All that, and all the news this week is DC related and I don't read much of anything of theirs. Oh well, might as well enjoy the bank holiday with some beers with my brother.

Wasn't there a LOT of people who said they'd drop the title because of that shite?

Seriously, that's how a book like ASTRO CITY lost me early on. Kurt Busiek would whine about how tough it was to get the book out...how it was such a labor of love and it took so much time and thought...but, gee, funny thing: he had no problem meeting any of his Marvel deadlines (and collecting royalties off those babies) to make sure he had his mortgage check or whatever. And every time I'd go looking for ASTRO, I couldn't find it -- but damned if I couldn't find Busiek writing yet another Marvel project or new miniseries. And I HATE that about modern comics. As a long time fan, I fucking HATE when creators try to hide behind the now groan-inducing"I'm making art here!" excuse, when the truth is they suddenly get a bit hot... the phone starts to ring... they then take on too much work... they then spread themselves too thin... deadlines don't get met... and worst of all BECAUSE they took on too much work, the actual quality of the books now suffer too.

Personally, DC lost me with the whole 52 stunt. "Hey, buy this for 52 weeks! We flashed forward and now we'll retroactively fill you in. Uh...you just have to give us your money weekly so we can make even MORE money now." So you get suckered in and THEN you get to the end, at which point the official line suddenly becomes "What's that? Did we say we'd fill you in after 52 weeks? Oops. Our bad because NOW you're gonna have to buy this OTHER shit off to the side TOO in order to get the whole story." That's when I said DC could kiss my ass and not count on my wallet anymore. That was just ridiculous.

Sorry to be so cranky, but I'm old enough to remember when Roy Thomas and Neal Adams (with a final issue by John Buscema) managed to tell the original great Kree-Skrull War story in Avengers 93-97 and STILL make it epic. What's with these guys today that it takes 52 weeks...a whole year...to get a damn story across? Oh, that's right, I forgot. Everyone thinks they're the next big FILMMAKER, so we get "storyboard comics" where the writer/artist think repeated panels where all that happens is the camera stays locked on a face (for example) and all that moves are the character's eyes or something like that to (supposedly) convey the emotion of the moment. In the meantime, in the glorious Lee & Kirby days, they'd get the same damn point across in one simple panel!

The second major problem is ret-conning. How can I ever find anything interesting or invest any sort of interest in these stories if you're just gonna shake the Etch-A-Sketch every year and start fresh, if anytime someone "dies" it's only until sales lag enough to bring that character back. The shameful Spider-Man fiasco makes everything that came before moot. It's like ending a story with "But it was all just a dream...." PEOPLE HATE THAT! Cripes. I am still pissed off from when they brought Jean Grey back from the dead the first time--telling me the original Dark Phoenix Saga, widely considered some of the finest comics ever, was all for nothing because it wasn't really Jean the whole time anyway, that she had been frozen underwater for the past few years or some other stupid nonsense. Arrrgh.

But someone mentioned earlier in the TB that comics are serial in nature.

A few eeks is one thing, but when books are months late you lose the suspense (e.g. Runaways) and if you are like most collectors and read more than one title, when the late issue you comes out you have to go back and reread the past issues.

Publishing houses need to kick open the doors and bring in new talent istead of having teh same 12 superstars create books.