Say what yoiu might about Mike’s writing, but it’s stories do seem to have a steadier pace. Heck, the “Annie” storyline was only 6 weeks! (Too short, I tell you.)
I’m not sure if it’s been answered, but What are Eric Costello’s credentals as a writer and why Mike may have chose him to appearently now be his regular fill in guest writer and not writing as his ghost writer, like Roy Thomas writing the Spider-Man strip for Stan Lee (and only got $300 a month!)
The possibility of Eric taking over is just speculation. Mike is not the first, or last comic strip writer to bring in fill-in writers regardless of reason. As for how Mike and Joe ended up with the strip, those strips were more of an “unsolicited audition” than a “violation of TCA’s copyrights”.
If anything Eric as guest writer out in the open is better than Eric “ghosting” the writing duties as Roy Thomas did for Stan Lee for Decades on the the Spider-Man newspaper strip.
However, the fact the 100th Anniversary of “Little Orphan Annie” being pushed up to earlier in the year (Rather than the Summer for the actual anniversary – which I’ve got a feeling will be reprinted over the summer), followed by the “Croptop” storyline makes me wonder that Mike had those plotted already in advance and we are looking at another Emergency fill in.
Say what yoiu might about Mike’s writing, but it’s stories do seem to have a steadier pace. Heck, the “Annie” storyline was only 6 weeks! (Too short, I tell you.)