Continuation of Bob Layton comments on Valiant/Nintendo/WWF

DawgPhan · Post by **DawgPhan** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 5:44 pm

DawgPhan wrote:As I understand it doing the Nintendo and WWF stuff was not Jim's fault. I think that he wanted to do superhero books, but was forced into the nintendo stuff because they had already spent a bunch of money on it..Anyway..I guess there are only a few people who really know what happened and the rest of us will never fully know the truth...

BobLayton wrote: Wrong, Dawg.
I begged him not to do that crap. But "Big Shoot" was convinced that Valiant would make him SOOOOO much money from Nintendo that it would bankroll the super hero line without having to borrow more money from Triumph. When it went south, Jim spun the Nintendo fiasco as to make it look like he had little choice--but he was TOTALLY the one pushing it on the rest of us who signed on to do Magnus, Solar and the rest of the Gold Key heroes.
Do you really think I would have left Iron Man ( at the height of it's popularity, BTW) to go do Mario and Capt.N???!!

I was there, folks. And it was NEVER pretty, sorry to report.
Bob
bob.layton@boblayton.com

Well I guess that answers that.

x-omatic · Post by **x-omatic** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 6:40 pm

Thank you for the insight Bob. Without your side of things we would be left with no choice but to beleive what "others" say. It is always best to get the info first hand.

ckb · Post by **ckb** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 6:56 pm

I know "ifs and buts are candy and nuts", but you have to admit that "if" it had worked, it would have been worth the pain of doing Mario vs Sgt. Slaughter. The debt to the VC people seems to be the source of many problems later on.

You should be commended for seeing that the idea was flawed ahead of time, for the reasons you stated in your interview.

It sure does look like a bad move in hindsight as well, since they still had to borrow money after doing it for a yaer. We are all under the impression here that the Nintendo and WWF books were printed in vast numbers. I must now assume that that is incorrect, or that the distributors got most of them back.

Bob Layton wrote:<<As I understand it doing the Nintendo and WWF stuff was not Jim's fault. I think that he wanted to do superhero books, but was forced into the nintendo stuff because they had already spent a bunch of money on it..Anyway..I guess there are only a few people who really know what happened and the rest of us will never fully know the truth...>>

Wrong, Dawg.
I begged him not to do that crap. But "Big Shoot" was convinced that Valiant would make him SOOOOO much money from Nintendo that it would bankroll the super hero line without having to borrow more money from Triumph. When it went south, Jim spun the Nintendo fiasco as to make it look like he had little choice--but he was TOTALLY the one pushing it on the rest of us who signed on to do Magnus, Solar and the rest of the Gold Key heroes.
Do you really think I would have left Iron Man ( at the height of it's popularity, BTW) to go do Mario and Capt.N???!!

I was there, folks. And it was NEVER pretty, sorry to report.
Bob
bob.layton@boblayton.com

ZephyrWasHOT!! · Post by **ZephyrWasHOT!!** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 7:27 pm

Bob Layton wrote:<<As I understand it doing the Nintendo and WWF stuff was not Jim's fault. I think that he wanted to do superhero books, but was forced into the nintendo stuff because they had already spent a bunch of money on it..Anyway..I guess there are only a few people who really know what happened and the rest of us will never fully know the truth...>>

Wrong, Dawg.
I begged him not to do that crap. But "Big Shoot" was convinced that Valiant would make him SOOOOO much money from Nintendo that it would bankroll the super hero line without having to borrow more money from Triumph. When it went south, Jim spun the Nintendo fiasco as to make it look like he had little choice--but he was TOTALLY the one pushing it on the rest of us who signed on to do Magnus, Solar and the rest of the Gold Key heroes.
Do you really think I would have left Iron Man ( at the height of it's popularity, BTW) to go do Mario and Capt.N???!!

I was there, folks. And it was NEVER pretty, sorry to report.
Bob
bob.layton@boblayton.com

It's *really* easy to present one's own side of a story without the other side being around to defend themselves.

I'm not suggesting this isn't true....I'm stating that it's just one side, and admittedly a biased side (naturally). It's always best to take a neutral position on testimony until hearing all sides involved.

I'm more of a 'he said/she said, and somewhere in between lies what ACTUALLY happened' kinda guy.

Although, I believe, without reservation, that it was, indeed, 'not pretty'.

