Coming from a more European market, where people have a year to do a piece of art, sometimes I'm like, why do we have to go so fast? Or, why can we not discuss a project that is going to happen in two years so I will have the time to do it all? But that's not how the [American] market works. There is a polarity with comics, as compared to the European graphic novel, is that a comic is a literature form, an art form but also it is a magazine that must support ads. It's always the question of, "Do we satisfy the needs of the retailer and the folks that have a product to sell?"
They have the public; they need a product to sell. Or do we instead favor the long-term sale of the book, because all the great successes of the past five or six years are books that were notoriously late. Books like "Ultimates" and "All-Star Superman." You don't want to have "Ultimates" #9, drawn by some joker that we've never heard of. You want all of it being done by [Bryan] Hitch. And then you get a beautiful book. It's the same with [Frank] Quitely. You don't want Quitely not doing one of those issues. What's the point? Now, you have a beautiful book that can sell for 10, 14 million years. Just imagine "Watchmen" #3, because Gibbons was a bit late, was drawn by some dude in two weeks. You don't want that, but that's a long-term thing and the long-term is not always the agenda -- but I wish it would be, more often.
