As long as the publishers have the right to arbitrarily set or change a deadline, a deadline penalty could be used to defraud freelancers (not often, but sometimes.) I doubt the big companies would do that, it's counterproductive, but there are several fly-by-night operations who would gladly fudge the paperwork to defraud freelancers.

A solution more like the "penalty" you suggest is to say that if you plan a page rate of 100 dollars (for the purposes of having a round number) but you want a 10 percent penalty for each month's delay, give a page rate of 50 and a 50 dollar deadline bonus. Then shave the bonus if the work is late. So that the rate including the bonus is the full rate, but you've only agreed to the half rate. Or 80 percent or whatever.

Technically, if you could afford it, the most stringent  way to deal with it is saying that the editor will only receive and voucher for a complete issue in publishable condition (not to say it has to be inked, but it has to meet the standards agreed to for pencils, inks, adherence to script, whatever) and after more than 30 days delay, the contract is cancelled/ void , and the artist has to "eat" the cost of whatever pages he's finished. But I don't think many slow artists will gamble on working for that publisher. And maybe not many others either.

Todd has spent millions defending himself against a guy who, at best, co-created a couple characters.

Why does it still seem like some kind of weird pissing contest? Instead of spending millions in litigation, couldn't a deal have been worked out with Neil? I'm probably naive, but giving credit to Neil seems alot more sane than letting such a silly dispute go on... Does anyone even know/care who Angela is today?

and then have to contend with them for the rest of my life as they
followed me around with their hand out.

Again, I'm probably being stupid, but are there any creators left out there who are in it for something besides dollar signs? Assuming everyone is always out to screw you must be quite tiring....

We should all be so "foolish."

It's all relative; for an insanely wealthy person, dropping millions on a baseball (which I still think is pretty stupid considering that money could've gone to any charity) can easily be spun as a smart business decision.

"I thought it was pretty shortsighted for Todd to let somebody else write a
story in which an evil twin of his creation appeared. Neil created nothing
that was wholly original for the Spawn series."

I'm not disagreeing with you on that. But Todd opened the door for that. And as you know, there is precedence for allowing separate creator credits for derivative creations. And once he agreed to a creator owned situation for Angela (and Medieval Spawn) rather than insisting on work for hire (and if he had, you know that Dave Sim wouldn't have agreed to the guest writer stunt either) he was stuck with it.

Pretending that he didn't make a bad deal and thinking Gaiman would walk away, especially when it looked like McFarlane had secured part of the rights to Miracleman, was naive. And as far as I read about the deal, Gaiman tried to trade his rights in Angela for Todd's stake in Miracleman (or the stake Todd was believed to have in Miracleman), which is more important to Gaiman than the Angela character.

And it wasn't a  case of Gaiman trying to lift the Angela character out of the Spawn universe. It was character royalties and co-creator credit. If Gaiman had created a character for DC that got its own miniseries, then he would have every right to creator royalties and co-creator credit (as I understand the discussion of Gaiman's contract at the time).  Doesn't mean he would want to (or even be able to) extricate that character from the DC universe to use it elsewhere. It just means money and credit.

Its a contract and if you're a professional you honor the contract and make sure you don't make the same mistakes in the future.

Erik Larsen wrote: So--you'd be the guy who fired Frank Miller, Brain Bolland, Mark Millar, Adam Hughes, Jim Lee, Joe Madureira, Brian Hitch, Jeff Smith and a dozen other of the top names in the field? I'd gladly be your competition.

Perhaps if you fired just one, the rest would fall in line.  Perhaps it would lead to restructuring deadlines to meet what a talent's actual output is instead of calling something a monthly that's only published once a year. You know, like Adam Hughes has insisted on for ALL-STAR WONDER WOMAN. Perhaps it would encourage people to put pen to paper instead of playing video games as is oft reported by artists who are currently working on extremely late books.  Put up or shut up.  It's done in every other field on the planet including artistic fields like theatre, film, and television, so it's not only the domain of blue and white collar jobs.  I don't understand why it's so hard for someone to imagine being fired for consistently not delivering their work on time. 

I work in television.  I've worked with actors and actresses, directors, production designers, real people (ala reality television), studio execs, editors, etc. etc. all down the line.  If any of us consistently miss a deadline, we're not long for the job and would be encouraged to consider another line of work.  I really don't see the difference between that and artists, writers, inkers what have you on a comic book.

Someone's gotta be accountable for late shipping books.  I too have to meet deadlines as an engineer.  I sometimes have to take that extra step and work a lotta overtime to meet a deadline.  It just appears as if the work ethic by some creators, not all, seems to be lacking the discipline to get the job done in a timely manner.

This same sort of thing goes on in the real world all the time--often in construction there will be bonuses for meeting or beating a deadline.

Also in constuction, there are penalties to be paid out to the owner of a project if the contractor cannot meet the deadlines that are agreed upon in a contractual obligation.  They are usually based on a dollar amount for every day or week that a job extends beyond the deadline date.