Life & Wisdom Quote by Mark Millar

A wry admission from a veteran of serialized storytelling, the line captures the mismatch between creative intention and production reality. Artists set out eager to deliver on time, to hit the monthly grind, to keep the story flowing for readers who expect punctuality. Then the drawing begins, and a page that seemed like a day’s work becomes three: the architecture needs reference, the crowd scene keeps growing, the lighting calls for revisions, and the tiny gestures that sell emotion demand ten more passes. The very standards that make the work special are the reason it takes longer.

Psychologists call it the planning fallacy, but in comics and other arts it is compounded by the invisibility of craft. So much labor is intellectual and iterative, governed by taste rather than a binary right-or-wrong. Ambition quietly expands scope; one gorgeous panel sets a bar that every page must meet. Good intentions do not speed up anatomy, perspective, or storytelling clarity, and they certainly do not speed up excellence.

Mark Millar speaks from the trenches. His biggest hits have paired him with artists whose lush detail and cinematic staging reshaped mainstream comics and also blew up schedules. Ultimates, Civil War, and his creator-owned books with Bryan Hitch, Steve McNiven, and Frank Quitely are case studies in how quality and time can be at odds. Millar eventually adapted by stockpiling issues before solicits, an acknowledgment that the calendar must bend to the work if readers are not to be punished for ambition.

The line is not an indictment but a call for humility in planning and compassion in collaboration. Editors must build buffers; writers must script with the artist’s strengths and bandwidth in mind; artists must budget energy as carefully as panels. The deeper lesson stretches beyond comics: creativity is slower because it asks for judgment, discovery, and revision. Time is part of the medium, and optimism alone cannot compress it.