Fill-In Artists

It can be hard to publish comic books on a monthly basis when the artist involved is extremely meticulous about his work. When confronted with this kind of problem the publisher has either two options: delay the release of the latest issue, or replace the artist with someone else.

Much ado is being made of the fact that comic books these days are late, whether by a week or by six months, more often than not on account of the artist taking a long time to draw the book.

I, for one, am grateful to Joe Quesada for deciding not to go with fill-in artists, even if it means making the fans wait and possibly risking sales dropoffs. This is not me talking as a Marvel Zombie, but rather as someone who has been burned a few times in my collecting "career" by stories not finished by the artists who started them.

I'm not really peeved by the notion of one artist finishing the art that another one started. I'm not a purist like Jeph Loeb who declares he wouldn't enjoy Civil War if Marvel replaced Steve McNiven with an equally high-profile artist such as Mike Turner. What bothers me is the fact that fill-in artists are almost invariably inferior to those they replace. One never sees an A-lister pinch-hitting for another A-lister. You will never see Jim Lee stand in for Joe Quesada, or Lienil Francis Yu step up for Bryan Hitch. Why should they, when the company would be so much better off having them work full-time on their own titles?

I guess the best way to illustrate (pardon the pun) my point would be to cite the two most irritating examples of how my enjoying a story is utterly ruined by a fill-in artist:

1. From 1999 to 2001, Joe Quesada trudged through his final six issue story arc on Daredevil. The book shipped late on a regular basis, and at one point he had to put in a fill-in issue which wasn't really part of the story but rather a parallel to the main story going on. One would think that this meant that, by hook or by crook, Quesada intended to finish this story. Alas, it was not to be, as Quesada was appointed Editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, and the resulting workload just proved too much for him to cope with at the time. He handed the artistic reins over to the extremely mediocre David Ross, whose work I have not seen since and am none the worse for it. Although David Mack's "Echo" storyline wasn't what I would call groundbreaking, it was certainly enjoyable and did boast some impressive action sequences, which Joe rendered with a lot of flair. Ross, who was so obviously a last-minute replacement for Joey Q, captured none of it in the one-and-a-half issues he drew. To Marvel's credit, they had the same inker and colorist work over Ross' pencils to try to ensure some sense of continuity in the art, but they just couldn't save an inferior product. It gratified me, years later, when Joe Quesada did his Daredevil: Father series from start to finish, even though it took him over two years to finish six issues.

2. Easily the worst, most insulting fill-in, that I have ever seen in my nearly twenty years as a comic book collector, is the replacement of one of my one-time favorite artists, Arthur Adams, on Mark Millar's final story arc of The Authority, back in 2001. Back then, I did not know much about Millar, much less that he would pretty soon write some of my favorite Marvel stories ever. I only picked up issues #27 and #28 of The Authority for one reason: Art Adams' pencils. The guy had been a favorite of mine since childhood, and I figured that, given Wildstorm's track record of letting artists take their time with their pencils, I was in for a real treat. Sure enough, these issues did not disappoint, and I daresay that Adams turned in some of his best work since 1985's Longshot, especially with the able assistance of inkers like Tim Townsend. Disaster struck, however, when for one reason or another Adams did not complete the three-issue storyarc, which instead was finished off by a British artist named Gary Erskine, whose art seems like that of a poor man's Steve Dillon. Now, I understand there are people out there who appreciate the guy's art, but it felt like an affront to tail-end what was shaping up to be some of Art Adams' best work ever with the work of someone who was nowhere near where he was in terms of sheer talent. It affected the story, too, which essentially touched on how G7 took down the Authority for questioning the way they ran the world, and how the Authority fought back. Swift, the winged member of the Authority, was brainwashed and then humiliated and paraded around as the trophy wife of a really evil G7 autocrat. Adams' rendition of this thoroughly evil character, while somewhat caricatured (like Millar's writing) was nonetheless wonderfully effective. I wanted this guy to die, and I got the hint that he would from a look on Swift's face towards the end of issue #28. In issue #29, however, when Swift chucked the guy's severed head on the floor, he basically didn't look anything like the villain Adams drew. Imagine the makers of Die Hard replacing the pitch-perfect Alan Rickman with another, inferior actor during the close-up scene where he's plummeting from the L.A. skyscraper to his death, and you will have some idea of how cheated I felt. Suffice it to say, I didn't buy this piece of shit, and to this day, I only have parts 1 and 2 of Mark Millar's final work for Wildstorm.

There are some other annoying examples, like Ron Lim replacing George Perez on Infinity Gauntlet, and Tom Raney replacing Steve McNiven on Ultimate Secret (from which Marvel has apparently learned its lesson: what Steve starts, he must finish), but the bottom line remains the same: fill-ins suck. Having two A-listers collaborate on a book from the beginning is not a bad idea, but it almost never works out that way, and I, for one, would really rather wait for the complete work of the artist I paid to see rather than an invariably lesser artist just tying up loose ends.

So whether it's Civil War or this Batman miniseries Art Adams is supposedly drawing for Jeph Loeb, or the sequel to Marvels that Jay Anacleto is drawing, I say to Marvel and DC, let these guys work at the pace they're comfortable with, don't breathe down their necks, and most importantly, don't replace them, because ultimately it's the work, and the fans who read it, that suffer the most.