Since our posts pretty much echo each others, I assume you were responding to James's post, Gregg?

Yep.  I wrote it before you posted yours, but posted it after your post.

Sorta like how I used to give Frank Miller art tips as he was climbing the ladder. One day he asked my why I was being so helpful and forthcoming. "Simple," I said, "if you're gonna be the one to knock me out of the box, I'm gonna be sure I help you do it!"

We've seen this once before, could it be in the future as well?

I would take Shooter over Joe Q in a heartbeat, and here is why. Right now we KNOW Joe is making a huge mess. It isn't like Jim could make it worse, could he?

On the topic of Mew Mutants starting the downward spiral....I really don't think so. It was a FANTASTIC concept. 1) X-Men was the biggest thing in the industry, and a spit off just made sense. 2) One of the next biggest things on the market at the time was Teen Titans, so borrow a tiny bit from there. 3) X-Men had moved (I think correctly so) at the time away from the school aspect that it originally had. Having something to harken back to that concept freed up the main book to continue evolving away from that spot.

Even adding X-Factor was a good, solid idea at the time. I really wasn't thrilled with some of the aspects of the outline (masquerading as mutant hunters, being completely at odds with the regular X-Men), but having the original five X-Men together again was a great idea. I didn't like the series overall until the new Peter David line up, but that wasn't because of the concept, it was just the storylines and style that didn't really hit me.

It was after THAT when things got bad. But it wasn't the explosion of X-Books so much as the lack of quality in the execution that turned me off. They could easily have added Excalibur, another X-Men, and even probably another full team book, plus two or three solo books without oversaturating the market. It was just that Uncanny, New Mutants, and X-Factor all got to be really bad right around the Fall of the Mutants time. Instead of tightening up the quality, they expanded the number of titles, looking for something that would be the "new fad" and stick. They knew that the fans would be stupid enough to fall for it.

You can also count me in as someone who LOVED the Hank Pym fall from grace. I find it to have been completely within the realm of the charachter as he had been written for years. Could it have been done a little better in some places? I am sure it could have. I bet if Shooter had it to do again right now, he would probably change things a little bit. But I bet that a lot of JB's best stuff is looked back on by him thinking "i could have done the dialogue in that sceen a little different".

My biggest complaint about him going bad is that he didn't REALLY go bad. He just made one screw up in judgement, trying to impress his pals that he always felt inferior to. You see super heroes do that all of the time, but in more harmless ways. I wish that he would have REALLY turned into a bad guy. He could have been the top bad guy in the MU. Potentially better than Magneto or Doom at their best. The Avengers never really had one single standout arch nemesis the way the FF have Doom, or X-Men had Magneto. The closest thing they have is Kang, or maybee Ultron. But Kang doesn't come through time to fight the Avengers, he comes through time to conquer, and ends up fighting the Avengers. Dr Doom has as a primary goal in his life, a mission to destroy Richards and his family. It is personal. Same thing with Magneto and the X-Men. Ultron is kind of like that with the Avengers, but not really.

On the topic of Secret Wars, I have always thought it to have been a fun little story where some interesting things came out of. The only real mischarachterization I particularly remember was showing Hawkeye as having something against mutants. Hawkeye, the guy who has best friends like Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Beast. The thing is, I have seen it done to him several times by other writers too, so I can't get too riled up at Shooter for it. There may have been others, but nothing comes to mind.

Here is a hypothetical question for the good Mr JB.....

All other things aside, if you got a call from the new EiC of Marvel next week (whoever it hypothetically might be) and he said something like "John, I got a project I want yu to think about doing for us. It is an Avengers story, might be a mini, a GN, or it might be in the regular title, we haven't decided. We have some rough plot ideas laid out, and I think it is going to be really good. I want you to do the pencils and co-plotting. Here is the catch...you would be working on it with Jim Shooter." Would you think about it? Or would you say something like "Get Mackie and Stern on the project instead of Shooter and I'll think about it."

 They knew that the fans would be stupid enough to fall for it.

***

or they just liked the books?????????????????

Re: New Mutants.

When a title has strayed so far from the source that you are considering a spin-off that will be "true" to that concept, I think there's a problem. That was one of my problems with Spider-Girl and Ultimate Spider-Man or even Untold Tales of Spider-Man. The *regular* Spider-Man titles need to be about the teenage Peter Parker.