And...height of Iron Man's popularity? In 1990? Ummm....I seem to remember that the height of IM's popularity happened thrice.....in 1979-80 when you and DM were doing the 'Raving Drunk' storyline from #120(ish) to #128, in 1983-1985 when Denny (right?) was doing the 'Jim Rhodes: Iron Man' from #169-#200ish, and then 1987 with the Armor Wars from #225-#233 (also you, right?)

(forgive me, other than a few notable exceptions, like those above, I haven't been a big Tony Stark fan. Oh, and BWS did #232.

)

IM certainly wasn't riding a crest of popularity in 1989 or 1990. Not according to any of the published reports of the day.

greg · Post by **greg** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:05 pm

::EDIT::
... This topic is a continuation of comments/discussion
started (and ended) in another thread.
Keep it on topic and non-personal or posts will be deleted... again.
::EDIT::

Brother J · Post by **Brother J** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:48 pm

I don't know, re-reading the Nintendo section in Shooter's interview, it sounds to me like Jim did indeed think the Nintendo books were a good idea when they were first brought to him due to the popularity of Nintendo at the time and the fact they were told they would get the Nintendo mailing list for their use. Here's that section of Jim's interview from Comic Book Resources:

MDT: A lot of the characters that you bought for Valiant were old Gold Key characters right? Magnus, Turok, Solar...

JS: Right.

MDT: And those are the ones that you wanted to publish at Valiant?

JS: Yes.

MDT: Instead what happened?

JS: We started off on working on those. We hired an assistant named Laura Hitchcock and we would sit in our offices coming up for ideas for these characters.

At the same time, Steve had somehow met people who represented Nintendo. LCI was owned by Stan Weston. He was a guy who I had licensed Micronauts from. Somewhere between Marvel and starting Valiant, we talked to Stan about being a potential investor.

He'd actually heard Harvey was for sale and asked if I'd be interested in going after that with him. We had begun a conversation with Stan that never went anywhere. Once we were chatting again, I guess Steve was talking to him about making comics based on the properties they represented.

LCI represented Nintendo and World Wrestling Federation, to name a few. So I guess, Steve had some conversations with him about doing Nintendo comics.

You have to understand, Nintendo was very hot back then. Mario Bros. was doing great. It sounded attractive. I knew you couldn't sell those comics in the existing comics market, but you might be able to sell them in the mass market. Steve was really behind this. He really wanted to do this. This was, of course, before I knew that he was sleeping with the banker. She seemed to be all gung ho about this, too. I was thinking about this, gee, the money people think it's a good idea.

Steve kept telling me things like because of Stan Weston and their relationship with Nintendo we could get the use of Nintendo's mailing list, who -- at that point -- had a 2,000,000 name subscriber database for their magazine. So if we could get an ad in their magazine -- maybe a blow-in card -- to advertise these new comics, that'd be pretty good.

2,000,000 people who are desperately interested in Nintendo, if we put out a good product...

...Maybe this would go. Nintendo was saying that they would help us market it and get on the shelves next to the games. That'd be great. We sign this deal, pay them a phenomenal amount of money, something like $300,000 -- which was a lot of money for a little company like ours -- and of course it never happened.

We never got the subscriber list, we never got help with the marketing and basically left to twist in the wind. Which we did. And we tried different things to make it work. It wasn't happening. I wanted to get out of the Nintendo business and get into the superhero business, but Steve and Melanie had surfaced and Winston had been fired. It was kind of contentious.

Before we could do superheroes, they insisted we try the wrestling comics. Same nightmare, couldn't give the things away. David Lapham's first job was wrestling comics.

My question is who at that point was in charge of signing contracts, Jim or Steve? It seems like common sense that if you are entering into a high dollar agreement with Nintendo, that you would want to make sure you had in writing an agreement that spells out that you would get the mailing list and the marketing help that would be needed to get these books into the right hands, the Nintendo fans. There's only so much you can blame on others screwing you over and then it seems to be time to look in the mirror and see what mistakes you made yourself.

DawgPhan · Post by **DawgPhan** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 6:48 pm

Brother J wrote:I don't know, re-reading the Nintendo section in Shooter's interview, it sounds to me like Jim did indeed think the Nintendo books were a good idea when they were first brought to him due to the popularity of Nintendo at the time and the fact they were told they would get the Nintendo mailing list for their use. Here's that section of Jim's interview from Comic Book Resources:

MDT: A lot of the characters that you bought for Valiant were old Gold Key characters right? Magnus, Turok, Solar...

