Is it Worth the Wait?

Jon did a blog last week talking about All Star Batman and how he doesn't mind the delay. I for one disagree. While I love Frank Miller's writing, I think I could make do without Jim Lee's art. Everyone talks about how good he is, and yes, he is good, but there is a limit to that. Same with people like Brian Hitch and John Cassidy. Hitch is awesome, but I won't buy something just because he is doing the art. I might buy the trade after he eventually finishes it though. He just takes too long. Look, the guy has done three comics in recent memory, The Authority, where he really made his name, a brief stint on JLA, and The Ultimates 1 & 2. But that's in something like ten years! I do make exception for Cassidy, but he's been getting Astonishing out with some pretty good regularity lately, so he might not count. I know Planetary has been waiting on Ellis to finish writing them for most of the series, so you can't really get on Cassidy about that.

So while this was an exceptional story, almost felt like I was reading the Crime Syndicate, would I be happy with one issue a year? No, not at all. You've got to realize the double standard being employed here, if anyone else had taken this long to deliver a Batman book of this importance, they would never work in comics again. But because they are who they are, no one cares. I remember two years ago at the Baltimore retailers convention the top industry brass said they would start having story arcs completed before they started publishing them. This was mostly Marvel, at the time they still had Daredevil:Father and Spider-Man/Black Cat unfinished after a year or more. As well as Daredevil/Bullseye, which they never even bothered to finish. And if you notice, Kevin Smith doesn't work in comics anymore. Though Joe Quesda continues to run Marvel.

-Dan

PS. The awesome image here is another great free DC wallpaper that can be found at DC's website.