It's a mixture of fans and pros fault. These days artists,not all but a growing number,are so focused on the detail of their art that they don't get much done.Editorial doesn't want to upset the artist,so they allow lateness if the artist is popular enough. There's also the fan reaction that sends mixed signals to the industry heads. Fans hate late books,but they also don't care for fill-in artists or an inventory book that interupts the story arc. For example,when Phil Jimenez couldn't keep up with the schedule for Infinite Crisis,DC tapped other artists to jump in to keep the series on schedule.Fans bitched. Marvel,having taken notice of that,publishes Civil War and when Steve McNiven got behind,they opted to have the book come out late then use another artist.Guess what? Fans bitched. It's the no-win scenario in those cases. Also,fans don't want multiple artists on their books generally. I remember a few books w/artist credited as Deodato Studios...bascially artists that draw like Mike Deodato Jr...which tells you nothing as to who they are and doesn't sell the book.Most of the time,fans like one single artist on a book. Now sometimes you'll see a book split between two artists and two inkers and it works. The current World's Finest book that split the art between George Perez and Kevin Maguire for a time,looked pretty good together. I'm not saying that the approach of animation-style producing for a comic is invalid,but I doubt you'll see that kind of model used in producing a comic as the norm anytime soon.
It used to be that a monthly title that was late was pretty rare whether it was due to a more stern hand by editorial or artists were more professional in their commitments or a mixture of the two,I have no idea,but for whatever the reason,a good practice these days would be to give an artist that has deadline issues a healthy lead-in time to have a few issues in the can before solicts. Marvel has been currently using the rotating creator method to keep certain titles on schedule. Of course,they've had some insane shipping issues. You had Iron Man out three weeks in a row. Superior Spider-Man,two weeks in a row or more instead of twice a month. Now that's just plain confusing to readers and also puts a hurt on the wallet if you get these titles. It seems to be righting itself at the moment but who klnows.
