Would you trade high-quality art for on-time comics?

fifthfiend

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Just wondering. Inasmuch as a lot of the chronic book lateness that goes around seems to be due to the art, to what degree would people here consider accepting simplified lines/coloring in exchange for books hitting the stands every month?
 
Yes, but I don't think we have to. There are plenty of good artists who can meet deadlines. They should get the bulk of the ongoings. Save the minis and "event" arcs for the slow artists and just make sure they're completely finished with them before you solicit them. Seems like a simple formula to me.
 
It would depend on the artist, really.
A better idea would be to make the book less than monthly, and to encourage creators to lighten their load a bit.
Kirkman used to be on time when he was only handling Battle Pope and Invincible, but now he's got Walking Dead, Wolfman, the various Marvel titles he was writing, etc. All his books are late, and he's a writer!
 
It's probably hard to support a family on paychecks from just one series, though. Clearly, the solution is simple: comic creators must stop breeding.
 
hmmm
back in the day the Kirbys, the Perezs. the Griffins, the Aparos and the Neal Adams produced on time high quality comics all the time. the problem now is that most of these guys have become prima donna comic book celebrities.They take their time due to the compaines bowing down to them.Hell and most of them are just splash pages anyway. back in the day if you didnt produced you might've ended up washing dishes.
Creators know now that if a company gets fed up with them they can just go somewhere else. which is a big reason why i dont fall into that hype. if you can sustain a book at the level and the longevity that jack kirby did.you deserve a handshake and my compliment otherwise forget it.


....hey what happen to my little avatar thingie it was there and not it isnt awww man!
 
To play Devil's Advocate, the process of penciling, inking, and coloring a comic has become more complex than it once was. Past pencilers were more akin to illustrators; now most artists in the Big Two and even elsewhere are more detailed in their pencils and that requires more time. Digital inking and coloring can also take time; people laugh at the quaint "dots" of old school colors (and the limitations), but that process was faster than today's digital colors, even if they often produce superior pictures. Sometimes even a skilled colorist can take almost as long to color a page as a penciler may have taken to draw it. Inking has also become more complex; Hitch often blamed inking woes for ULTIMATE 2's delays.

That all said, the old axum is that if you encourage certain behavior, it will continue. Once a taboo, late issues have become a norm. Management at both Big Two companies poo-poo latenesses and give the analogy of "waiting for the best work", as if other mediums so flippantly excuse latenesses. When video games run years late at times, critics often note it as a blemish. You hardly ever hear of a TV show or movie missing a debut date and when it does occur, a red flag is set up. The idea of telling the already overrought customers of an industry that as a whole sells fewer units than the average John Grisham novel to "grin and bare" sometimes embarassing delays is almost asking for self destruction. On the one hand, Marvel & DC bemoan the fact that they much compete with TV, movies, the Internet and Video Games for the attention of their fans, yet often imitate none of the professionalism of either. When was the last time you tuned into, say, "HEROES" and instead of a new episode you saw a blank screen and an announcer stating, "This episode is running behind because the creators and actors are terribly busy. Please some back next week, or the week after that..." TV wouldn't put up with that. Comic readers get this from some titles almost monthly.

There is a reason that a comic book run is becoming the part time job or runner up position for TV and movie writers who happen to lose a gig or find some spare time.

The Big Two no longer promote timely comics as they used to and allow creator hype to cloud their judgement. Of course, as Hollywood strip mines comics to make up for their own lack of ideas, it may be all the Big Two can do to retain talent.

The artists that can handle a monthly gig should get them, and the ones that can't should be given due lead in time and the fans give a realistic, not optimistic, schedule.

On the writers side of things, not every writer is created equal. Bendis can and has handled up to 6 ongoing titles at once (which is easy when you have cookie cutter, copy & paste dialogue like he does. Like he does? Like he does. See?), whereas Dan Slott often struggles with more than two, even for a side one-shot or mini. Jeph Loeb once claimed that many writers miss deadlines because they are too perfectionist, and then he went to Marvel and began an extended reign of mediocre to outright dire work.
 
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i'd happily at least get the story scripts early and happily read along and then wait for the comics to hit later on.

there's a market for getting the scripts out, i'm suprised no one has used it to calm the lags...
 
Marvel sort of does that with SPOTLIGHT, charging you $3 for sketches, scripts, and interviews.
 
I wouldn't buy scripts. I'd frankly be kind of pissed if Marvel put out a script to "appease" me during a delay. If I wanted to read prose, I'd read more novels instead of comics.
 
Honestly, my favorite artists are rarely ever late on a book. The ones that are always late and everyone seems to defend are exactly the ones who produce art I don't like.

