You can't have One without the Other

Collaboration can bring in multiple perspectives and opinions to try and produce quality comics. I can see the benefits of collaboration because you can bounce ideas off of your colleagues until one is satisfied with the end product; like we did for the Collaborative Comic project we did. It also brings talented people (e.g. writers and artists) together who otherwise could not have created a comic by themselves. So a writer without the artistic ability can rely on his/her partner to help execute their ideas. And an artist with amazing skills can get inspiration from a person with good ideas and storytelling abilities. For example, I think that Jacque Tardi could have benefitted from having a colleague or friend with the similar concepts and dreams to help him write a better story for his Adele Blanc-Sec.

In a collaboration, it would be ideal if everyone listened to each other to make the best story and art as possible. Sometimes this is difficult because there may be a dominant figure, and other ideas may be looked over. I have yet to see a more equal relationship between comic writer and comic artist. We seem to discuss more about the comic writers rather than the comic artist. Maybe this is due to the fact that storytelling is the most important factor in comics. The comic medium is just another way to tell a narrative, just like a novel or film. The comic artist can help the process of executing these ideas through the interaction between text and image. So are we giving enough credit to the authors? Or maybe we're not? Because some comics have such great images that it would be a shame if they weren't receiving enough credit. I think it is important that the writer and artist have a solid chemistry to be able to produce an awesome story.