{"id":2079,"date":"2011-03-07T22:03:15","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T03:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=2079"},"modified":"2011-03-07T22:03:15","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T03:03:15","slug":"what-was-jim-shooter-doing-on-may-6-1976","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/07\/what-was-jim-shooter-doing-on-may-6-1976\/","title":{"rendered":"What was Jim Shooter doing on May 6, 1976?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back on September 12, 2009, I hinted<\/a> at an April 20, 1976 memo from Sol Brodsky that somehow related to Jim Shooter. And ever since then, every couple of months, Sean Howe, the guy who’s writing that history of Marvel in the ’70s, has emailed to tell me that he really<\/em> wants to see that memo. So I figure it’s time I put him out of his misery.<\/p>\n

But I’m afraid that for most of you, the memo (I almost typed “email,” which shows how much difficulty I have in looking back so far into the past) will be anticlimactic. Because there won’t seem to be anything intriguing about it at all. For some small number of you, though, it will open a mystery for which I have no answer.<\/p>\n

As you can see, Sol’s memo states that Jim had resigned his position as Associate Editor, and that his last day would be May 6, 1976. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But (you might be asking yourself) how can Shooter be quitting? Didn’t he hang around to later take over as Editor-in-Chief in 1978?<\/p>\n

Why yes. Yes, he did.<\/p>\n

And if you are one of the few who knew that factoid, you probably wish I could explain the meaning of this memo. Well, I can’t. Too much time has passed.<\/p>\n

Did Jim quit, take a hiatus from his employment at Marvel, and later return to eventually ascend to the position of Editor-in-Chief? Or did he instead just threaten<\/em> to quit for some forgotten personal or political reason and get talked out of it, so there was no break at all? I seem to recall the latter, but my memory is so hazy it could just as easily have been the former.<\/p>\n

And so I hand this memo over to the care of the corps of truly dedicated Marvel historians out there to figure out what it truly means.<\/p>\n

Which may just mean I’m handing it over to Sean and Sean alone. But that’s OK. As I’ve said before, the truth wants to be free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back on September 12, 2009, I hinted at an April 20, 1976 memo from Sol Brodsky that somehow related to Jim Shooter. And ever since then, every couple of months, Sean Howe, the guy who’s writing that history of Marvel in the ’70s, has emailed to tell me that he really wants to see that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,31,20,37],"class_list":["post-2079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comics","tag-jim-shooter","tag-marvel-comics","tag-sol-brodsky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}