••

He'd tried to do it while I was still on the book, but I had resisted -- and that was taking X-MEN further and further away from being a "specialist" book. This was the time when "mutant" became a pretty much meaningless term in the Marvel Universe.

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This is what I've thought since the year 2000, but for many here in this forum thinks it's X-Men The Last Stand was THE one film that tarnished the X-Men lore, but never speaks badly about the first two done by Bryan Singer!

X-MEN got off on entirely the wrong foot, and it has been downhill at an ever increasing speed since then.

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For me it REALLY went off track around #200 when Magneto was reformed and joined the X-Men. After that it was just hard to read.

My vote is for Shooter.

I was going to say Scilla and Caribdes, but it is true:  I read a lot of Marvel books under Shooter and none now under Quesada.

I really liked things when Stan and Archie were EIC too.

Yeah but to be fair, Bob Harris did his fair share of damage during the '90's and clearly a lot of mavel planning seems to now be done by colective group discussion - hence the constant mega crossover (We are currently in the middle of a 7 part mega crossover at marvel and they are already talking about next year's).

Without a doubt, I prefered the comics under Shooter's tenure but was that because of or despite of?

As said by some, with Shooter at its head Marvel was enjoyable.

It is of course due to the creative teams as much if not more than to Shooter himself.

And certainly Shooter didn't stay out of the way, but the point is that he obviously cared about the characters, the stories, the marvel universe and even the creators.

 Unlike what happens in comics today, you felt the books were about story, characters and art, not just about banking on a "franchise".

There's of course a clear exception: Secret Wars II.

But even the first Secret Wars, a series that in all logic could have been extremely commercial, a simple banking on the various characters, even this one was about story. Was Shooter a tyran with his collaborators on this one? I heard so. But the point is that we end with a quality series, maybe not perfect (but what is perfect?) maybe with some scenes that make blink a few readers (Galactus ,anyone?), but overall something well writen and well drawn, a consistant and enjoyable story.

Secret Wars II on the other hand was one of the worst series ever published by Marvel. ... At that point at least. Since then Marvel took the habit to do worse than that every month.

••

Which is better, being crushed under a steamroller, or trampled by elephants?

These kinds of either/or questions are an exercise in futility.

How did it develop that Marvel had an EIC and DC didn't? Or am I forgetting something about 1970's and 1980's DC compared to Marvel?

Cheers, Jon

Here's the million dollar question for JB and the board. Who do you guys think was a better EIC, Quesada or Shooter?

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Is death an option?  No? Ah well....

But I will say this:  I was buying Marvel Comics when Shooter was EiC, but I have not been buying them since Quesada has been EiC.  And I have more "disposable income" now than I did then.