If you're referring to me, I said they have pushed me one step further to leaving. When series 9 comes out should I be excited or should I be a little gun shy? If you look forward to going to an expensive restaurant and have a bad experience more than once do you go back? I don't.......
Being gun shy understandable. I don't look to the sketches as much as you do. I've kept up with the thread, and while I still think some of what I'm reading is over-the-top, there are a lot of reasonable points being made.
It's not going to be a simple fix, as there's always going to be the least-best sketch artist in a series. And it's not math. As Neil pointed out, doing the sketches for him is an organic process. You also can't have every sketch come under a strict approval process (at least I don't think you can). It would seem that the artists will need to get a sense of what is required, broadly. Not every sketch needs to be a finished piece, but if it's loose piece after loose piece, that's not enough.
I'd also suspect that what constitutes a "color sketch" could be reviewed... Again based on what I've read here. Does a blob of one color filling in a white space constitute a color sketch? Should it?
I think this is tough because sketching and art is so damned individualistic. But again, I appreciate the points that have been made. I definitely have come around to considering this issue in a way I hadn't before. I hope that Topps can find a way to address everyone's concerns.