Well, Lee, Kirby, Ditko - their prime work came before I was born, but I picked up back issues and reprints from the 70's through the 90's until I had the majority of their work. Lee's on my list, Ditko's close. Hell, my number one pick, John Romita Sr had his peak before I was born and before I started buying comics. I caught up on his work because I loved what I saw in back issues and reprints.

It shouldn't matter when an artist or writer did their work, what should matter is how good the work was. Sometimes it's harder to view dated work by the standards of the day (Lee's scripts are dated, but way ahead of what DC was doing at the same time), but even so, great work is timeless.

That's just me, though. I love classic movies, radio shows, and TV shows from before I was born, so I've always had a real appreciation for the classics.

I loved the Far Side growing up as a kid and still enjoy it today. Though I went through an entire daily calendar of it last year which took some of the bloom off the rose, so to speak. It wasn't quite as funny as I remembered it. Funny how that works.

That being said, Larson doesn't quite make the cut for me.

It's a daily gag strip.

They can't all be zingers.

We tend to remember the 10 percent or so that were really funny and forget about the other 90%.

Day Twenty-One Response and Wrap—Up

I love Gary Larson’s humor and his art is perfect for this type of gag panel art. He’d make the ‘strip’ list for sure. And if I really thought about what creators have impacted my life most, he might have to be on it. Sharing his work with friends was a huge part of my social life for years, and I still laugh when I stumble on his work or dig out the books. But I’m cheating and not counting strip guys here.

I’m sadly negligent in exploring classic strips. I love the bits of Krazy Kat I’ve seen, and imagine I’ll sing Herriman’s praises someday.

Similar comments with Foster and Raymond. Love their style and like the few strips I’ve read over the years, but I’ve never dived in and read a full storyline. Mean to, just mountains of unread books that never seem to dwindle.

Walt Kelly I’ve explored much more of, and love his work. I’ve been accumulating the Pogo reprints and some of his other work. I haven’t read enough of it yet to put him in my top ten, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be in my top ten someday. The few full comics I’ve read of his are wonderful, and I’m thinking the strip may end up rivaling Calvin and Hobbes as my favorite.

But no additions to my list for now.
Frank Miller
Jack Kirby
Carl Barks
Alan Moore
Mike Mignola
Jeff Lemire
Bernie Wrightson
Matt Wagner

Day Twenty-Two Choices

Today we’re talking Valiant. Creators some were probably introduced to via Valiant.

Today I ask you if Joe Quesada, Barry Windsor-Smith, David Lapham, Jim Shooter, Tim Truman, or Bob Layton are on your list.

This also allows me to add Matt Kindt and Jim Lee (for that shitty Hard Corps cover) and I will even go to flyover incarnations and offer you up Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid. Waid is probably most famous in comics for co-creating Doctor Tomorrow.

Hell you might be a Jimmy Palmiotti guy if you like Harley and Hex idk.

Are any Valiant alumni on your list?

I'm playing catch up since taking the weekend off.

Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library and later works (Jimmy Corrigan, Building Stories, & Rusty Brown) are some of my favorite comics ever. I'm putting him at number 11. Dan Clowes I don't connect with as much. I recognize his talent but it doesn't speak to me the same way Ware and the Hernandez bros do. Same with Panter.

Otomo's Akira and Domo and Memories are all amazing works but I can't push him into the top 10. Close but no cigar.

Stan Lee is another face on the Mount Rushmore of Comics so an obvious slam dunk.

Matt Wagner -- another close one as I remember the feeling I got when reading Mage and Grendel in the 80s. Those were good times. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is an amazing talent but doesn't break the top 10. Man, writers have it tough on my list as Jonathan Hickman and Rick Remender who have both done some great comics just don't break into the heights. Simon Bisley is another great that doesn't make the cut.

