blessed with experiences. I submitted my first story to Marvel when I was 13 (I thought, hey, that Shooter guy did it...) and of course it didn't go anywhere, yet here I am today with the ability to call up many of those creators who really influenced me. The fact that some of them are now good friends is a bonus that still ocassionally blows my mind.
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superman-prime
- scratch 1 for the coog guys
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magnusrobot12
- 100 posts! (if you round to the nearest 100)
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