My condolences to his family.

"The work you remember so fondly was in many cases produced in spite of Shooter, not because of him. Use the Forum’s SEARCH function to look up “Shooter” and see for yourselves."

Could it also be that his style forced a lot of creators to produce some of their best work in spite of him? I plan to look back at the posts you are referring to because I have only ever heard it via "fan talk" and will be glad to get it from a credible source.

Secret Wars was the start of that and I loved it at the time.

(The less said about the crossovers that plagued books shortly after the better...)

Sad to hear that Shooter has gone.

My first read of Jim's material was the Fatal Five way back in Adventure Comics back in 1968. Even at a pretty young age, I knew there was something - different - about the Legion of Super Heroes stories.

He isn't the only reason why the comics of the late 70s and 80s, particularly at Marvel, had a litterary dimension, some of it came as natural developpement from the work of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Roy Thomas and others, some from the approach of Denny O'Neil and Steve Gerber... that was here before Shooter. But Jim Shooter favored and amplified the phenomena, made it an ambition, an objective. He had the chance that Marvel got the writers and artists with the talent to fullfill it. Some were already there, he gave their first chance to others. Together they built the Marvel of the 80s we loved, second in creativity to the 60s, taking the best of the maturity that was sometime there in the late 60s and 70s, generalising, expanding it while keeping the books fresh and all-age: it was aimed at young teen, fun for kids and had qualities that could interest adults.    

John Romita, the elder one, said that Shooter was great at first, for maybe three years ; but after the huge success of Secret Wars, thought he knew everything. That was probably more than three years, yet it seems to be a pertinent  remark (at least to me who wasn't there, otherwise than as a reader of the books.)

JB says what he  always said on this board, and share  his personnal experience as a creator and a direct witness ; his sincerity is compatible with the respect due to Jim, both as a man, an artist, a pro and a defunct. 

I had a few exchanges with Jim on his blog during the months, about a year overall, when he wrote it in the mid-2010s, he always was very nice to me and other fans.