Forced Products

I read an interesting forum post this morning that editors and agents tend to stay away from joint-produced graphic narratives as they are usually a forced and contrived final product. This makes sense, but I wonder how skewed this viewpoint actually is? I am a horrible artist, and when I did do the illustrations for my own stories, I felt that they were extremely contrived.

Now, I don't want to take away from what these professionals do, but in my opinion, a good graphic narrative, novel, etc. starts with a good story. The art, of course, should not take away from that story. But for many, the art can make or break the end product. If you have a good story with a good artist backing you up, how can the product not be good? The art needs to complement the story, of course, but a quality artist can do this without problems.

So this brings me back to my original point. Good artwork is definitely a necessity, but do these professionals mean that the "forced" final product an issue with poor art or poor storytelling? If anything, I would think that a good writer, if they are not an extremely talented artist, needs to outsource this position since their own poor renditions of the characters would take away from the final product. Whether this is "forced" or not, it is an important part of putting together the best product possible.