Late Comics

A topic that's always being debated in comic fandom revolves around comics that don't come out on time. Back in the 70s, when I was at my peak of comic collecting in terms of completeness, you might have the experience of reading a 7- or 8-part storyline that's interrupted in the middle, for an issue or two, as the publisher stuck in a filler story from inventory in order to avoid having that issue ship late when a writer or artist missed a deadline. There were printer reservations involved each week, you see, and so if Marvel failed to provide an issue of Avengers for printing that week, for example, it could cost them a lot of penalty money with the printers. Thus was born the term Dreaded Deadline Doom, which when it struck, meant that that month's issue of whatever wasn't going to be what you expected it to be. In fact, it was almost always some drek that hadn't been deemed good enough to be published when it was originally written and drawn. And sometimes it was just a reprint of an older issue! *Gasp*

I used to hate those DDD issues when one would land on the shelf at the local news depot. I was all primed to read the next chapter in some exciting adventure, only to be disappointed. Mostly I was just pissed that whoever had been late that month couldn't manage their workload better. Even as a teenager I understood that you shouldn't sign up for more work than you can do.

These days, though, it's more likely that a tardy artist will simply result in the next issue of his or her comic shipping late. To understand why it all changed, there are some classic examples that are often trotted out: the last several issues of Watchmen, back in 1986, were abysmally late, as were the final two installments of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Those two seminal works are terrific cases to support the argument that says, "Who cares if they're late? Wait as long as you need to for them. No one will remember that they were late, years from now!" Except, of course, for the fact that everyone recalls their lateness, now twenty years later! But the point is that that's not what those series are remembered for. Imagining a tenth issue of Watchmen drawn by someone other than Dave Gibbons, for example, is incomprehensible. Would the trade paperback collection of Watchmen, that still, twenty years later, sells very well for DC, be jumping off the bookstore shelves if there'd been a break in the style partway through? I'm in the camp that says, "Not a chance!"

Having said that, late comics still bug me, in some cases. For example, how is one to understand a comic that's late pretty much from the start? The current run of Wonder Woman was announced with a flurry of hype (TV writer Allan Heinberg was kicking it off with a 5-issue storyline) only to be followed by a two month wait for # 2, and eventually an announcement that it would ship bi-monthly instead of monthly. Considering Heinberg's previous reputation for tardiness (really just a matter of getting busy with his other commitments) why not wait until you've got a few of his scripts - or maybe all 5? - in hand before scheduling the new series?

Kevin Smith recently finished a Spider-Man/Black Cat mini-series that he started sometime late in the 90s! What's a gap of seven or eight years, after all? Of course, the series only ran 5 or 6 issues in total, so who couldn't remember what happened between issues? Smith also got one issue of a Daredevil/Bullseye mini-series out, around that same time in the 90s, and we still haven't gotten a second issue for it yet! I can understand people having other drains on their time, but why is it so hard for publishers to get more material in the can before soliciting the books themselves? To their credit, they've started doing that, here and there. A Jeff Smith (of Bone fame) Shazam! 4-issue series was announced but without a release date, until such time as he got well underway on the 4th issue, I believe. That's the way to do it! And if the creative people don't like waiting that long to get paid - if it even works that way, which is doubtful - then maybe they'll be motivated to actually work on the comics more!

And taking all of that into consideration, how can I not love when I read that Brad Meltzer completed all 13 scripts for his Justice League of America series before the first issue went on sale?! Obviously the artist for the book could still be late, but the selling point of this run is Meltzer, so even substituting someone else on issue six, for example, wouldn't detract that much from the typical fan's enjoyment. Well done, DC and Meltzer! We need more of that and less of what happened with All-Star Batman and Robin, in which either - or more likely both - writer Frank Miller or artist Jim Lee are so late that DC's own subscription department recently started telling people the best-selling title was cancelled. Turns out it was just so many months overdue (about five or six now, I think) that they got confused and thought it had been axed. And who can blame them?