Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Jim Shooter, shooterfiles

Jim Shooter And His Comic Book Rule About Roller Skates…

Jim Shooter and his comic book rule about roller skates...

As comic book editor and Marvel, Valiant, Defiant and Broadway Editor-In-Chief, the late Jim Shooter was famed for one of his bugbears. That of artists not showing a character in full figure at least once on the page. To the extent that, if you hadn't actually seen the character's feet, they could, for all intents and purposes, be wearing roller skates. There would be nothing on the page that would contradict that. And, as lots of comic book creators remember the man, fellow writer, publisher, editor, artist and letterer Richard Starkings recalls it well. And writes;

"One of Shooter's most often quoted storytelling questions to artists was "are they wearing roller skates?" Shooter was the first editor that taught me that any shot that cut off part of a figure — or a building, or a vehicle — was, technically, a close up. He'd point out a character in perhaps a three or four page sequence who was never shown full figure… "how do we know he's not wearing roller skates?!" Shooter would ask. I readily adopted this as it was such an easy and effective way of causing artists to think about showing the whole figure at least once in every sequence they appeared."

Let us remember that Jim Shooter did help introduce the world to Dazzler, the roller skating mutant superhero…

"Not every artist responded well to this, I remember talking over an ACTION FORCE strip with former 2000AD Art Editor, and good friend, Robin Smith and pointing out characters who were never seen to be in possession of feet. Robin's grim contempt for "Shooter's Roller Skates" is forever etched in my mind. Anyone who knows Robin can picture his expression. If any of you have taken a look at Robin's fantastic collection of cover sketches for Classic 2000AD covers, you might, like me, wonder if Dredd or Johnny Alpha were wearing roller skates on pretty much any of those covers ELEPHANTMEN magazine artist Justin MORITAT Norman was not familiar with "Shooter's Roller Skates" until he started working with me. He would endlessly make fun of them in convention sketches, but he always remembered to show characters full figure for me! I dare say Shooter wasn't the first Marvel editor to understand the importance of showing characters full figure. Take a look at pretty much any Marvel Comics cover from the 60s and 70s wherein a title character is shown in close up. Whether this was Stan or Jack or Romita, I don't know, but I did ask a couple of top former Marvel editors about it…"

And the evidence of the Roller Skate edict that Richard Starkings adapted is on display in these Moritat sketches…

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