My new Top 10:
1. Jack Kirby
2. Frank Miller
3-4. Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez
5. Joe Kubert
6. Alan Moore
7. John Byrne
8. George Perez
9. Steve Ditko
10. Stan Lee

I was further behind than I thought. I missed the following:

Gary Larson, George Herriman, Hal Foster, Walt Kelly, or Alex Raymond - all no's for me. The only pure comic strip guy I can think of that comes close to Top 10 for me is probably Chester Gould.

Joe Quesada, Barry Windsor-Smith, David Lapham, Jim Shooter, Tim Truman, or Bob Layton - all no's again but some are top 20:

• Conan is still one of my favorites and it's due to two artists, Frank Frazetta and BWS. I just read his aborted Storyteller series from Dark Horse which has been sitting on the shelf for years and loved every issue. What an amazing talent.
• Dave Lapham's Stray Bullets is a great series and his writing on other books hasn't been bad.
• Tim Truman is another favorite. Reading Scout in the 80s was a blast. I probably own 95% of the books he's drawn (I'm assuming I missed something along the way) and love it all (Grimjack, Starslayer, Spider, Simon Girty, Tecumseh, Hawkworld, Jonah Hex, and more). And his writing on Conan was fun too. I can't knock off any of the 10 so Truman's going to be #12.
• Shooter was never that great of a writer (Secret Wars 2 anybody?) and Bob Layton was a great talent on Iron Man but both are a no for me.

Matt Kindt & Jim Lee are easy nos for me. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid have both written some great stuff but suffer from the writer's curse in my list where only Alan Moore and Stan Lee make the cut. Jimmy Palmiotti's Jonah Hex run was great and he's a good inker, but not worthy of top 10.

And now I'm caught up.

Wow. That's a lot to parse through. Didn't expect Jim Lee to pop up in a Valiant discussion, but here we are. Lee is unequivocally on my list. X-Men #1 came out when I was 11. Of course he was my hero. His X-Men v.2 run was like my Bible growing up. I wasn't cognizant of the business side of comics back then, so I had no idea what Image was or that Lee wasn't going to come back to X-Men. It was probably 6 months to a year after he left that I stumbled across an issue of Wildcats on the news stand. I was immediately an Image kid. After Wildcats he didn't really do any long runs. I drifted away from comics for a while, but every so often would check in on what he was doing. That's when I discovered he had come back to penciling full-time on Batman! Hush is what got me back into comics and jump-started my most prolific period of collecting/reading. His follow-up run on Superman wasn't quite as exciting and I haven't really read much of what he's done since. From what little I've seen of it, I don't really care for how his style has evolved. That said, he's done a lot of commissions and sketches over the last couple of years and seeing him ink himself is pretty exciting. He gives his pencils a completely different look from what Scott Williams (his longtime collaborator) usually delivers. I'm sure we'll never see that on a regular book, but I guess you never know.

As for all of the other guys, they're all going to be no. I love Layton as an inker, but Valiant is a bit of a blindspot, so his contributions there are lost on me. Shooter was editor at Marvel during a truly glorious time, (although he kind of killed it with Secret Wars nonsense), but I don't have much of an opinion on him as a writer. Windsor-Smith is amazing, but none of his work is amongst my favorites. Matt Kindt is a guy who I've grown to love, but who doesn't quite make it yet. I haven't read his Valiant work, but his stuff for Dark Horse is awesome. Pastaways getting cut short is one of my more recent comic heartbreaks. Waid and Busiek are as reliable as they come and both have delivered great, great work. Busiek gets a bit of a knock because, as the legend goes, he's the man responsible for Jean Grey's resurrection in the lead up to X-Factor and X-Factor sucks. I love Marvel Knights Daredevil, so Quesada gets some points there, but otherwise not a huge fan. Lapham I have no opinion on. My mind's drawing a blank on Truman.

