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Wes Wescovich
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Posted: 25 July 2006 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | 1  

I agree Joe.  It seems that the publishing schedule and even the characters themselves have taken a backseat to the writers and artists.  Of course, JB has said words to this effect many times.  And the saddest part is that the average comic reader of today thinks that it's perfectly fine and indeed preferred to wait a month or two since that is what they are accustomed to.  I used to like fill-in issues most of the time.  DC would contract a new cover and give us a great old story reprint.  Many times as a double issue.  I asked Julie Schwartz about the double sized reprint fill-ins and he told me that it was a way to give the fans something extra since they had to wait for a new story.  Plus doubling the page count was an easy choice due to the fact that reprint royalties were practically non-existant. 

M***** really blew it with the Fanfare title by emptying out the drawers holding the fill-in issues to use in their anthology.  Beautiful stuff in many cases, others not so much, but I would much rather have seen that Michael Golden story re-scheduled in MTU where it was intended before it got delayed.  That seemed to be their answer to slow production.  If a story could not be finished on time and it was a finite, stand-alone story (as most were in those days), it could be filed away with the ready-made fill-ins when completed and used at a later date.  I wonder which EIC came up with that idea.  Beats all hell out of growing roses. 

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Robert Oren
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Posted: 25 July 2006 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | 2  

J.B.   all i can say is....................wow!!!!  put in beautiful context.....yet again!!!
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Paul Greer
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Posted: 25 July 2006 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | 3  

The kicker about DD Father is that issue six has still yet to come out and Marvel is soliciting the trade or HC for their October solicitations.  

As for Superman/Batman, late or not, I can't knock a guy for writing a comic dedicated to his deceased son. I'm all for fill-ins when needed to make a book on time. But it is nice to see someone work through their sorrow and turn it into something to help others.

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Charles Valderrama
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Posted: 25 July 2006 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | 4  

i totally agree with JB. Unfortunately, as long as the fans keep
BUYING these late books and keep their sales HIGH, the
editors will keep condoning these methods.

-C!
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David Miller
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Posted: 25 July 2006 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | 5  

What are the lead times like these days?  When John withrew from the SUPERMAN RETURNS adaptation, I had the impression that he hadn't even seen the script at that point.  Which seemed crazy to me.  Obviously, a Byrne is going to be able to get the book in the can from two months out, but even if the artists are reliably monthly, it seems like it's forcing the deadline. 

John, I apologise if I'm making any incorrect assumptions, here. 
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Francesco Vanagolli
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 1:03am | IP Logged | 6  

Fans today tell me "Artists are slow because if you want quality you must wait!".

Mmh... Romita Sr., Colan, Kirby, Ditko, Byrne and several others gave me the quality in all these years... And they didn't miss the deadlines.
I'll not mention any name (it wouldn't be polite), but there are guys in the industry who I appreciate as artists but not as pros. Because if you need months for drawing 22 pages (22!) you aren't a pro.

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Andy Smith
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 5:42am | IP Logged | 7  

David Miller
What are the lead times like these days?  >

It all depends on the schedule and the book. I'm working on the last page of Claw #4 today and #2 shipped a week ago. Last year I worked on a book in November and it shipped in Feb. I think these days most artists are working on books two or three months before they come out.

andy
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John Byrne
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 5:53am | IP Logged | 8  

I can't knock a guy for writing a comic dedicated to his deceased son...

***

Personal tragedies are not to be diminished in any way, ever. But, the fact remains that realistic scheduling would mean they would also have no impact on the work. Coinsider: if Tom Batiuk dropped dead today, FUNKY WINKERBEAN would continue to appear in newspapers around the country, every day, without a break, for the next year.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 5:55am | IP Logged | 9  

"Artists are slow because if you want quality you must wait!".

****

I'll counter this with "Fans are stupid because they accept any bull the prima donnas feed them."

If an artist is "slow", there is a very, very simple, tried and true solution: schedule the book(s) only when completed.

This is not rocket science.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 6:00am | IP Logged | 10  

On the matter of publishing schedules, altho there has grown up in fandom (and to some extent in the industry) the notion that bi-monthlies and twice-quarterlies (8 times a year) are the "poor cousins" of the monthly books, this was not always so, and, in the beginning, was never intended to be the case.

4, 6 and 8 times per year publishing schedules were the norm. Go look at the indicias of Silver Age comics, and notice how many say "Published monthly except..." It was common practice to publish most books bi-monthly, and the "big sellers" twice-quarterly, the latter shifting to a monthly schedule in the summer, when the kids were out of school.

Somewhere over the years idiot fans and retailers shoved in all kinds of "rules" that had nothing to do with reality, and so what were once perfectly normal publishing schedules came to be seen as somehow negative.

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Paul Greer
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 6:01am | IP Logged | 11  

I agree 100% that the book should have never shipped late. To me instead of it being issue #27 (or whatever issue it was), it could have easliy been used as issue whatever since it was a stand alone story. I was only commenting on how I felt about Michaels Casselman's comments on the book. It seemed to be more personal, not just the title being late.

Edited by Paul Greer on 26 July 2006 at 6:02am
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John Byrne
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 6:02am | IP Logged | 12  

When the Editor-in Chief of a comics publishing company has an issue of a book that's over a year late, why does anyone wonder why any of the other late books that publisher releases are late? If it's "lead by example" he's certainly doing a great job.

***

And, of course, it's just a coincidence that one of his first official acts as EiC was to cancel a profitable book that happened to be shipping on schedule every month.

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