Comics, Creators, and Deadlines

So I'm looking over my advance order for June and I notice that most of the titles to which I subscribe are either a series of mini-series (30 Days of Night), canceled (Deadworld), or pushed back (Dr. Fate). The reason, in every case, is the same: the creative teams simply couldn't meet their deadline.

This is a real sticking point in the industry and one of the major strengths of Dave Sim and Gerhard. Sim is a big "deadline" type of guy and expounds - at length - on the importance of meeting deadlines whenever he gets a chance. And he's right.

I remember drawing my own comics back in highschool and how I obsessed over every little detail in every single frame and never turned a complete one in - not once, ever. Six weeks I'd have to do them (I got at least 2 or 3 chances because my Art teacher was supportive) and by the end of the six weeks, I'd hand in a few completed pages and a slew of layouts, thumbnails, character studies, costume designs, and so forth. Basically nothing.

It's harder to do than you think and when you compound this with the fact that these guys aren't just looking for a good grade, but are actual, working artists who likely have at least one more project going or promised (such as Locke's album cover work for Cannibal Corpse), you start to understand how these things happen.

But there's also the matter of how they go about it. If you are the sole creator or you work very, very closely with a collaborator (and I mean daily - like Sim and Ger), you might be able to swing "jumping right in." If that is not your circumstances, you need to thumbnail and layout the entire comic before you line the first panel!

For the writers in the audience, you know how frustrating it can be to get 10-15 pages into a scene and suddenly realize you can't use it (you were going according to an incorrect detail - such as setting it at the character's birthday party after you specifically mentioned she refused to celebrate birthdays in the opening chapter, for example - or the scene simply doesn't fit into the overall story, or maybe it ended up killing all the tension and forward motion you'd striven to achieve up to then). Now imagine getting even 2-3 pages ahead in a comic and realizing you can't use them - or having the writer change the entire scene! A decent writer can churn out those 10-15 pages in a day; even the most prolific of artists likely couldn't finish 3 comics pages in a day (completely, I mean - layouts, pencils, dialogue balloons, inks).

Some of The Big Boys will say that they sometimes work page to page, but firstly, they're real professionals - meaning they eat, drink, breathe, and sleep the industry - and secondly, they've been doing this stuff for years. But even amongst them, most will tell you to layout and thumbnail the entire book before you even start to sketch the first splash. Even with the internet and fax machines, the slightest little misstep can cost days of work. It took Moore and Bolland something like 3 years to do Killing Joke, IIRC, and that was only 72 pages (or around-about)!

So, at least I've got a positive amount on the account...