Current list:
Frank Miller (He's probably going to have to come off. He's only on there because I was initially non-committal and Trevor declared him to be on my list. Since I play by the rules, I kept him on!)
Jack Kirby
Alan Moore
John Byrne
Chris Claremont
Brian K. Vaughan
Ed Brubaker
Geoff Johns
Jim Lee

Today's list gets into some creators I have to think very deeply about, mainly Shooter, Busiek, Waid, and Lee. The others I appreciate but I don't think they make it, except Quesada, I can't separate him from his editorial decisions and for his art alone I don't see how he can make anyone's list.

As far as comic strip guys, while I love Larson I don't think anyone else will make my list if Breathed and Watterson didn't.

On a side note I'm reading the Infinity Gauntlet omnibus with my son and man I kind of forgot how much I loved Starlin. Even the very comic-book way he introduced Thanos's love affair with Death and his quest to kill off 50% of the population is just way way before its time. I might have to reconsider him too.

Fun fact (to me anyhow): I read and collected Valiant comics starting from Magnus #1, had every issue of their first 2.5 years, even a "Gold" variant of Archer & Armstrong #0. Then in July 1993 I sold the lot of them at the height of the collector bubble for several hundred dollars and spent two weeks with a cute blonde in Chicago. Literally weeks later the value of those comics plummeted. No regerts.

Anyway these are ones I feel like talking about:

Quesada - No.

BWS - big fan, loved his work, but not Top 10.

Jim Shooter - whatever people may think of the person, as a creator he was amazing. His DC work on Legion of Super Heroes (as a teen!) was deeply influential to that book. Then Marvel's Avengers, his EiC tenure, early Valiant and Defiant, I was a fan of all that stuff. I bumped Claremont to put him on my Top 10, but then he was immediately bumped off by the below.

Bob Layton - biggest honorable mention ever, because his 80s Iron Man run is probably my favorite ongoing comics run of all time. That book was religion to me. I liked his Valiant work as well, but I'm not much familiar with anything outside of that.

Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek are two of my favorite writers. Their work on DC, Marvel, Valiant, Boom, everywhere... man. Waid's Flash was ICONIC -- he basically redefined the character and created the Speed Force. And Kingdom Come. And Fantastic Four and Captain America and god knows what else. Busiek's Avengers and Superman were so good, but Marvels, JLA/Avengers, and Astro City? Come on! Both are worthy of my Top Ten. And because they were more representative of my favorite books than Lee and Kirby (who I love and respect), both are going into my Top 10.

Jim Lee - A fantastic artist, don't get me wrong, and probably the best of the early Image creators, but still a bit to "pinup-y" for me.

My Top Ten:
Kurt Busiek
John Byrne
Garth Ennis
Neil Gaiman
Jack Kirby
Frank Miller
Alan Moore
Grant Morrison
George Perez
Mark Waid

Honorable Mentions:
Chris Claremont
Darwyn Cooke
Jose Luis Garcia Lopez
Geoff Johns
Keith Giffen
Bob Layton
Stan Lee
Jim Shooter
Walt Simonson
Marv Wolfman

Joe Quesada, Barry Windsor-Smith, David Lapham, Jim Shooter, Tim Truman, or Bob Layton. Matt Kindt and Jim Lee. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid. Jimmy Palmiotti.

No.

I've never been a fan of Barry Windsor-Smith. I'm not a fan of his style, although he did what he did very well. Jim Shooter, it's hard for me to separate the creator from the Editor in Chief who really pushed for blander, more generic comics (of which Spider-Man and the Avengers both suffered shortly after issue 200 of both series), so, No. Quesada, Lapham, Truman, Kindt, Palmiotti? Not familiar with them at all. Jim Lee? Good artist, not great. So, no.

Bob Layton? Top 25 for sure. He was one of those guys who just grew into a bigger role than originally assigned. Originally, he was just an inker. Then a co-plotter/inker. Then a writer (on occasion). As an inker he was definitely Top 15 all time, in my book. As a co-plotter? He was very, very good. His Hercules mini-series work was fantastic. But he's not Top 10.

My list remains (for now)...

