I don't know about Shooter giving pros their freedom. Most of the artwork produced seemed to conform to a homogeneous house style. Steve Englehart stated on his website that he stopped writing Shadowman because Shooter didn't want writing that deviated from his own style.

What history did Englehart and Shooter have? I thought most of Englehart's problems at Marvel were with Gerry Conway, who booted him off Avengers so he could write it himself, and Tom DeFalco, who interfered with Englehart's work on Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four and, finally, West Coast Avengers.

Well, I think it went in stages.  At the beginning, yes, he was trying to bring order out of chaos and get the books out on time and make the company profitable.  Star Wars was saving their bacon (it helped that there was little Star wars merchandise, in the early days).  He did a lot to work with young talent and did  quite a bit to boost Marvel's line, as a whole.  He took some chances on a few ideas (like The Micronauts) and they turned out to be hits.  But, he didn't seem to know when to ease up.  He wanted hard and fast rules that applied to every situation, rather than recognizing that there was more than one approach to telling a story.  His rules were good, for people starting out; but, they could be stifling for experienced creators, wishing to spread their wings.  He was in a corporate environment and the knives are always sharp in that kind of culture.  The Bullpen had been dysfunctional for years, with egos, substances, and other contributing factors.  Shooter was an executive and the one having to make the hard choices, or voice them to everyone else and take the heat.  However, he created a lot of heat with an intractable viewpoint and alienated whole chunks of fans with arrogant statements in the press.  He became more and more difficult and alienated himself from more and more people, as time went on.  I think stress was probably at the center of much of later accounts; but, also a problem of leadership.  In my experiences, the best leaders aren't the authoritative ones (ie the screamers and the threateners); it's the ones who set the example and build people up, who inspire them to follow them anywhere.  I don't think Shooter ever learned that.

Valiant proved to be different, as the stories there were of developing young talent, like David Lapham, and giving the pros their freedom (like Layton, Perlin and BWS).  His downfall there came due to differences with the investors as to the company direction.  In that case, I tend to think Shooter was arguing on the side of quality, while the investors wanted higher returns, with a lot of expansion and going for the short money.


As for poor Mark Gruenwald, accounts told at the time of his death spoke to him being under tremendous stress; but, he was the cheerleader that the Marvel staff needed, to lighten the mood and get through things.  There were stories of him enduring Shooter's rages, then orchestrating some fun to get the staff to blow off steam.  Many felt that the stress he endured contributed to his eventual heart attack.  It certainly didn't help.  Through it all, though, he was the sort of positive leader the gang needed:  he set the example, he encouraged people, and he built team spirit and everyone would follow him into fire. 

Claremont, of course, was livid for a number of reasons and tried his best to dissuade Shooter of bringing her back but to no avail. However, Shooter reportedly allowed Claremont to 'tweak' a two page flashback sequence in FF in order to appease his star writer. Naturally, that made Byrne mad when he found out.