It’s a mantra that has served me well over the years, and one I have tried to impress on up-and-coming artists.

It’s important to remember that the readers have only the published work to go by, and have no way to know if a particular image is exactly what the artist intended.

As long as you’re doing your best, given the circumstances, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

(In my fan days I would often labor over a piece of artwork, erasing and erasing until I sometimes wore right thru the paper. I had not yet learned Joe Simon’s words to Jack Kirby: “You don’t get paid to erase.”)

That three day Spider-Man issue happened because it was discovered there actually was no next issue waiting in the drawer. A writer had departed, leaving vouchers screwed up. It was only by sheer chance that Roger Stern discovered the mess.

So Roger bashed out a plot for me. Frank Miller, hearing what was happening, suggested that instead of breakdowns, as intended, I should do my usual tight full pencils and the printer shoot from those.

Shooter declared we were crowding the deadlines much too close for that. So I did tight breakdowns and sent those to the Office, where they sat on Shooter’s desk for NINE DAYS until he approved an inker.

A notoriously slow inker. (Why they didn’t hand it to multiple inkers I will never know!)

Somehow, the issue came out on time.