Multiple Custom Sidebars "Best Practice"

Hello!

I am working on a site that has many child elements under parent elements. The parent element (Comics) has template. Each child element (Superman, Spiderman,etc…) has a top section of the sidebar that is specific to that comic series. I use custom fields to dynamically fill the template with content for each comic but the area I am not sure about is the best practice on customizing the sidebar. I know there are a number of ways to do this. Easiest would be to just have a template for each comic (i.e. superman, spiderman,etc) that calls a specific custom sidebar. But that would mean I have to create a lot of different templates.

I know I can also add conditional statement to the sidebar so it displays correct information.

My question is:

Is it better to have a separate template for each comic or to have one template and a really long conditional statement in the sidebar that has to load on every page?

Or does it matter?? Want to set up in most efficient manner for WordPress.

Thanks in advance for your time.
sandra ??