Btw calling someone idiot b/c he dont like a comic you liked is stupid.
Opinions are like asses everyone have one.

Me, me, me!

Hypertime!

Exactly the trade-off isn’t between “letting” Frank Quitely get by with “just” 8 issues per year versus making Frank Quitely do 12 issues of Batman a year in the parallel universe where that could possibly happen.

There is, however, a possible but as-yet unperformed trade-off between buying the irregularly published Batman book by the top-end team or the other, spot-on monthly cash-cow Batman title by, I dunno, Joe Average and Billy Journeyman. It’s not as if the existence of a regular but thoroughly mediocre Batman comic precludes the very existence of an irregular critics’ choice Batman comic, is it?

But how about this…

Who’s for a new, ‘in-but-out-of-continuity’ Batman title. And when I say that I don’t mean the po-faced grimngritty of Legends of the Dark Knight, the “8-issues in its become interchangable with all the regular titles” of Shadow of the Bat, neither the ‘why was this even published?’ irrelevance of Batman Confidential, but dayglo psychadelic Morrison telling any sort of Batman story he likes. Call it Batman – The Black Casebook. Just crazy-ape shit thats published whenever they finish one. And let it run forever…

Oh yes, it will be “monthly”. Like ASS was “monthly”. Like you get 12 issues in what? 2 and a half years? But who cares? Like everybody above me says, you got to be patient for the good stuff…

Because most good artists require more time than most bad aritsts. It’s not like that’s a choice any of us make. It’s just the way that it’s been proven to work. So, accept how it is and stop complaining that things aren’t ideal. It’s not that big of a deal, really.

And if you’re really stuck on reading the issues in equal periodical succession, buy them in trade.

I keed, I keed

You’re right about the namecalling, the level of antagonism in this thread stopped me from bothering to post anything.

Now who wants to join me in a hearty laugh as we all remember Alan Moore singing the Little Lulu theme song on The Simpsons?

Oh Little Lulu
I love You-lu
Just the same.

(Now there’s a springboard for jokes about child-molesting idiots!)

Am I the only one who thinks that Quitely’s probably only doing the opening story arc?

Who say we can’t have both? Why does it have to be one or the other? If a creator, whoever he or she is, can’t pull off a monthly title, then don’t hire them for that title. I like what they did in the later part of Morrison’s NWM run, having a different artist for each story arc.

This isn’t a problem if it’s a stand-alone title like All Star Superman, but if it’s part of a larger tapestry, it can be a big problem (ie, Astonishing X-men).

To argue that artists who are not Hitch, or Quitely, or whoever should be paid no heed is the comics world’s equivalent of the movie critic who bemoans the existence of the latest shite comedy as if its absence would force everyone to watch nothing but masterpieces.

As someone who does that regularly, that’s just our way of saying ‘Oh my god, you’re all a bunch of fucking morons for liking this, for the love of god, why do you fear substance, and prefer a story told the way a ten year old tells a story, I hope you all die, I hate you’, but y’know, idiots never liked their idiocy pointed out to them, so we blame the people who feed them.

Ideally, the journeyman stuff — which sells, make no mistake — can subsidize the production of the super-quality stuff in the shorter term. Longer term, it might be possible to abandon the direct market and the idea of the monthly 22-page feature in favor of the model used elsewhere in fiction publishing.

But yeah, DC would rather sell 12 Batman issues a year without Frank Quitely, and most comic-store patrons would rather get their fix on time than hold out for artists who take their time to make the quality happen. That’s true in virtually every other medium, too, from TV — the short-season HBO and Showtime stuff makes up the minority of produced TV even though it makes up the majority of critically-acclaimed TV. The majority of what’s produced and the stuff that usually wins in the ratings is the grind of 22 and 24-episode seasons for syndication purposes. (The Sopranos was the big exception to this rule; it creamed network shows regularly despite being on a premium channel.)

Hell, publishers do this too: the romance and legal potboiler divisions are what allow the art novels to be published, just as the summer blockbusters and the Epic Movie sorts of things are part of what what allow studios to gamble on Oscar bait and the arthouse imprint’s production.

The plan isn’t “5 issues of Morrison Quitely OR 12 issues of Morrison Daniels,” or at least it shouldn’t be. The real idea should be “5 issues of Morrison Quitely for the bookstores and the critics, 12 issues of Someguy and Daniels for the accountants and the regular readers.”