JS: Right.

MDT: And those are the ones that you wanted to publish at Valiant?

JS: Yes.

MDT: Instead what happened?

JS: We started off on working on those. We hired an assistant named Laura Hitchcock and we would sit in our offices coming up for ideas for these characters.

At the same time, Steve had somehow met people who represented Nintendo. LCI was owned by Stan Weston. He was a guy who I had licensed Micronauts from. Somewhere between Marvel and starting Valiant, we talked to Stan about being a potential investor.

He'd actually heard Harvey was for sale and asked if I'd be interested in going after that with him. We had begun a conversation with Stan that never went anywhere. Once we were chatting again, I guess Steve was talking to him about making comics based on the properties they represented.

LCI represented Nintendo and World Wrestling Federation, to name a few. So I guess, Steve had some conversations with him about doing Nintendo comics.

You have to understand, Nintendo was very hot back then. Mario Bros. was doing great. It sounded attractive. I knew you couldn't sell those comics in the existing comics market, but you might be able to sell them in the mass market. Steve was really behind this. He really wanted to do this. This was, of course, before I knew that he was sleeping with the banker. She seemed to be all gung ho about this, too. I was thinking about this, gee, the money people think it's a good idea.

Steve kept telling me things like because of Stan Weston and their relationship with Nintendo we could get the use of Nintendo's mailing list, who -- at that point -- had a 2,000,000 name subscriber database for their magazine. So if we could get an ad in their magazine -- maybe a blow-in card -- to advertise these new comics, that'd be pretty good.

2,000,000 people who are desperately interested in Nintendo, if we put out a good product...

...Maybe this would go. Nintendo was saying that they would help us market it and get on the shelves next to the games. That'd be great. We sign this deal, pay them a phenomenal amount of money, something like $300,000 -- which was a lot of money for a little company like ours -- and of course it never happened.

We never got the subscriber list, we never got help with the marketing and basically left to twist in the wind. Which we did. And we tried different things to make it work. It wasn't happening. I wanted to get out of the Nintendo business and get into the superhero business, but Steve and Melanie had surfaced and Winston had been fired. It was kind of contentious.

Before we could do superheroes, they insisted we try the wrestling comics. Same nightmare, couldn't give the things away. David Lapham's first job was wrestling comics.
My question is who at that point was in charge of signing contracts, Jim or Steve? It seems like common sense that if you are entering into a high dollar agreement with Nintendo, that you would want to make sure you had in writing an agreement that spells out that you would get the mailing list and the marketing help that would be needed to get these books into the right hands, the Nintendo fans. There's only so much you can blame on others screwing you over and then it seems to be time to look in the mirror and see what mistakes you made yourself.

I think that the problem with this is that nearly everyone involved other than shooter seemed to be involved with each other some how..Steve and melanie sleeping together...Melanie brother is some how involved....it sounds like everything kinda was done on a handshake and that might not have been the best way to do it...of course this makes no mention of shooter actually being at any of the signings or having anything to do with the contracts...also doesnt that seem like something that a lawyer should handle...I might be a great guy, and fairly smart to boot, but I normally have a lawyer look at anything that I am going to sign or have a lawyer create the contract in the first place...someone was asleep at the wheel and I still have problems with it being Shooter...I think that Steve was very heavy handed and that did not help matters...

x-omatic · Post by **x-omatic** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:14 pm

So we know Bob was against it. We know Shooter was for it. Based on what Shooter said, Steve was for it as well. I guess the question is, who had the final say? Did they need to vote on it? Or was it just Shooter and Steves decision?

wrunow · Post by **wrunow** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:44 pm

x-omatic wrote:So we know Bob was against it. We know Shooter was for it. Based on what Shooter said, Steve was for it as well. I guess the question is, who had the final say? Did they need to vote on it? Or was it just Shooter and Steves decision?

Well it seems to me that Shooter and Steve were basically partners and all the others were hired to do certain jobs, obviously Steve needed a partner with comic book experience to run the editorial part of the business and when things went sour in his relationship with JS he looked to fill that role with other, we know the story from there.

So yeah, it was probably Steve and Shooter's sole decision as they were the managing partners for Voyager Comm.

