Single-Creator comics v. Collaborator Comics

When I go over my old favorites, I find that a lot of them are very AW-TOOOOOOR - Woodring's stuff, 8Ball, Hate, Cerebus (it may be wrong to do so, but I think of Gerhard more as an art assistant than a true collaborator), L&R, Feiffer, Peanuts, blahblah. But there are enough notable exceptions (mostly revolving around favorite writers) that I can't really take a side. Looking at that list does give me the idea that the auteur guys can sustain a vision for longer - the collaborative exceptions tend to be briefer in duration, more of a limited series thing than an ongoing deal.

My gut says single-creator is the way. I own plenty (probably half or more of my personal collection) of collaborator comics, but I totally agree about sustaining a vision. Much of that is probably because those creators usually get to decide when their series end and their characters live or die. Then again your choice "uncompromised heroic artist vs. cooperative creative synergy", I definitely FEEL the first one more, and I think the latter is relatively rare.

The presence of the writer putting pen to paper to create the images, is not necessarily BETTER but I think it captures something you can't get with a team (notwithstanding the few writer-artists who aren't super-invested in the art part, like early Brian Michael Bendis' photo-referencing). I'm not sure I want to see Paul Pope do art for someone else's story.

Interesting though that it's mostly the American system that created these massive systems to crank out pages and pages of comics every month, necessitating separate colorists, inkers, letterers and so on, but it feels like it isn't that way elsewhere -- like most of Europe (excluding England) and of course, Japan, which seem generally more auteurish with their comics. Then again in Japan there's often tons of uncredited "assistants" who do the bulk of the work, like animators to storyboard.

UK comics used to be person A writes, person B draws, back when there were UK comics. I associate this system with thrill power.

I agree with Oilyrags that there are a lot of good single-auteur comics, but there are a lot of truly great collaborative comics as well.

There's nothing in the essential nature of comics that makes number of creators relevant, so I think the answer to the initial question is "no." Depends on the comic, obv. My favorite comics tend to be those with really strong writers -- Moore, Englehart, Bendis, Rucka, Brubaker -- so my gut might try to tell me multiple-creator comics are the best, but there's no reason why that should be so.

I was thinking about notable single-auteur comics and The Spirit (the original Sunday sections) popped into my head, but even there, my favorite run is the stuff Wally Wood drew at the end.

I don't think it matters. Some comics I read for the art, some I read for the story, some I read for both. In general, I prefer single-creator stuff, but a lot of the best artists out there just don't work that way (and that's often for the best - i.e., Shaolin Cowboy).

hahaha, I LOVE Shaolin Cowboy.