Shooter was the only writer who had previously wrote Hank as a loser who couldn't win at anything.  Conway had him rejoin the Avengers to please Jan.  Then Shooter turned it into him joining because he couldn't do anything else right.

I absolutely believe Shooter's whole goal with Pym was to show Claremont and Byrne the "proper" way to turn a good guy to a bad guy.

As far a writing, Shooter sucks.

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This is the mentality of the reader who wants every single thing ever written about a character to be as true and valid as every other thing every written about a character. These are the ones who operate as if they imagine there is some kind of comprehensive bible for every character -- and always has been. As if, say, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started out on FANTASTIC FOUR with every story, every character turn, every plot nuance, firmly in their heads from Day One. So, if we have a character like Hank Pym, who has been thru a lot of changes over the span of his published history, then each and every one of those changes must have been deliberate. They were all planned out from the start, and not a single one was due to a writer jumbling the character's history, or, worse, wanting to make his "mark" on the character. Has Pym changed his costume 87 times? Well, surely that was always part of The Plan, and was meant to show he's a complete nutball, right?

Of course, this is a classic example of Shooter talking out of more sides of his mouth than any human being should be allowed to have. This is, after all, the same Jim Shooter who has often declared that "continuity" should mean a hole that gets punched in the wall of the hero's HQ in one issue is seen being repaired in the next. NOT a pathological devotion to every jot and tittle of the character's publishing history.

Part of the problem, as noted before, is the inability of some fans to leave their fan mentality at the door when they turn pro. As I have often quoted Len Wein as saying, "the first story you'd do as a fan should be the last story you'd do as a pro". So, an encyclopedic knowledge of a character's history should not be a reason to make every story encyclopedic. We can be selective.

Sad thing is, back in the days when I was starting in The Biz, and many of the Old Guard were still there to keep a hand on the tiller, the readers who demanded absolute fidelity to every detail of a character's history were considered the oddballs. They were the ones we saw at conventions, looking wild eyed as they asked the attending pros questions about some forgotten scrap of minutia. They were the ones, not to put too fine a point on it, that we MOCKED.

Slowly and steadily, as the industry shrank, they became the ones we LISTENED TO. In many instances, they became the ones PRODUCING the books!

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I'm not sure I can agree with that. I have said many a time that I wish Gwen had simply left, as did Peter's previous girlfriends. Her death seems to have drawn a line thru Spider-Man's history that no amount of effort can erase. The canon is BGD (Before Gwen's Death) and AGD (After Gwen's Death), and as that event moves further and further into the Past -- hard to believe it happened before I turned Pro!! -- for all too many fans and fans-turned-pro it is a moment in TIME, something that must be addressed in terms of YEARS having passed, not the usual convenient "a while ago".

The death of Gwen Stacy SHOULD have been rendered inconsequential by the passage of time (like the death of Franklin Storm, or the death of Larry Trask), but it seems that cannot be. Not for some people.

     I have reached the conclusion that Jim Shooter was an ass.  He may regret what he did now, but it's too late; the damage is done.  The only thing that saying this now does is serve as an old-timer's voicing regrets about past mistakes to the kid at the bar.

     Put down that beer, Jim.  What's done is done.  Moving along...