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Felicity Walker
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 349
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 1:29am | IP Logged | 1
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I have this pleasant mental image of a competent artist with a more normal style being given four pages to fill in for a late, hot artist and those four pages being the best-drawn ones in the book, and the fill-in artist gets to take over the title.
Speaking strictly as a fan of the medium, and setting aside for one moment the business angle and how a late comic affects people’s livelihoods, I would rather get a perfect comic late than an imperfect comic on time. However, that’s in my abstract dream-world, and I don’t begrudge the businesspeople their pragmatism.
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Knut Robert Knutsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 September 2006
Posts: 7374
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 1:37am | IP Logged | 2
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But if you have a hot title with a hot artist who is too slow for monthly, why not get the writer (who is presumably faster) to write fill-ins for a faster artist and just publish the damn fill ins.
If I'm reading Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch and there's a four month gap (or even a 1 year gap) with fill ins drawn by Mark Bagley rather than nothing at all, who's going to get hurt by that? Certainly not the company. Retailers might order less of those issues, but it'll keep its core audience.
For every 100 thousand Hitch might sell, Bagley might sell 90 thousand (or, seeing as it's actually monthly, he might sell 110 thousand but that would certainly challenge their belief system.)
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Kevin Hagerman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 April 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 18105
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 1:50am | IP Logged | 3
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Computer games were habitually late, or worse, shipped on time but not in a playable state! Now that they are more often a cross-platform port, there seems to be less of a problem, but there are exceptions.
I predict Chinese Democracy and Duke Nukem Forever come out on the same day. February 31st.
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Felicity Walker
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 349
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 2:17am | IP Logged | 4
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I’m so glad we live in the console era. I remember fifteen, twenty years ago, having to fight the computer to get it to play a game because nothing was compatible with anything else.
Of course, I haven’t owned a console since the first PlayStation, because I have so many things plugged in, either to or around, my TV that there’d be nowhere to put a console! But someday, when I can afford more living space, I’ll get a console again.
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Joakim Jahlmar
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 October 2005
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6080
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 4:19am | IP Logged | 5
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Paulo wrote:
"Yeah, that's one of the key points I was trying to infer in my comment about perfectionism. That the current crop of artists have to be slow to be good and/or don't have the know-how to be good and on time. One can only imagine how their work would look if they were forced to be on time."
More dynamic and much less static and bogged down by details unnecessary to tell the story? Mind you, just a small hypoithesis.
And I totally support JB's notion that the publishers ought to go bi-quarterly. Heck I'd even say go bi-monthly or even quarterly if you have to, but do move it to an output that you can realistically match. If a quarterly comic book arrives promptly on time with each issue, I think most of us here would prefer that to getting 6 issues of a "monthly" title in a year and then never really knowing when we'll be getting what.
O and if someone wants to "grow roses" they should of course feel free to do so, but then they should grow the roses and THEN take them to the market, not bring a sticker to the market saying, "the roses will be around on this date, scractch that, delayed until this date, no scratch that..."
Steve Myers (on Perèz):
"I do know for sure there was at least one month when he was drwing the Titans that it wasn't published due to being behind schedule (I got a note in the mail, because I had a subscripton)."
Well on the original run, didn't he and Wolfman actually squeeze in a four issue Titans mini on top of the regular load during the first or second year?
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Peter Svensson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 1470
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 4:31am | IP Logged | 6
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Yep. Tales of the New Teen Titans. Perez may have needed fill-ins on occasion, but when he's on a book he likes, he stays on it. He was on New Teen Titans for about 50 issues plus annuals, and Avengers (the second time) for about 35 issues.
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Jonathan Stover
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Joined: 01 June 2004
Posts: 749
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 7:35am | IP Logged | 7
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Perez did at least two of the Teen Titans annuals, the four-issue miniseries and an issue of DC Comics Presents with Superman and OMAC during his Teen Titans and Crisis runs. And Crisis had two 38-page + cover issues. And he pencilled The History of the DC Universe sometime around the end of the Crisis. And early on his Titans run, I think he was still doing covers for Justice League of America.
I've heard that Jim Aparo could only produce 20 pages a month -- but that was when he was pencilling AND inking. When they switched him to just pencilling, his productivity went up, though I never liked the inker they seemed to always stick him with (one of the DeCarlos, I think) -- the inks seemed to 'flatten' the pencils, and I seem to recall that inker having the same effect on Greg LaRocque and...Dave Cockrum on Batman, maybe?
Kirby noted somewhere that he and a few others could produce eight to ten pages a day back in the 1940's, when they really needed the money. Even during Kirby's first Marvel period and first DC period, he must have been doing at least three pages a day, given the number of Kirby books coming out simultaneously up until the mid-1970's.
Cheers, Jon
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133580
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 7:50am | IP Logged | 8
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There were times when Kirby was drawing upwards of ten books a month for Marvel, most of them with 24 pages of story. Of course, for much of that time he was drawing what we would today consider breakdowns, and depending heavily on the inker to lush-up the line and spot blacks. With inker/finishers like Sinnott or Ayers, your can't really tell that Kirby did anything other than full pencils. With someone like Chic Stone, it's more apparent.Looking at the Kirby originals on my wall, it is really easy to see his work-load diminishing, and more detail and texturing going into the pencils, much of which is still visible under the inks. About two-thirds of the pages I have, the underdrawing looks about like this: 
(That piece invokes one of my favorite What If? scenarios -- What if Wally Wood had inked the first year or so of FANTASTIC FOUR?)
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Anthony J Lombardi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 8:12am | IP Logged | 9
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Thanks for clarifying that for me Andy. I think somethting more then holding pages back from the artist needs to be done. With alot of the hack work being passed off today. I can see a majority of those artist being able to turn a good profit on their pages. Those few artist that really are good one way or another aren't gonna be hurt all that much by haveing their art held up from them.
The reason being these good artist some of them are professional enough or fast enough to get the workin on time. The other good artist who can't keep up well they can just raise the price of the art they do have few pieces means higher demand.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 8:22am | IP Logged | 10
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There is a story which, as I recall, involves Denny O'Neil. An artist came to him saying, basically, "You gave me this on January 14th and said I had three weeks to do it. But the deadline is coming up and I need two more weeks!" Supposedly, Denny responded "Okay, imagine I gave it to you on January 1st."The most simply way to avoid missing deadlines is to ignore the deadlines --- but from the other end of the equation. When I calculate my work schedule, I do so by adding time in front of the "window" the editor has given me. So, if the job should take three weeks, and is due on March 30th, I set my goal to start on February 20th, or even sooner. (Frank Miller told me of working with a particular editor at Dark Horse. The editor insisted on giving Frank what he called "Drop Dead Dealines" -- the absolute last day the work could be turned in to still ship on time. "No," said Frank. "I want No Fuck Up Deadlines. The day I can turn this in to guarantee it will ship without any fuck ups!!)
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Anthony J Lombardi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 8:31am | IP Logged | 11
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When I was doing freelance work I always set my own deadlines, which were earlier then what was given to me. I wanted to make certain i had the work done in time plus to give myself time to make any changes that might be needed. If i had three weeks i was looking to get it done in a week to two weeks. so i would have that final week free for what ever might come up.
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17701
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| Posted: 21 February 2008 at 8:38am | IP Logged | 12
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That Kirby was a drawing machine!
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