Hey Joe. How many kids do you have?

If it's zero, as I suspect, now might be a good time to shut your ignorant mouth up.

Personally, I don't care why.  If the presses or distribution center were in New Orleans, I'd cut slack, but if it's late, I just lose interest.

Astonishing X-Men is the best X-Men book in decades...it ships late, I've lost interest because it's late so I dropped it.  Brubaker's Captain America has been brilliant, but there were issues that shipped late and I lost interest.  Comics are serial fiction, intended to be put out monthly...if that doesn't happen, I'm really not of the mind to care.  My part of the deal is that you (the publisher) keep me entertained on a month to month basis, and I'll support you.  You drop the ball, my interests drift elsewhere.

If I could make a living out of comics, I would do nothing else, so I would never be late.
I can't understand why people who actually got a job doing comics would ever spend time on other, irrelevant stuff. (And no, I'm not being funny...)

Question: Are modern freelancers allowed to subcontract or "farm" out part of their work, such as backgrounds? Does it have to be ghosted, with no credit and no awareness from the editor? If the editor knows about it, must a credit appear in the book and must the company split the page rate up themselves, or can the freelancer do it?

Just a solution to a problem that might help freelancers, though I understand many of them struggle to put food on the table as is (but think about how much more you'd make overall with an on-time book!)

Wes Wescovich wrote: ] I remember when there was a Superboy and the Legion issue that came out in the late 70's featuring a gorgeous Starlin cover and I was surprised to find a Swan reprint inside.  There was an editorial from Al Milgrom on the inside cover apologizing for the fact that he had just taken over the editing chores and the first issue under his reign was a reprint due to a schedule problem.  THAT was a professional response to the problem.

But if that was done today it would either have been solicitated as a reprint issue = few people order it,
or changed into a reprint issue when the solicitations said otherwise = retailers could send it back.

JB said he has every sympathy for Brian Hitch if his girlfriends pregnancy problems caused him to miss a deadline.

He said that working well in advance of deadlines would mean that this problem, awful though it is, would not impact upon his meeting of his deadlines.  I take it by that that he is certainly not saying that meeting this deadline was more important than Mr Hitch's girlfriend's pregnancy problems.

That said, I can see how some of the other comments on this thread might come across as callous.  A little thought before posting might be in order.