With LITG reporting that Shane Davis may be a fill-in artist on Final Crisis, Comic Bloc worriedly asks what would be better – fill-ins or delays if the book runs late?
“Put me down for delayed. Art-wise, I rather have a Civil War than an Infinite Crisis. Sorry to be blunt, Geoff, but the fill-ins (even if it was George Perez) ruined the book. I’m sure DC doesn’t want this to be happen again.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter to me…yet. Until I see how the story unfolds, how the art works with the story, it is hard to say. The different artists in Infinite Crisis were close enough to each other style-wise, that it didn’t break things up all that much for me. If Davis is indeed the emergency back-up, he is a good one, but his style seems a lot different than JG’s look. I just want big projects from either of the Big Two to have some of the promised pay-off.”
“I won’t vote. I don’t mind the delay if its a month, two at the most late. But if you are going to put an artist like Adam Kubert, you better have some top quailty fill-ins standing by! I won’t mind the fill in if it means getting the story sooner then a year later.”
“Neither. If I need to have something, though, I’d prefer a fill-in. Shane Davis is good and really, since I’m reading it MONTHLY and not in a trade, as a whole, I won’t care that much about changes in art.”
“DC will get hammered by fandom either way. It’s a no-win situation.”
“I voted Delayed, even though I hate delays. I think JG Jones will do fine on this. He’s a professional and has had a good head start. I just want to buy the collected version someday and don’t want it to be a patchwork quilt like Infinite Crisis was. Wow, what a mess that was. It really took away from the story for me. How awesome would it have been to have that entire thing pencilled by Phil Jimenez?”
“It is a no win situation for DC. People will complain if there are fill ins and people will complain if there are delays. Personally, looking at how good the art is in the preview that was on EW.com, I would be happy to accept delays if it means keeping the creative team intact for the whole of the series.”
“I agree that it’s a no win situation, but they can sure lose less depending on how they go. I am sure that choosing between delaying and filling in is a business decision, so there are things going on which we fans may never understand.”
“A delay, but only during that ‘natural break’ [between #3 and 4, where the book skips a month]. At that point, DC should be able to assess the progress on the remaining four issues and if its not far enough to get those last few out before the year is over, stretch it by a month. I’d be okay with that… Technically, its already stretched another month. Final Crisis appears to be coming out at the end of each month, so if its not coming out in August, then the next issue will hit at the end of September, so that’s two more months to work on the fourth issue. (Which should be done well before then anyways.)”
May 20th, 2008 at 11:40 am
How long have they been hyping Final Crisis? When did Jones start?
Is it that hard for a large company like DC to understand the idea of ‘lead time’? All they would have to do is give Jones enough time to finish half, three quarters, or even all of the issues before soliciting the first issue. Hell, use it as a selling point, put them out twice a month once you have them in hand.
They can’t front him money? They can’t give him an advance?
Comic book publishing doesn’t make much sense to me if they can’t work ahead of themselves. All of this flying by the seat of one’s pants stuff is dumb.
Commission a story, pay an advance, get it finished, THEN SOLICIT IT.
Is it that hard?
With ongoing series you set up a team for a run, and you get some issues in hand before publishing them. Half the run, maybe.
Both Marvel and DC seem to be willing to solicit material that is not finished. How the hell does that work? Would a non-comic publisher solicit a book that isn’t done yet? No. Hell, they usually don’t even talk about a project until it’s done and going through proofreading.
What if someone, god forbid, dies before finishing a product solicited?
What if JG Jones croaked with only 2 issues of Final Crisis done and one solicited?
Chimps could run a publishing company better than these people.
I guess it’s a magazine thing.
But really, I blame the fans for their love of the pamphlet.
Enough already. Give me 4 good Superman graphic novels a year, give me 2 Green Lantern and 2 Green Lantern Corps books a year, give me 3 good Wonder Woman stories a year, give me 4 good Spider-Man stories. Marvel and DC have enough characters that they can publish 3-4 books a month and keep fans interested, maybe even spotlight underutilized properties on ‘off’ months, spread out the big guns over the year.
I’d love a good 64-128 page Black Lightning story once a year. Or Challengers Of The Unknown, certain properties can’t sustain a monthly but they could sustain a yearly story, and creators wouldn’t have to commit to an ongoing project. You come in, you do a story, one really good story, someone else comes in and follows it up maybe you come back in a couple years.
