I kind of agree, in that I think event books are a plague on the industry - partly because they derail so many series and spawn so many really crap tie-ins, but most because it means that really significant stories never happen in the characters' own books any more. OTOH, I completely disagree about the editing thing - in the 70s, there were some truly terrible books put out under the writer-editor combination - and most writers need good editorial oversight, and Kirby is a classic example of someone who desperately needed an editor when he was writing. The problem now is I'm not sure what the editors at the big 2 do, but most of the time they're not in position because they're the most experienced writer around, they've leveled up from office assistant etc through the ranks*, compared to someone like Shooter or Goodwin, who knew the mechanics of storytelling inside out.


(* at risk of derailing the thread, the same is true in politics - people come into politics having never done anything "real" in their lives - they've just been SPADs or political gofers)