As a artist I am more understanding. I know that sometimes it's not easy getting the work done. Artists aren't machines they can't just pump the work out. Of course if the artist repeatedly misses deadlines that's a problem. They shouldn't be working on titles that require them to maintain a schedule that is beyond their abilities to meet.

*****

Brian, I'm just going off my own memory so I might be mistaken, but I do seem to remember it shipping late. How late I'm not sure, but it seems like a month or so.

Edit: The only thing I can find is that it came out in March 1986 and the previous issue came out in February so it wasn't a month late. But it may have been a week or two late. Maybe someone else can remember since this happened in pre-internet days. I couldn't find much on Watchmen being late either, but I'm absolutely sure it was.

I think the problem with fill-in issues these days is that simple economics makes it impractical to hold material unpublished against the proverbial 'rainy day'. Inventory pages sitting unpublished are viewed by accountants as 'dead money', so most books are published 'just in time' to minimise the length of time between paying for it and getting the revenue. I frequently get comps of a book within a month of lettering them, in one case only a fortnight later…

(And, yes, the last three issues of Watchmen shipped increasingly late. ISTR #12 was at least two months late, since I had to take time out of exam revision to go and pick it up, when I'd originally expected the series to finish well before exam time!)

But if life really got in the way, due to an emergency of some sort, I'd much prefer the occasional fill-in story. It creates its own kind of cliff-hanger in a way....makes you want the next book even more.

This, possibly, is the thing that baffles me most. At the start of a run as regular artist, surely the conversation the editor should have is:

"Can you hit twelve issues a year, month in, month out, without fail? Really? Well, how about we call it nine issues? We'll give you a breather after every third issue…"

(Editor goes away and schedules three quality fill-ins; maybe has a conversation with the writer about how those issues can stand alone from the main run but still inform or move forward any sub-plots or over-arching storylines…)

J W posted a hypothetical conversation. One would hope that sort of thing would go on, especially when Jim Lee was working on the videogame and supposed to be drawing ASB. 

Really?! You'd have forgone this because it wasn't done by the regular team?