Monthlies need to die. This business can survive, super hero comics need to look at serial novel series for a template, there are tons of them out there people buy them 3-4 times a year, year in, year out, quality questions aside, people make a living off that stuff.
Hell, Harry Potter made a mint, is the content of Harry Potter that alien to super hero fiction? Not at all.
Continuing to adhere to monthly pamphlet publication is hurting this industry. DC and Marvel need to get on the ball and realize their properties would be better used if they weren’t saturating the market with stupid inconsequential comic books to feed an ever dwindling and fickle fanbase.
I’d buy my nephew a trade paperback every month, eventually I plan to (he’s only six), but I’m not spending $12-$20 on 4-6 little flimsy pamphlets filled with crass advertising.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:50 am
So a 7-issue series that was supposedly started last summer will need a fill-in artist? Oy vey.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:55 am
ElCoyote’s Prophet, they did get lead time. Then Grant Morrison turned in the second script and it went in a different direction than they expected. Dan Didio had to fly out to Scotland and talk to him about what was going on. Rijiggering everything based on Morrison’s changes ate up the lead time.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Somehow, I’d prefer to think that something done in Countdown screwed up Grant’s original plan, making him change things up. In my world, Countdown is responsible for global warming, rising gas prices, and the flat I got last week.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Plus we are talking rumor about a possible scenario. Remember that A RUMOR.
And how many people bitched and moaned about the action comics delays? DC is trying to appease both groups here, yet they are still getting flack.
BTW, the rumor is that Jones if delayed would do a reduced page count main story with some one else doing a back up tale (with the new rumor of Shane Davis doing them) with the end result of FC shipping on time with the main story having one artist which the trade waiters want with more than 7 issues, but that is if it is late. Remember there is that break there
May 20th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
DC should have just put Bagley on the book with Thibert as his inker. You give Bagley a few months lead in time to get his character references done, get situated with DC, and boom, he’d knock it out of the park.
Screw one artist for 52 weeks, the big accomplishment these days would be for a big event to ship without being late at all. Marvel is surely going to do something stupid to delay Secret Invasion even with Yu on it.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Hey guys, remember how timely of an artist JG Jones has been with his sequential work for the last few years?
Oh yeah he hasn’t done anything but covers since Wanted and that had an average delay of 2-4 months between the last 3 issues.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Bagley is a workhorse. He draws competently and on time. He is not great. Not great at all. Just average. JG Jones however, is amazing. I’m willing to wait.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
“Bagley is a workhorse. He draws competently and on time. He is not great. Not great at all. Just average. JG Jones however, is amazing. I’m willing to wait.”
That’s a damn lie and you know it, you lying liar.
Bagley doing a monthly book is good. Very good. Just because he can do more than 12 issues a year does not mean he is average simply because it is an either/or condition in regards to quality.
In fact, you give Bagley the lead in time to do just 7 issues, he’ll add so much more detail it’ll be like the first HD comic ever. EVER.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I’m not a fan of JG Jones anyway. That first Final Crisis image we saw ten years ago, with the zombie-like Superman is horrid.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
“Countdown is responsible for…the flat I got last week.”
Finally, Kevin Huxford has cracked! Teh Internet wins again!
May 20th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
ubershep said: “Bagley is a workhorse. He draws competently and on time. He is not great. Not great at all.”
Oh, but he is great. Anybody who can make 110 issues of a Bendis book readable is GREAT!
May 20th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
And don’t we all just know that most of those people saying they would accept a delay or two would actually start whining about it louder than my ex-wife.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I am apparently the only person on the internet that had no problem with the different artists on Infinite Crisis.
When your fill-in artist is George Perez you should NOT be complaining.
The only glaring issue I saw was the two-page spread of the Secret Society attacking Metropolis that was a red filter over rough pencils (that was fixed in the trade).
That being said. I would have no problem with a fill in artist if said artist’s style compliments JG Jone’s work on the book, or if the fill-in work is done specifically on scenes that could benefit from a different stylistic approach.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:20 am
@DK
Agreed with everything you said. X-men Legacy is written for multiple artists, there’s no reason Morrison can’t tweak the script to allow a fill-in artist to take over some of the work load.
Also if they really want to keep the style the same so the inevitable hardcover looks cohesive, they could always have JG Jones re-draw the pages he couldn’t finish.
May 21st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Rich “The Bullshit” Johnson is at it again!