Actually, the full question was, “do you stick to a book when it has multiple creators or do you cherry pick issues based on your favourites?  Would you rather see a small publishing delay for creator consistency?” So this question is largely aimed at the recent practices of the big two in dealing with the seeming inability for a single creative team to produce a monthly book. Now right up front  I want to make it clear that Jeff and I sweat the deadline. We have always, since we started back in the 90’s been concerned about getting our story out on a schedule. We’ve had a solid run with the web version for a year and a half until we had to take a break for a few weeks earlier in the fall. And that was hard for us to do, and it was only because of a family crisis. But let’s make one other thing clear. This is our hobby. Jeff and I both have full-time careers. We do DFS in our off hours, and they can be slim some times. When we were doing the black and white mini-comic stories, we were in post secondary school and working at part-time jobs. It’s always been a juggle. What was discussed this week was people who do comics for a living. The people drawing Spider-Man, draw Spider-Man. They are artists whose day job is to be an artist. And they don’t seem to be able to get the job done. While there has always been to occasional fill in issue done, in my day, and yes, I’m doing the old man voice, you’d have a run of years with the same people doing monthly issues of Spider-Man, X-Men, Teen Titans etc. It’s been mostly since the 90’s that artists can’t keep up the monthly pace. And I’m not sure why. My best guess is it’s all the extra rendering that started in the 90’s. As much as I’ve always loved Art Adams, he’s sorta the guy to blame for Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Rob Leifeld etc. All those guys who need to put 100’s of extra lines everywhere. That’s gotta take time. And the heavily rendered computer colouring as well, it take way longer to do all that shading and special effects than to just colour in flat areas. (I oughta know. I’ve debated doing anything more elaborate with DFS since I started doing the colour on the new story. Jury is still out on whether I’ll do anything different for the next story) I suspect another factor is the rock star effect. Comic artist used to be an unassuming job. Sure there were some famous people, but famous is a relative term. And they didn’t make crazy big money and live the rock star lifestyle. they were craftsmen doing a job for a paycheck. They loved what they did, but it was a job and you had deadlines to meet. But then the 90’s again, and you started getting super stars, and the role of comic artists went from skilled labourer to artiste. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe comics are as legitimate an art form as sculptor, architect or ballerina. But there is a difference between an actor say, who is good at his craft and works hard, performs well and gets deserved applause. Then there’s the celebrity. Famous more for being famous than the actual work they do. Oh, they might now and then make a movie, which may or may not be good. But their real focus is being famous. Some of the blame here goes to Wizard magazine, whose practice of hyping creators and making hot lists drove not only fan support for this mentality, but supported the rock star persona of these top 10 creators. When you look at some of these really hot comic artists, and you see their track record for missing deadlines, or taking forever to finish a project, you see that same sort of divide.  If you sign on to do 20 pages a month, do 20 pages a month. Skip the movie, turn the 360 off and draw the next page. If you can’t do 20 pages a month, don’t take the gig. You can do a limited series or one offs, or join the covers only brigade. (Ugh! The poor starry eyed kids who come to cons with a portfolio of pin-ups who get lectured on having to show samples of actual pages, only to see their heroes do nothing but covers and pin-ups.) Okay, stepping down off the soap box, yes I will follow a creator from one project to the next. I’ve read stuff I might never have bothered with otherwise because of who was working on it. But when they jump ship, and some other random team is assigned, I’m as likely to walk away as well. Nowadays it’s not really a big issue for me, I mostly read stuff that’s driven by it’s creators, so the chance of replacing Terry Moore on a Terry Moore created comic is pretty low. And these creators know what they are capable of deadline wise and plan accordingly. I bought the first trade paperback of the JRJR Avengers, I like JRJR. But it was sort of like fulfilling the chicken wing craving. I’ve had my fill, now I’m good for a while. I might get a craving again.