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By Jason Bourgeois
Welcome back to even more Grey Matters. Don't forget to check out my report of Atlanta's yearly Dragon*Con convention, and see all my wacky adventures down south.
But let's get right down to business this month. A recent trend has been comics with poor shipping schedules. Actually, that's not such a new trend but in my opinion, it's getting worse. Ultimates from Marvel springs immediately to mind, whose schedule has been so far off the rails, the last issue should have been out several years ago. The idea of the monthly comic is almost a foreign concept. Marvel, for a time tried to get their circulation on many of their books up to 18 issues a year, but that failed miserably and I was sure it would when they first had that brilliant notion. A few books still try to ship twice monthly once in awhile, but it's become rarer and rarer as most books can't even manage to come out once a month with increasing frequency. Which is a weird concept in and of itself. Books coming out with less frequency is becoming more frequent.
DC has been very good about sticking to their schedules, and solicited stories, getting many things out when said, usually only slipping a week or two at any given time. There are, as always, notable exceptions. The first comics people would think of would likely be the two All-Star books, Superman and Batman, which often seem to be in a contest with Ultimates to see who can have the largest gap between issues.
With DC being so deep into events these days as has been covered in the past, it's integral for many books to ship on time, or else the whole line crumbles like a horrible domino effect of doom. They have gone to great lengths to make sure occurrences are coordinated and everything lines up in any given week.
However, there are a few problems starting to occur. Allan Heinberg's run on Wonder Woman was plagued with horrible delays, to the point where the fifth and final part of the story was actually removed from the schedule, from the book itself, and several fill in issues were done until the new creative team could come along with their own stories. The book is now up to about issue 12, and the story that would have been in issue five has finally been published in the just released Wonder Woman annual.
Over in Superman's self-titled comic, Kurt Busiek's story arc titled Camelot Falls has been plagued with similar delays, having several fill in stories crop up along the way, and the final part which was supposed to come out shortly, got bumped from the next issue, and has also been moved into the annual for that book, coming in several months.
But Superman's trials aren't over yet. A six part storyline in Superman Confidential was about to wrap up, and the final part of that story was bumped for about four or five issues, with other stories.
There are other examples, but that's more than enough to get the idea across.
It's terribly frustrating as a reader to have delay after delay on a book, wait for a conclusion, or even just the next part, and have that yanked out from under you and moved to an indefinite date, never knowing just when it might be released. It undercuts the storyline's momentum, and feels sloppy. The debate lies in whether books should come out monthly, and complete their stories, even if rushed, or have them stuffed in a drawer and plough forward.
Personally, I'd rather do everything possible to keep things monthly. I remember back, not that many years ago, when I could go in and know what books should be there, because they always came out in that particular week. Now, you don't even know if the book will be in there that month, let alone that week. Failing that, I would much prefer to finish up a story and then move on. To yank a story from where it's supposed to be, then toss in fill ins is just annoying. Could you imagine tuning into your favourite program, and the second half of the storyline has been delayed until six months down the road, with other episodes telling other stories that have nothing to do with what the story was involved in before? Aside from the summer breaks, that's just bad planning.
There really is no good solution. Rushed comics, or late comics. Which would you rather see?
Also breaking the monthly grind is Amazing Spider-Man, which is becoming a thrice monthly title later this year. Or early next year, if any more delays come along. It probably should have started by now, but delays in the current stories have kept things from starting off. Frankly, with all the current delays giving the new teams time to get stuff in the bank so to speak, if the first few issues of the Brand New Day direction of Spider-Man are delayed, it will just be downright shameful. It will be interesting to see how long one title with rotating teams coming out so frequently can come out on schedule.
Of course, they went with only three issues a month, so they can still poke fun at DC's attempts at weekly comics, and say &guot;Oooh, we'd never do that!&guot; Comes off as a tad childish, but it's all in good fun, I suppose.
Sadly, these delays rarely affect sales, so things will likely keep on at this pace, since it seems I'm a lonely voice in my frustration over these sorts of things. I'd like to see changes made, and books coming out on time, though. CrossGen could do it, why can't the two big companies?
Jason M. Bourgeois
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