What Is The Least Popular Mainstream Book That Is Consistently Late?

There was a period in Cerebus in the issue #85-90-ish range where they got sloppy with schedules--there was a gap of two and a half months between issues at one point... and then Cerebus went biweekly for a few months until Sim and Gerhard got caught up with their originally scheduled ship dates. I'd like to see Miller and Lee try that...

The best thing the "you don't get to be late NOHOW" mentality ever gave us: Howard the Duck #16, still my favorite issue of the series.

Miller & Lee on uppers and various narcotics is a great image, but the results, I bet, would border on the nauseating.

In fact ISTR Newsarama or someone asking DC when they announced Wonder Woman, "Oh, Heinberg's writing it, this is going to be really late all the time right?" and DC saying, "No no no, don't worry, he's a reformed character."

I wouldn't (if it meant no more BUTTBAT).

The only reason I got interested was the inclusion of a YA preview in some Previews catalog a few months prior to the issue hitting stands. And, yeah, it was enjoyable and generic, but emphasis on enjoyable, so THE HOOK sinks in. Then dude starts to get all late w/ crap, gets "promoted" within the TV industry to The Hottest Show, and now it's a matter of the fans wondering WTF while his comic employers are making excuses and hoping he deigns to bless fans w/ a finished storyline within the next calendar year. And nowadays, w/ non-comic folks seemingly de rigeur, it seems that just announcing that the creator The Nine is attached to a 3-D Man graphic novel is enough to make the company feel they're hyping the product.

I wonder if attaching Heinberg or any of the Lost folks to projects actually gained the companies any traction outside of the usual comic spheres? Getting a writer from Law & Order would possibly appeal to non-comic fans, except the only folks that probably care about who wrote what, and would follow that writer, are the geeky sorts that are already into comics. And, of course, attaching a writer from Lost, for example, on a mini-series that serves as a small part of a continuity-laden B-star cosmic event, or a mini-series featuring alternate versions of well-known characters, isn't the way to gain that outer-market traction (if that's even the goal). It's like they're hiring non-comic writers to make superhero comic fans feel better about being part of this industry, to break out of the "good old boys network" feel of the Big 2.

Don't mind my rampant generalizations.

Similarly, is Richard Donner on Action actually a Big Deal in the way DC want it to be? Though they've sensibly set it up so he can dictate the plot while Geoff gives him a backrub, so lateness won't be an issue.

(Latest trend seems to be fantasy novelists - Tad Williams on Aquaman)

I think the thing Marvel and DC have to learn is that while poaching writers from television is not a bad idea, it is very ridiculous to hire writers who are currently serving as staff writers (or in the case of Damon Lindelof showrunner!) of hit series. Writing for television is a full-time gig, and you can't possibly expect any of these people to have enough time to meet regular comics deadlines. Look at what it did to Geoff Johns -- that guy totally bit off more than he could chew with three or four regular series (including 52, which is actually like two books per month given its workload) and the Blade series and whatever else he's got going on, and he's behind on pretty much everything.

[xpost]

I don't think they hired him @ the same time - it just turned out that AH's lateness on YA caused the end of his Marvel tenure to overlap w/ the start of his DC tenure.

- staking its reputation on a really brutal schedule and not even a week's lateness.
- written by a committee (even tho it's a committee of 'big names')
- drawn by any bum they can get in off the street, judging by last issue's space scenes.
- not even top-drawer characters

And it's doing 100k+ an issue.

The funny thing is that all four of the writers on 52 are waaaaay behind on everything else, but yet they still manage to get 52 in the shops every week. They aren't even that far ahead of schedule in terms of production, they just have a lot riding on making sure that it's weekly.

It's pretty decent, but I found it, from the one issue I've read, to be clearly the work of someone who doesn't have complete confidence in letting the images carry all the weight they should.