One problem is that the industry has demanded more and more hyper-detailed art out of its artists. At one time, photo-realism like Neal Adams was the exception, not the rule, now it's practically industry standard. Not an excuse, but I don't think, with current art styles the way they are, that any mainstream book should be monthly.

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Just don't agree with that theory, there are several good artists that more than have the ability to ship a book on time. However, they are allowed to get away with turning in their work late.

I buy ULTIMATES for 1 reason and 1 reason alone....Bryan Hitch.... He leaves or stops drawing the book I stop buying it ...plain and simple....

I don't care if they get a creative team that can do 10 issues a week... I won't waste one penny on that title. I don't need a "Weekly" or even "Monthly" fix.... I want to buy good art or art that inspires me... Any company that wants to put out 5,000 titles of crap art is going to not sell me anything... A company that puts out one book a decade with Frank Frazetta's art in it gets my money everytime...

Quality not Quantity..... I would rather have one great painting in my entire lifetime than 5 million shitty ones....

Alan Davis is so good that he might be able to get me to buy THE ULTIMATES on a monthly basis...  I'd much rather see him working on the real Avengers or Fantastic Four again though...

John McMahon wrote: They are treated differently because their employers believe (rightly or wrongly) that the persons in question will make them a lot of money.  The notion that Billy Bugfuck and Johnny Jerkoff could wander into Marvel and do twelve issues of Ultimates a year that would make close to what 7 from an A list team does (both short and long term) is nonsense.

John, I have no problem agreeing with this point. My problem comes from this fact. Ultimates is solicited as a monthly title. If the talent cannot commit to producing in a manner that would coincide with a monthly release, then one of two things should happen. Either, a) the talent needs to be replaced by someone that can do the work and have it in on time, or b) the book doesn't need to be solicited and advertised as being a monthly book. If Ultimates or Superman/ Batman or Black Cat were on bi-monthly, quarterly or bi-yearly schedules, you wouldn't hear a single complaint form me. But none of them are/ were. They were all released with the full intentions of coming out on a monthly schedule. Wehn they stopped doing so, the publisher had a choice to be professional and take one of the paths I mentioned above, or not being professional and simply having late books.

What do you think would happen if Time didn't ship on the day it was supposed to? Would the editor get fired? Would anybody? What if it was 6 weeks late? Would Time-Warner simply say, oh well, we have our audience that will buy it no matter when it comes out and they will buy the mag no matter what? The know it will be that much better if it's late.  I don't think so. ( And yes, I do understand that my example includes the parent company of DC Comics.)

Brian, it doesn't matter who the parent company is.  If Time, or Newsweek, or US shipped weeks late, heads would roll.

In one of my broadcast copywriting classes in college, one Monday a fellow student came in and told the professor that he didn't have his writing assignment quite done and would bring it in on Wednesday.  The professor just nodded his head.  On Wednesday, the student came into the room and proudly presented the 2 page story.  The professor took it, and promptly threw it into the trash.  "Deadline was Monday, this is old news". 

Granted that news article is a different beast than a work of fiction (but at the NY Times...nevermind...), deadlines still remain.