DawgPhan · Post by **DawgPhan** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:51 pm

wrunow wrote:
x-omatic wrote:So we know Bob was against it. We know Shooter was for it. Based on what Shooter said, Steve was for it as well. I guess the question is, who had the final say? Did they need to vote on it? Or was it just Shooter and Steves decision?
Well it seems to me that Shooter and Steve were basically partners and all the others were hired to do certain jobs, obviously Steve needed a partner with comic book experience to run the editorial part of the business and when things went sour in his relationship with JS he looked to fill that role with other, we know the story from there.

So yeah, it was probably Steve and Shooter's sole decision as they were the managing partners for Voyager Comm.

but also remember that steve and melanie were sleeping together...so between the 2 of them they had a controling interest which means that regardless of what shooter said they did what they wanted...

cjv · Post by **cjv** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:57 pm

ZephyrWasHOT!! wrote:I'm not suggesting this isn't true....I'm stating that it's just one side, and admittedly a biased side (naturally). It's always best to take a neutral position on testimony until hearing all sides involved.

I'm more of a 'he said/she said, and somewhere in between lies what ACTUALLY happened' kinda guy.

I agree with this 100%. Only knowing one side of the story, it is almost impossible to get a full view of what really happened. And the kicker is, that even if both sides are different from each other, you are generally listening to the story as both sides a) remember it, and b) interpret it. So both sides may fully believe they are telling the 100% truth, but the truth may lay in the middle.

Now, having said that, if we are ONLY presented one side of the arguement (I don't know if Jim still posts here or not), it may be difficult to maintain a middle of the road view.

Chris

wrunow · Post by **wrunow** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:58 pm

Yes, but Shooter said this was before he knew they were doing the nasty, so it sounds like both he and Steve agreed to do the Nintendo stuff, he doesnt' sound in the interview like he made any kind of stink about it, actually he thought they would make some dough and get the Nintendo mailing list, for what that was worth to them.

The wwf books were probably a different story, Steve probably made money brokering the deals on both of these books, so he was for it in a major way, Shooter probably thought he was a wheeler and dealer and was naive enough to trust him and figure he would eventually get rich.

ZephyrWasHOT!! · Post by **ZephyrWasHOT!!** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 8:03 pm

cjv wrote:
Now, having said that, if we are ONLY presented one side of the arguement (I don't know if Jim still posts here or not), it may be difficult to maintain a middle of the road view.

Chris

Exactly my point. It's only after hearing BOTH (or ALL) sides that one can sort through the conflicting testimony and, based on evidence, come to some sort of 'well, he said this, and he said that, but this is what makes the most sense, and it's somewhere in the middle' conclusion.

Even then, it's not an exact science, but it's usually pretty close to the truth.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 12:10 pm

Reading the interview Jim gave while he was at the company ( the Mylar is for Whimps interview) it made it sound like he was for it or that he was atleast attempting to put a good face on it. Any interview afterwards made it sound like he just went along with it because the board wanted it.

This is pretty much the situation you're going to get with any former company employee (especially a higher up). While he's EIC it's his JOB to put a positive spin on everything the company does and publically support it. No competent EIC is going to go around and bad mouth his business partners' decisions while he or she holds that position. They are the company' mouth piece. Their job is get support and confindence for any endeavor the company takes from both employees and the public at large.

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:18 pm

That is an excellent point. I have seen this happen in the company I work for. Bad decisions are made all the time by the corporate heads but you don't hear the boss bad mouthing it (unless he has another job lined up) even though everyone can see that it will not work out in the end. This could be the case here too.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 2:03 pm

You know I just remembered what it was really like back at that time. Sometimes public opinion or the out come of something can color history. I just remembered how unbelievably big Nintendo was at the time. I was about 10 or 11. Everyone I knew got Nintendo Power. Nintendo merchandise was all over the place. Captian N and Super Mario (with weekly showings of Zelda) where two of the best cartoons on at the time. When I heard the shows were going to become comics I was pumped and ready to buy all the comics. I wasn't unusual. This really was a franchise with HUGE potential readership.

But then they came out. The comics were indeed all over the place in a ton of different froms. However. when I got, them it was extremely disappointing. The quality and feel of the cartoons wasn't there. The coloring was very impressive but the majority of the stories and a lot of the pencils/inks was simply bad. I just found that most of the stories were stupid. On top of that, their formats were simply too expensive. I think the lack of quality was atleast a factor in their demise.

I wasn't into the WWF so I can't tell you anything about that franchise, but that's what I recall about Nintendo from a players point of view.

