Fill-in Issues: Good idea or Bad idea?

[HassanT]

DC Comics over the past couple of years have move toward fill-in issues to meet deadlines or give the creative team breathing room. Marvel, on the other hand, would just skip a month and/or publish a one-shot with a different creative team. Which do you prefer?

I prefer the Marvel approach overall. I feel that DC Comics has ruin the momentum on a lot of books with fill-in issues. True, that momentum could also have been ruin by late books, but I feel bad fill-in issues are worse on a book than a late book. People tend to forget late books after the comic comes out while people still remember the bad books because it is still physically in their collection.

I look at Booster Gold and have no idea why Dan Jurgens didn't take over the book right after Johns left? I look at the Brave and the Bold, which is now in fill-in mode. Grant Morrison's run on Batman was interrupted by a horrible fill-in arc. I consider Flash to a permanent fill-in book. Look at Wonder Woman.

Marvel uses one-shots to make up for late books. You can choose to get them or not. In some cases, the one-shots feed into the regular book (Iron Fist) or in the other cases, the one-shot is done by a hot creative team (Matt Fraction on Thor). I like this approach because titles like Iron Fist or Thor would have suffer if they had fill-ins within the regular books.

[Squire]

It really depends on whose doing the fill in issue, and how much I’m enjoying the run. When it’s one of those “day in the life” or “flashback” stories you can see a mile off, I just skip it. But if it’s by the regular writer and may pay off later, like that Prankster story in Busieks Superman run (which I think was a fill in) I’ll pick it up.

[JohnMayo]

I prefer it if they could figure out how to maintain a schedule without having to skip months or have fill-in issues.

[Frank Castle]

I'm with John on this. Stick to a schedule. But I don't mind a creative team doing a one and done story, as long as it is good! I don't like them for the sake of killing time but when they are done well, they can be great little stories.

[BobBretall]

I'm old enough to remember the "Dreaded Deadline Doom!" issues where Marvel would simply reprint some old comic in the middle of a run if they didn't have an issue ready in time. Those books ca,me out monthly come hell or high water.

Did not happen often, but one I remember vividly from my younger days was Avengers #136. Here's a short description, pillaged from MyComicShop.com:

The Avengers series takes a one-issue hiatus from current events to reprint Amazing Adventures (2nd series) issue 12 (with pages two and three omitted). The cover of Avengers 136 was updated to show the "blue" Beast. In the actual story, the Beast is colored gray.