Last Blog Post; Does Collaboration Help or Hinder?

As somebody who writes comics on a weekly basis for the Duel Observer, I would usually say that I would prefer that my comics remain unedited by others. However, after reading the Watchmen, and other collaborative comics, I have to say that if your editor or writer is very good, then you have missed a chance. Comics when fully realized have a chance to become an incredibly subtle medium- just as much as movies or literature in the canon. Both movies and literature are a collaborative process: in the first there are actors, directors, film editors, etc., while in the second there are the writer and the writer's group of editors and critiquers. When somebody works alone, it can become easy to be too absorbed in your own work and think that things that are obvious are actually subtle or vice versa. The collaborative process is tried and true for every other form of creative thinking, so why not comics? Perhaps comics often are unedited and under-collaborated simply because the medium can be unwieldly in draft form. Probably, though it's because it can be difficult to match up an artist and a writer who can collaborate enough to really produce a work that encompasses plot, character, subtlety, and more. Artists and writers are creatives that tend to dislike it when their visions are inhibited- and when works fall short, this is often what is happening (disregarding where something goes wrong because one of the collaborators is just not skilled enough).