Hello Gail, sorry to bother you, I just wanted to take a quick minute to ask you about your thoughts on lazy editing. By this, I mean editors letting a book out with things like easy to spot typos. I just finished reading Batwoman #0, and it twice mentione

Well…truthfully, there just AREN’T many ‘lazy editors,’ as far as I can see. I haven’t had any, certainly. Editing is more than just checking copy, it’s a huge, complex juggling act and if one of the jugglers, say, me, is late, the editor has to juggle even harder. They check art, they keep artists working, they approve sketches and outlines and springboards and layouts and solicits and lettering and coloring and they have to keep late writers on deadline and they have to be the voice of mediation between the publishers and the creators and they have deal with office politics nonsense and they have to coordinate crossovers and that’s really just the start. It’s a difficult, difficult, and uncertain job, and most are underpaid and EVERYONE has a complaint and the editor gets blamed for all of it.

Sometimes the writer is late, so the artist is late, so the lettering is done at the very last minute. When that happens, the editor gets blamed for the mistakes because they’re the editor…but when has a writer ever came forward and said, that was my fault, I typed it wrong and made the issue late?

I get depressed by typos and errors in comics as much as anyone, but I have never yet met a lazy editor.