Maybe They Should Change the Name to "Hundred Year War"?

It's official. Marvel's Civil War #4, originally slated to ship Wednesday, August 16, will now ship on September 20th! Think that sucks? Oh, wait, it gets even better: Civil War #5 won't be on shelves until November 15th. Marvel's biggest mega-event in God knows how long, and they're only going to ship one issue between mid-July and mid-November. Worse, this forces a dozen or so tie-in titles to slip as well.

DC took a lot of criticism when Infinite Crisis fell behind schedule, even after a boat load of artists were added to the mix, but the final issue shipped only 2 weeks after it was originally scheduled to. This puts MCW at least two months behind and that's assuming that no further delays pop up in the meantime. I can't even begin to imagine what this means for all the other titles in the main Marvel U. The worst part? A lot of creative teams that DID meet their deadlines are going to have their work ship late through no fault of their own.

Whose fault is this? Millar? He's been the writer of a lot of late books, so he likely has to bear a lot of the blame here. McNiven? He may have to go into the Jim Lee, Frank Quitley, Phil Jimenez, Bryan Hitch class of pencillers that can't be trusted with a monthly book. Quesada? Ultimately he's the boss, so he has to take the blame. Either way there are too many books that don't ship on time now, and sooner or later it's going to kill the industry.

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