JRJr is my favorite comic artist and it seems like he can produce about three issues a month with no problem.

Often I think the fault is editorial. Not because they need to make the artist do more work. But because they should be making the artist do less work. The simple fact is that comic art does not need to photorealistic. In fact, there's a very strong argument against it if you've ever read Scott McCloud's work. I personally think editors should be pushing the artist to minimize their art some. If we wanted photorealism, they could just produce fumetti.
 
it doesn't really matter to me, because it saves me money.lol
 
the process of penciling, inking, and coloring a comic has become more complex than it once was. Past pencilers were more akin to illustrators; now most artists in the Big Two and even elsewhere are more detailed in their pencils and that requires more time. Digital inking and coloring can also take time; people laugh at the quaint "dots" of old school colors (and the limitations), but that process was faster than today's digital colors, even if they often produce superior pictures. Sometimes even a skilled colorist can take almost as long to color a page as a penciler may have taken to draw it. Inking has also become more complex; Hitch often blamed inking woes for ULTIMATE 2's delays.

This is a lot of what I was getting at with this topic. Artists like Kirby et al were great but clearly nowadays we're working with much different standards in terms of pencil/ink detail and coloring quality and htat sort of thing. Basically what I was wondering here was the extent to which people think those standards and the time they take to produce or whether they'd be okay with or even prefer the simpler techniques that lend themselves well to producing work on-deadline.

DBM's answer is pretty illustrative, he clearly outright prefers the simpler*, more illustrative style of a JRJR to the more rendered look of a Hitch or a John Cassaday. I don't know where exactly I fall personally, I actually really enjoy a cleaner, more simplified approach in a lot of instances but I can't say that the effort of say, a Dave Aja doesn't add something really special to a book.


*Just to be clear "simpler" isn't meant as any kind of perjorative here.
 
I like all kinds of different art styles, but it's just inexcusable to take months or years to finish a single issue of a major publisher's periodical. If it's your own creator-owned magnum opus, by all means, take your entire bloody life. But ongoing series at major publishers need to have regular releases; that's how the medium operates. I'm sure the extremely artsy-fartsy artists might not want to accept that there's simply a maximum level of detail you can squeeze in under the monthly time/detail ratio, but there is. Just like you wouldn't expect a TV show to delay an episode because they're trying to get the special effects up to super-duper-realer-than-photorealistic quality, comic readers shouldn't expect that their books are going to be delayed willy nilly to appease some egomaniacal artist's need to get things just right. They work in a time-dependent medium. If they don't like it, well, that's what creator-owned graphic novels were made for.
 
In the long run, who really remembers delays? What if Kingdome Come, or Watchmen, or even something like Hush came out a few weeks late? Does it really matter now? The art lasts forever. The memories or anger of books coming out fades.

Do I think to myself, man Secret Invasion took forever to come out, it sucks. No. Will I think Final Crisis is going to be wierd because of the artist fiasco. Yes.
 
I would totally sacrifice time for art quality.

Good point about Secret Invasion and Final Crisis.
 
I think my answer is ultimately no, I would not trade it, because I don't think there's any reason why we can't have both. There's hundreds of artists out there who can do quality work on an average schedule. Everyone's going to have one or two late deliveries which is unavoidable and to be expected and dealt with, but if you're just consistently later than every other artists who can do your job in half the amount of time you can, then why in the poop are you hired for the job instead of those people?

Same exact situation with writers. If you can't deliver timeliness...then, well, there's a literal line of other writers, probably just as talented as you, who are just waiting on bated breath to have your job.
 
To be honest, i think comics get a little too much detailed sometimes. Granted, I like the look of a nice piece of art, but I think sometimes the artist goes over the top (Jim Lee comes to mind).

And on the flip side, the thing I hate the most is when I open a book and there's dialog boxes every. Some of thebest comics I ever read only take 5 minutes to read. if I want to read a novel, I'll go buy one.
 
Your totally right, but if I HAD to make a choice I'd say give me better art.

So Willy if you had to choose, which would you choose.
 
I'd choose timeliness. Again, things will go wrong and readers have to make reasonable allowances for that, but we should never reward unprofessionalism. Let someone else have your job if you're not able to do it on time. The trade-off is not "Either we get Bryan Hitch, or else we get some guy who sucks." The trade-off is "Either we get Bryan Hitch, or else we get some guy who's probably as good, just different."

And, really, at this point it's not like we're not used to artists changing in the middle of an arc. It's not the best case scenario, but it's hardly the worst either.
 
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I want to have my cake and eat it too.

Mmm... Cake.
 