John Romita SR
John Buscema
John Byrne
John Romita Jr
Neal Adams
Gerry Conway
Marv Wolfman
George Perez
Gil Kane
Stan Lee

Cut from the list, but still great...
Sal Buscema

In case anyone wants a refresher, or doesn’t want to scroll thru the thread, here are all the picks so far, by day.

Pretty sure everyone’s top ten creators will be mentioned by day 35, one way or another, I’m leaning towards that length as a capper. I’ll post this list in the thread wiki.



Frank Miller

Neil Gaiman, Jack Kirby

Moebius, Jacques Tardi

Carl Barks, Paul Pope

any Buscema, Hernandez, Kubert, or Romita

Alan Moore, Grant Morrison

Berkeley Breathed, Bill Watterson

Neal Adams, David Mazzuchelli

Art Adams, Mike Allred, John Byrne, Paul Chadwick, Geoff Darrow, Dave Gibbons, Mike Mignola, Walt Simonson

Gerry Conway, Paul Dini, Steve Gerber, Russ Heath, Denny O’Neil, Roy Thomas, Bruce Timm, Marv Wolfman

Darwyn Cooke, George Perez

Warren Ellis, Jeff Lemire

Brian Azzarello, Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Bolland, Brian K Vaughan, Bryan Talbot

Alan Brennert, Milton Caniff, Alan Davis, Al Gordon, Alan Grant, Alan Kupperberg, Charles Schulz

Ross Andru, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Todd McFarlane

Ed Brubaker, Jack Davis, Garth Ennis, Frank Frazetta

Chris Claremont, Richard Corben, Keith Giffen, Brandon Graham, Geoff Johns, Dave McKean, Dave Stevens, Al Williamson

Bill Sienkiewicz, Wally Wood, Bernie Wrightson

Daniel Clowes, Katsuhiro Otomo, Gary Panter, Chris Ware

Simon Bisley, Jonathan Hickman, Stan Lee, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Rick Remender, Matt Wagner

Hal Foster, George Herriman, Walt Kelly, Gary Larson, Alex Raymond

Kurt Busiek, Matt Kindt, David Latham, Bob Layton, Jim Lee, Jimmy Palmiotti, Joe Quesada, Jim Shooter, Tim Truman, Mark Waid, Barry Windsor-Smith

Waid is the 10th on my list. Kingdom Come, his JLA run, Fantastic Four, Flash, Irredeemable, Incorruptible, Empire, and so many others. I also love Busiek, but Wait feels a bit more "modern" to me than Busiek's writing.

Speaking of creators, this benefit book is loaded.
https://zoop.gg/c/comicsforukraine

Jim Shooter is an interesting name. He was editor-in-chief at Marvel when I thought they were really clicking. Eventually led to a revolt but I hear he ran a tight ship. I don't think he's on my top ten but he at least merits consideration. I'm a 'no' on Jim Lee. I grow less impressed by his art the more I get exposed to it. He's also had some terrible ideas running DC from what I hear.

Mark Waid is a tough call for me. Love Irredeemable and Kingdom Come, but I think Alex Ross deserves the bulk of the credit for Kingdom Come's success. Waid is like #11 on my list.

Kurt Busiek makes my list. If he had done nothing else besides Astro City, I probably would have included him. But he's been a key figure on many of my favorite runs across both DC and Marvel. I love his Avengers.

Day Twenty-Two Response and Wrap—Up

Of these “Valiant” guys, Barry Windsor-Smith comes the closest for me. Have always loved his art, and am currently doing a (slow) Conan re-read. I hear his Monsters was perhaps the best book of 2021, but it’s yet another that I started and loved, but let it get buried in a mountain of stacks bedside. He’s probably top 20 if Monsters is as good as everyone says.

Not too familiar with Quesada. I remember liking The Ray from DC back in the day, but haven’t read much of his other work.

I’ve always enjoyed the bits and pieces of David Lapham’s art and writing I’ve seen over the years, and have the complete Stray Bullets waiting for a rainy day. Loved the first trade.

