Here's the quote heard 'round the internet today, from comics writer/novelist Neil Gaiman. Specifically, he was responding to a fan of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, but just substitute Martin's name with John Cassaday or J.G. Jones and Song of Ice and Fire with Planetary or Final Crisis, and you'll see where I'm going with this.

The fan wanted to know if it was unrealistic "to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down, even though if and when the book gets written is completely up to him?"

Gaiman sums it up pretty succinctly: "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch," The Sandman creator said. "This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now."

This reminded me of a post I did last year -- it was a post about an upcoming comics convention, and one of the guests was Final Crisis artist J.G. Jones. One of the fine folks in the comments section pointed out that Final Crisis was late, and they were shocked Jones would take a weekend off to go to a convention instead of staying home to work on the book. Never mind that Jones going to a convention isn't exactly him blowing off and screwing around; in his case, it's actually work, and second, it's the weekend, two days that many, many other people in the country don't actually work.

Anyway, go check out Gaiman's full post; sometimes it's good to be reminded that comics, books and other forms of entertainment we all enjoy aren't being created by machines.