This is a lot of what I was getting at with this topic. Artists like Kirby et al were great but clearly nowadays we're working with much different standards in terms of pencil/ink detail and coloring quality and htat sort of thing. Basically what I was wondering here was the extent to which people think those standards and the time they take to produce or whether they'd be okay with or even prefer the simpler techniques that lend themselves well to producing work on-deadline.

DBM's answer is pretty illustrative, he clearly outright prefers the simpler*, more illustrative style of a JRJR to the more rendered look of a Hitch or a John Cassaday. I don't know where exactly I fall personally, I actually really enjoy a cleaner, more simplified approach in a lot of instances but I can't say that the effort of say, a Dave Aja doesn't add something really special to a book.


*Just to be clear "simpler" isn't meant as any kind of perjorative here.

It ultimately comes down to style, but you will notice some of the artists who can meet a monthly schedule, such as Romita Jr. or Mark Bagley or others, have different styles than Bryan Hitch or Cassaday. It call comes down to the individual, of course. Some can maintain and some can't.

But be that as it may, I never stopped liking a comic back in the 80's and 90's because of the color dots. I never asked for glossy pages. It was ironic when MIGHTY AVENGERS had that bit where Sentry, Dr. Doom and Iron Man go back in time and everything is "old school colors" and I thought, "it didn't take 2-4 weeks to color comics when they did it like this".

I'm not saying that I don't enjoy modern techniques, too. But as the prices of production rise and the sales fall, is the trade off still worth it?

I like all kinds of different art styles, but it's just inexcusable to take months or years to finish a single issue of a major publisher's periodical. If it's your own creator-owned magnum opus, by all means, take your entire bloody life. But ongoing series at major publishers need to have regular releases; that's how the medium operates. I'm sure the extremely artsy-fartsy artists might not want to accept that there's simply a maximum level of detail you can squeeze in under the monthly time/detail ratio, but there is. Just like you wouldn't expect a TV show to delay an episode because they're trying to get the special effects up to super-duper-realer-than-photorealistic quality, comic readers shouldn't expect that their books are going to be delayed willy nilly to appease some egomaniacal artist's need to get things just right. They work in a time-dependent medium. If they don't like it, well, that's what creator-owned graphic novels were made for.

Good point.

In the long run, who really remembers delays? What if Kingdome Come, or Watchmen, or even something like Hush came out a few weeks late? Does it really matter now? The art lasts forever. The memories or anger of books coming out fades.

Do I think to myself, man Secret Invasion took forever to come out, it sucks. No. Will I think Final Crisis is going to be wierd because of the artist fiasco. Yes.

I'll tell you a true story. I've gone back and re-read some of the Whedon/Cassaday ASTONISHING X-MEN run for research purposes and while it is hardly the pinnacle of X-Men storytelling, it is still is a solid adventure tale that probably wasn't worth some of my venomous reviews (although I haven't reread DANGER or TORN). But what I haven't forgotten was that it took over four years to get 25 issues worth of story.

The "it doesn't matter" argument is pretty much what the editorial uses as an excuse. Let's apply it to other mediums. What does it matter if TV episodes were late all the time in the era of downloads and the DVD Box Set?

What matters is pacing, which requires regular issues come out. And it also stands to reason that trades and box sets may eventually outpace the weekly/monthly audience, but it will take a very long time. Finally, not every delayed work is of the caliber of WATCHMEN or whatnot. Just like for every BIO-SHOCK, there are a dozen lackluster, "barely worth a rental" games.

And ironically, the very reason that SECRET INVASION has been so successful against FINAL CRISIS is because of timely issues. Maybe people like professionalism sometimes.

BrianWilly said:
I think my answer is ultimately no, I would not trade it, because I don't think there's any reason why we can't have both. There's hundreds of artists out there who can do quality work on an average schedule. Everyone's going to have one or two late deliveries which is unavoidable and to be expected and dealt with, but if you're just consistently later than every other artists who can do your job in half the amount of time you can, then why in the poop are you hired for the job instead of those people?

Same exact situation with writers. If you can't deliver timeliness...then, well, there's a literal line of other writers, probably just as talented as you, who are just waiting on bated breath to have your job.

A sound point. The problem is this is not an industry that supports new blood. Name-power can be everything. Not all the time, but over 50% of the time.
 
I don't like delays, but bad art will always be bad art.
 
Deodato, Garney, and Pagulayan are good examples of artists who are incredibly awesome and always on time. Though Pags switched off with other guys during Planet Hulk but that is an acceptable solution to the problem.

I think Hitch's work on Ultimates was worth the wait though. Of course not every title can have ridiculously long delays like that but I think this is a case where it was worth the wait. It's not like my life depends on one out of all the other comics I read being on time.

Not really a big deal, IMO.
 
who cares about late books,pick up something else in the meantime that you haven't had a chance to read
 

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