TheNextChampion has spent a lot of time in his recent reviews ranting about how lateness affects comics.  While I certainly agree with him that it can be frustrating to feel like you’ve been waiting months and months for an issue to come out, and have it not transform into a robotic dog that does all of your housework as soon as you finish reading it, I can offer a solution: stop reading comics by people who are notoriously late.

Hate waiting?  Don’t spend money on anything written by Grant Morrison or Mark Millar.  They’re going to be late nine times out of ten. It may not be their fault.  Their artist may break his drawing hand, they may come down with a crippling case of gout, but, rest assured, something will happen to push Nemesis #4 and For The Love Of God Someone Pull Bruce Wayne Out Of The Fucken Time Stream Already #5 back another couple of months.  It’s just the way it is.

Personally, I don’t get worked up over books being late.  If I pick up a book and can’t remember what happened, I go back and read the previous issue.  If I don’t love it, then I stop reading the series.  If I do love it, then I’m amped that I’ve not only read one issue of a series I’m enjoying, but now I’ve read two issues in succession.  That’s, like, totally 1/3rd of a trade.

I’m hardcore like that, though.  Shit, I’m enjoying RASL, and Jeff Smith only puts out issues of that every other Leap Year.

I mention this because Flash #5 was a month late.  And it doesn’t matter.  Suuuuuuuure, it’s a little amusing that a book about speedsters is falling behind schedule, but damn, look at that art.  Is the comic coming out on time worth the book looking like this?

Not for me.  If it takes an extra month or two for Johns and Manapul to put out a story, I think it’s worth the wait.  Of course, I read Planetary in issues, so two months doesn’t seem so bad.