DawgPhan · Post by **DawgPhan** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 2:48 pm

Todd Luck wrote:You know I just remembered what it was really like back at that time. Sometimes public opinion or the out come of something can color history. I just remembered how unbelievably big Nintendo was at the time. I was about 10 or 11. Everyone I knew got Nintendo Power. Nintendo merchandise was all over the place. Captian N and Super Mario (with weekly showings of Zelda) where two of the best cartoons on at the time. When I heard the shows were going to become comics I was pumped and ready to buy all the comics. I wasn't unusual. This really was a franchise with HUGE potential readership.

But then they came out. The comics were indeed all over the place in a ton of different froms. However. when I got, them it was extremely disappointing. The quality and feel of the cartoons wasn't there. The coloring was very impressive but the majority of the stories and a lot of the pencils/inks was simply bad. I just found that most of the stories were stupid. On top of that, their formats were simply too expensive. I think the lack of quality was atleast a factor in their demise.

I wasn't into the WWF so I can't tell you anything about that franchise, but that's what I recall about Nintendo from a players point of view.

Funny you say that...I was just thinking about Bob saying something like he wouldnt leave Iron Man at the height of its popularity for Super Mario. Since Mario hit the scene I dont think that there was ever a time when Mario was not more popular than Iron Man. Super Mario around that time may have been more popular than anyone in the world. I dont have anything to back that up, but I would bet that, amoung the target audience, he was more widely recognized than any other character. Not superman, not Spider-Man, and not Bat-man...No one...hmm...that might be a good question...

wait here we go..

http://www.ncecbvi.org/students/keith/Nintendo.html

1989 - Nintendo released The Adventure of Link, sequel to the top selling game The Legend of Zelda in the U.S. It started "World of Nintendo" displays in the U.S. to help market Nintendo Products. Studies show that children are as familiar with Mario as they are with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny! It introduced Game Boy, the first portable hand held game system with interchangeable game paks. Nintendo Power magazine became the largest paid subscription publication in its age category.

DJSpecter · Post by **DJSpecter** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 11:34 pm

Firstly, aside from those who obviously worked with Mr. Massarsky, I think I might be the only one who knows his point of view on things, of course not trying to start a fight but just as Mr. Shooter has plenty of interviews and Mr. Layton's interviews and comments are all available, I think that whatever I know of Massarsky's point of view should be thrown into the mix.

Firstly, he ended up married and divorced to said "Melanie", if you ever converse with him don't even bring up melon. While he will acknowledge many mistakes that took place in their relationship (mostly the marriage part, and anything else that had to do with her... everything except the divorce. And even there he mentions how he believes she robbed him of millions of dollors.) I never heard anything about her influincing him to get rid of Mr. Shooter.

Secondly, as we all said Nintendo was very popular, this was happening right as Super Mario Brothers 3 was out, and Mr. Massarsky has always owned a Nintendo System (as long as they've been out), although I don't think he ever took on the Gamecube. Also, Mr. Massarsky, being a lawyer, probably did all of the negotiations himself (this I don't know but sounds right:). As everyone has already said, it sounded like a good starter idea, to help raise money for the real stuff. So even if all Mr. Shooter did was say, "Hey, I think I could do that." that's a good enough line for Massarsky to say, "We'll give it a shot." And you have one side who thinks they have a verbal contract and the other side might just think that it's a workable idea. By the time the side who thinks its a workable idea gets through managment, the other, much smaller, side has already put out four months worth of books.

Remember, Massarsky didn't jump ship after Nintendo, so he knew he could do something with the comics, he jumped ship after Nicenza, when he realized these were not his comics, and that the industry was going down. I think I might have mentioned once before: The last time I saw Mr. Massarsky's coffee table (which was within the last year) it had a well read copy of Solar, as well as a pair of Valiant Vision glasses. Mr. Massarsky is a kid in many many ways, but in most other ways, he is a businessman, combining the two ended up with Nintendo comics, growing up a bit and with more of his buisiness side, he ended up with Solar and Magnus and Harbinger that we all love.

Some of what I said above is thought some is facts. But if you want all the facts that have been hiding in the creases of your comics, check out the trivia contest, as we enter into the begining of the medium hard questions!

-Dave

(Yeah, all that just for an ad..)

DJSpecter · Post by **DJSpecter** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 5:23 pm

Just by the by...

Massarsky called me up today and asked me to help him move. While I was over there he told a bunch of stories. He seemed to be in a particularly Valiant mood as he was telling alot of good stories. One of them could probably clear up a bunch of the ambiguities relating to Shooter's "spending habits."

