yendi

Quote from Joss Whedon on Fray:

"Oh God, I will [finish], I promise, I'm sorry," Whedon said in an interview. "I don't know the date. I think I'm just marginally ahead of the artist on pages, because he went to CrossGen [Comics], and because my life imploded. We both got really behind. I'm so embarrassed about it, but it will only take me a couple of weeks to finish the last issue and a half that I have left to write. Then it's a question of how we can schedule him to do the pages. I really want to get it out. I'm very embarrassed about that. I've known the ending since I've started it. All I have to do is write it down."

You heard that right. He hasn't fucking finished writing the series, and the art is in limbo. This is a fucking eight-issue mini-series, but they couldn't plan for it properly.

Folks, it's things like this that are driving folks away from the industry. It's things like this that are making folks decide to wait for the graphic novels, because we can't rely on companies to produce the issues in a timely manner, and we don't want to wait on a cliffhanger for eight months.

I actually blame the publisher more than I blame Joss. Joss may have time management issues, but Mike Richardson (head of Dark Whore) was the one who decided to solicit the series before it was finished. He's the one who made a judgement call on his freelancers, and decided that they could turn in something in a timely manner, and he was clearly wrong. I don't hold the creators responsible because that's a contract between them and the publisher, but I do think there's an implicit contract between the publishers and me, and too many of them break it.

Next time I hear Joe Quesada or any other pro whine about folks who just wait for the graphic novels, I'm going to whap him upside the head with a copy of The Dark Knight Strikes Again #2, shove a copy of Fray #6 where the sun don't shine, and pick any random issue of Quesada and Smith's Daredevil run to shove down his throat.