Appreciate Jim Shooter’s work, but not a huge fan.

I’m a fan of Tim Truman’s work. Loved his Grimjack and Scout, and the Airboy relaunch. A few fun things at Marvel and lots of solid DC work highlighted by Hawkworld and Jonah Hex.

Never read a ton of Bob Layton’s work, but it seems pretty good. Need to read his Iron Man run someday I hear.

Matt Kindt is awesome. Dept H and Mind MGMT are modern classics. He might be top 20.

Jim Lee would easily be last among anyone mentioned in this thread so far.

Kurt Busiek would make a writers only top 10. I remember loving The Liberty Project back in 1987, and Marvels with Alex Ross is a top 10 book for me probably. Astro City is great, although you know the drill, I’ve only read a bit of it so far.

Haven’t read a ton of Mark Waid’s work, but like him. JLA: Year One and Kingdom Come are very good, liked his Archie stuff, the bit I read of Irredeemable. But again, lots of his runs are still in my mountains.

Jimmy Palmiotti is great. Jonah Hex, Painkiller Jane, Harley Quinn, and Power Girl were all fun.

So pretty much all incredibly solid creators with really good runs and even key books, but none of them resonate deeply with me yet to make a top ten. So my list remains:
Frank Miller
Jack Kirby
Carl Barks
Alan Moore
Mike Mignola
Jeff Lemire
Bernie Wrightson
Matt Wagner

Day Twenty-Three Choices

Let’s dream today. We already had Neil Gaiman as a candidate here so now it’s time to see if any of the artists make your top ten. This will be a two-day event with so many great artists working on Sandman. Fwiw, I consider Sandman the greatest series in the history of comics so far.

Today I want to know if Sam Kieth, Jill Thompson, Colleen Doran, Charles Vess, Mike Dringenberg, or P. Craig Russell are in your Top 10.

I'm also going to throw in Chris Bachalo because he drew the first ever Vertigo comic.

Ah, an easy day for me.

Sam Kieth, Jill Thompson, Colleen Doran, Charles Vess, Mike Dringenberg, P. Craig Russell or Chris Bachalo.

All are NOs for me. They've all done some great stuff over the years but none make the Top 10.

I mentioned this when Gaiman came up, but I've never read Sandman. I know most of these artists from other work. Russell is probably my favorite here. Kieth had that memorable run on Marvel Comics Presents that, alongside Weapon X, represented the only notable thing that title ever produced. Of course he's probably best known for The Maxx, but Trevor clearly hates 90's Image and refuses to do a day devoted to that magical time in history and instead offers up dribs and drabs. Give me Liefeld or give me death! Anyways, not familiar with Jill Thompson. Dringenberg was the guy who did a lot of the covers, right? No to the Sandman crew.
​​​​​

Great illustrators, all, but not in my top 10.

Bachalo probably has the most mainstream appeal, however his work is best when a bit more restricted (like in Death). Oftentimes his layouts just outright confuse me.

Hey now, I bought a ton of Image books in the 90s. Still have them if you need kindling.

Another day with no one even coming close to my list. The Status Quo remains.

I love Sam Keith, but he doesn't make my top ten.

Love Chris Bachalo and P. Craig Russell. Not Top 10 but I'm a huge fan of both their work. Met Bachalo a few times in the 90s, very cool dude, was a big fan of Death and Shade The Changing Man. Never really followed his Marvel work. Russell's fantasy artistry is incomparable.

My list remains as is.

Fair enough.

I didn't go back that far, and reprints were tougher on my budget because I pretty much bought every super-hero title from the Big Two for a five years or so (and Image and Malibu for a shorter time).

But I guess I am going with absolute love when I was most in love with comics (mid-'80s to about 2000).

Most Legends such as Lee, Kirby, Buscema, Moore, etc just never connected with me (what I read anyway).

I'm probably more thinking we should have a Battle Royal thread after this one ends to set the Top Ten Legends, as determined by DVD Talk.