When they first started out, Shooter suggested that they pay the artists by the hour. Massarsky thought this sounded like a fine idea, and not having worked in comics before didn't think anything of it. So they were paying each artist $50 an hour. What ended up happening is that they would end up with 3 day, $1,200 pages that looked great, but that means that a book would take forever. All the while the rest of the industry was paying per page at $100 a page.

He didn't say that this lead to the parting of shooter & the insertion of Fred Pierce, but I think anyone, for or against shooter, could understand how it would.

More stories to come, got to run!

-Dave

Escaflown4 · Post by **Escaflown4** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:11 pm

Nevertheless, getting rid of Shooter was the worst decision the company could ever make. Valiant was never the same without him. The quality of stories took a plunge as soon as he left. It just didn't have the same feel anymore.

ckb · Post by **ckb** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:46 pm

And with the explosion that was about to take place, paying the artists that would not have been a problem.

Escaflown4 wrote:Nevertheless, getting rid of Shooter was the worst decision the company could ever make. Valiant was never the same without him. The quality of stories took a plunge as soon as he left. It just didn't have the same feel anymore.

DJSpecter · Post by **DJSpecter** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:02 pm

I highly doubt that this is what got shooter ousted. This is what put pierce into play, most likely. But when you pay 10x what the big guys are paying when you are on no budget... you get the idea. Shooter was certainly thinking that this would improve the quality of the art, which admittedly it did. By not paying artists by the page, you are telling them "quality not quantity" because they don't feel as if "every book I finish is 2,500" they think "the harder I work, the better the art, the more I get paid." This would work fine for a sculptor or a painter, who doesn't have the same sense of deadline. But that style of thinking can't work to that extent in the comic book industry.

On that note, story number 2 that Massarsky shared was regarding the ousting of Joe Q. Joe Q, affter he was ousted posted on the internet about how the reason he was fired was because they were paying him so much and they just couldn't afford him so they fired him. At this point very few people were familiar with the internet and it wasn't as easy to have the style of discussions that we are having that everyone shares what they know and they come with a basic conclusion. Massarsky explained that he wanted to know how to defend himself on this internet thing. For those who remember the timing of Quesada's being fired, it was right after the release of Ninjak 2. Ninjak 1 was horribly late on its deadline, but this few people notice because it was a first issue. I actually said to Massarsky today that I remember waiting every week for Ninjak 2 to arrive (I had actually thought at the time that the book must have been cancelled after the first issue, or they didn't know how to write the next book, since the ads for it had a skull in the picture, I assumed Ninjak was dead... no plot line there.). Ninjak 2 came out 3 months late and because Joe Q was just horrible at making his deadlines, he was fired. Massarsky said "he still hates me for it, he would cross the street if he saw me." But you can't be in the comic business without a sense of deadlines.

Anyway, one other thing that Massarsky said was "Jim Shooter can't sit through an interview, even today, 12 years later, without ranting about how I stole his company. It's been 12 years since he was fired, hasn't anything interesting happened since?"

The point being that argueing and yelling won't change the past. Even if we can't be friends, we should be able to have the dignity and maturity to co-exist..."and say hi when you see me."

-Dave

ckb · Post by **ckb** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 11:12 pm

To Steve, it was just another business deal. To Shooter, it was his life's dream, and he had pretty much pulled it off. Shooter is smart enough to know he will never have the chance again. I would be bitter too.

Keep the stories coming, very enlightening.

Escaflown4 · Post by **Escaflown4** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 11:30 pm

Valiant was not just a business deal for Shooter like ckb said, it was his passion. I mean the guy wanted to tell stories and he's good at it. He's been in the industry far longer then most people working in it now. He knows how things should be run and what the readers want. He had it all going for him at Valiant and it was maliciously robbed away. This is something that one doesn't forget easily. I mean Steve should really place himself in Shooter's shoes and see how he would've felt.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:00 am

DJSpecter wrote:
Anyway, one other thing that Massarsky said was "Jim Shooter can't sit through an interview, even today, 12 years later, without ranting about how I stole his company. It's been 12 years since he was fired, hasn't anything interesting happened since?"

-Dave

Good Lord. The man couldn't be dense enough to really believe that could he? He ousted Shooter from a company he co-founded that became worth tens of millions of dollars and which also became the fourth largest company in its entire industry. "Hasn't anything interesting happened since?" Sheesh.