I'm currently highly pissed by lateness in comics.  Sorry, just visited Millarsworld.com for the first time and saw the posting on Ultimates 13 finally being done.  And the way every single post kissed Bryan Hitch's a$$ for the book and not one single post said anything negative about the pathetic shipping schedule of this series.  I know Hitch makes mention of how he has been financally affected by the lateness of the project but that doesn't absolve the issue. I know Newsarama people went nuts on this post (how I wound up at Millarsworld) both for and against late product but to see the suck up work on the Millar board was amazing.  Do the moderators just remove negative posts in situations like that or do people jsut go to Newsarama to complain?  Seemed strange.

When did comics stop being professional.  When did deadlines lose meaning?  And why?  In the multi-billion dollar industry I work in I think all top management at Marvel and DC would have been let go a while ago and a good percentage of writers and artists - 10%+ at least. which is a huge percentage of a company.  Is it when the fans took over the asylum?  Was it the internet and reading the newsgroups?  When did professionalism leave and deadlines become meaningless?

I'm not trying to blame Ultimates for everthing, it's just one of the worst offenders and the one most immediate in my mind because of what I jsut read.  But there are many guilty parties out there.  They're not the majority of the industry but they affect everyone.  The stench gets everywhere from these late stinkers. 

I've watched tens of millions of dollars be lost by companies in my own industry because of missed deadlines.  How much money is the comic industry losing?  In how many years will the comic indusry become too unhealthy to continue to publish paper comics on a monthly basis?  And what will be the true root cause?  It won't be just one thing but I will always blame late product as one of the contributing factors.  And ow do we the consumer fight back to fix this.  In the business world I know and the models I can follow the customer simply takes their business elsewhere because competition drives professionalism and product. 

But as a comics fan I'm like a crack addict - even when stuff if I've been waiting for it I ahve to get it.  And that is why people like me have to take a burden with stuff like this.  And I'll bitch here, but then I'll go and buy Ultimates 13 just like I bought Ultimates 12.  Even though after reading Ultimates 12 my reaction was "this is what I waited for.  It took this long for this."  I'm Marvel's pawn here.  I'm a hypocrit, I can't say know.  I'm what they count on.  A completist comic nerd junky.  And yes, I'll buy Ultimates 2 issue 13.  Because I have to finish what I started. 

But whatever series Bryan Hitch is talking about moving on to - that I just won't start.  It's the only thing I can do to have some influence.  I read 80+ comics a month, I can live without starting another series.  And yes, this can backfire on me and help speed up the decline of monthly books if other people are thinking the same way - but it's going to happen anyway with the current plan, maybe if it happens for this reason someone will re-evaluate the business model.  I don't know.  I just know late books suck for me and I would like to see things change.  And I'm such a stooge to the system the only real way I have to do this is to stop reading new books by serial offenders.  Because serial offenders tend to be some of the mre talented people and if I start I'm hooked.  So to go back to my 80s childhood I just have to say no from the start.  Which sucks for many reasons, not least of which I don't normally pay attention to new creative teams, just the pitch in Previews.  So I don't want to make a mistake.

Not sure why I jsut typed all this.  Maybe becasue if I put it in writing I'll follow through.  Only time will tell.  And maybe I read enouh titles that I should not care when a book is late because I have ther things ot read - but I do.  And consistant, tolerated lateness will destroy this industry.  It might take 15 years (and we're in to that cycle) for it to happen, it won't be overnight, but it will kill something I enjoy so maybe I jsut needed to rant and seeing someone applauded for finally finishing their job put me over the edge.  And I'm not heartless, I understand that being this late was financially difficult for everyone involved on Ultimates 2 - but that should be a reason to do better or do something else.  I'm the customer, I have a right to be dissatisfied and expect different - it's what I live with every day in my own job - I'm not creating a double standard for others.