It’d be nice if the only things that ever were published were ambitious works with critically-defensible and laudable creators, all of them given all the time they need to finish the work as they would have it done. It’d be wonderful if Mitchell Hurwitz got to run with Arrested Development as long as he liked and the network executives refused to air Two and a Half Men on the grounds that it’s lazy and formulaic crap. But that will simply never happen outside, say, a patronage system.

Arguments about publishing delays, moaning about superheroes dominating the direct market, and whinging about fanboys who put RPG stats and continuity trivia above pure storytelling and masterful technique is the comics world’s version of the devil’s bargain art makes with commerce in every other remotely popular medium. The alternative is to see comics as marginalized and rarefied as the theatre or fine painting in the contemporary world. To argue that artists who are not Hitch, or Quitely, or whoever should be paid no heed is the comics world’s equivalent of the movie critic who bemoans the existence of the latest shite comedy as if its absence would force everyone to watch nothing but masterpieces. More likely, a ciniplex only showing the cream of the crop would mean almost no one besides the critics themselves would go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon, and that only for the few weeks before the ciniplexes closed.

“I just don’t get people who would rather have Tony Daniel monthly than Frank Quitely whenever he damn well pleases.”

I would probably rather have monthly Grant Morrison scripts than 8 Grant Morrison/Quitely comics a year. I suppose that doesn’t really answer your question though.

After all, look what happened to the New X-men with Morrison/Quitely.

I’d blame the editors for that one – it’s like they didn’t know Quietly would be taking his time… despite evidence from his last book The Authority that that’s what he would be doing.
If the editor had planned a little better, like they did by the end of the book, they could have lined up a bunch of artists ready for each arc – meaning you don’t end up with rushed books or destroying Igor Kordey’s career and you get the extra sales spike of a new artist every few issues.

* I eagerly await being called a mistaken idiot by fans of Azzarello. Maybe the next guy can work in something about me molesting children while they’re at it.

You child molesting idiot!!!

Nah, I can get why people didn’t like it – I thought it was ridiculously good, it just fell right apart in those last twenty pages… like dramatically fell apart… like they went ‘oh shit, we’re out of space, time to wrap it up’.
I would’ve liked to have seen more of Azz’s Gotham – maybe a series of OGN’s about Johnny’s rise and eventual fall in the criminal world of Gotham.

I eagerly await being called a mistaken idiot by fans of Azzarello. Maybe the next guy can work in something about me molesting children while they’re at it.

I, too, am no fan of Azzarello, but I do think that he was the right guy to go to if you want to make a comic to appeal to fans of The Dark Knight, especially those who are not comics fans. A misanthropic, cynical and pretentious writer with dreary, depressing stories is the perfect guy to write a comic to appeal to fans of a misanthropic, cynical and pretentious movie with a dreary, depressing story. Kudos to Dan Didio for this creative choice.

Come on. Shouldn’t we wait to see the first issue of Battle For the Cowl before completely slamming on Daniel as a writer? He’s a guy who always at least TRIES to improve his craft

Wait…this was my first exposure to Daniel, are you saying what we got is an IMPROVED Daniel? So you mean he used to be worse and even more amateurish in his pro career? Scary thought…

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Again, though seems to me like Hitch, Jones, Quitely, etc. should be doing OGNs. Then there’d be no question of rushing them, or of fill-ins. Certainly they shouldn’t be put on big crossovers, where books that are done and ready are held back by the publisher if the appropriate crossover-mini issue hasn’t dropped yet.

On the other hand, one has to realize that Quitely (or JG Jones or Bryan Hitch) aren’t going to work at a pace that will allow them to keep up with a monthly deadline. The talent and company should be able to work out a timetable that accomodates both of their needs.

Personally, I’ll wait as long as necessary for quality comics. I remember the gap between issues of The Maxx got longer and longer as the series went on. The last issues of Sandman and Y took longer to come out than expected. Watchmen, Camelot 3000, Dark Knight Returns- they all had long waits between the penultimate and final issues. I don’t like the wait, but imagine Watchmen 12 looking like that last issue of Infinite Crisis, with Pat Broderick and Vince Coletta handling the finale.