RANT: On Lateness and LATENESS

A few intersting bits of comedy on Diamond's changed shipping dates report (via Newsarama)

WILDCATS #1 09/27/06 - 10/04/06

Now under normal circumstances a one week delay wouldn't bug me too much. But this is the first issue of a major relaunch of the Wildstorm line of books, and its coming out a full month late? I'm actually not surprised, after all WildCATS is written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Jim Lee, but that also means that DC shouldn't have been surprised either. Yet they solicited this title, a title that was announced at the beginning of the year and rumored for months before then, and with a straight face said "First week of September."

This is not a new problem for comics, but recently it seems to be spiraling out of control. The Great Civil War delay of '06. The 21 issues in 5 years Ultimates. The fill-in artists and unfinished splash page in Infinite Crisis. Young Avengers and Wonder Woman approaching quarterly schedules under Allan Heinberg's pen. Damon Lindelof's Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine 5 issue mini that may never end. I could go on and on.

Comic books are an art, not a science, I know this. But they are also a business, and by allowing books to come out 'when they are ready' the editors and publishers are allowing the inmates to run the asylum. To go back to WildCATS, DC knew that Lee, and to a lesser extent Morrison, are notoriously late, yet they still solicit their book when it obviously was not done. Why? Why not wait until at least the first 4-6 issues are totally finished before soliciting the book? I don't want the end product to be compromised by rushing scripts or bringing in fill-in artists, but the editorial staff has to be wiser when scheduling.

There are bright spots in this regard. Astonishing X-Men was plagued by delays for it's first 'season' so Marvel put it on hiatus for a few months, then brought it back on a bi-monthly schedule to start. It's now (apparently) back on a monthly schedule. They waited until they knew the book would be out on schedule before soliciting it. I still ended up waiting 8 weeks between issues, but at least it came out when promised, just like DC does with Justice. All I'm asking is for the comics companies to be honest with their fans, and to themselves, when they publicize their schedules.