Trevor

I did add a 4th today, so it’s not the same post.

And you were so fast yesterday! I edited the post in like 45 seconds or less to be blank, then fixed it fully in a few minutes. Email notifications?

B5Erik

Daniel Clowes, Gary Panter, Katsuhiro Otomo, or Chris Ware.

Who? I'm not familiar with any of them, so... No across the board.

My Top 10 remains intact, unchanged for yet another day.

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

fujishig

Otomo is a yes for me, though he will probably get replaced soon. I've only read two long form works from him, Domu and (of course) Akira, but man (a similar reckoning will happen with Miyazaki in the future of this thread, I guess). Probably the second most influential manga creator of all time (after Tezuka).

Hokeyboy

Pass on all, mostly due to unfamiliarity.

rocket1312

I don't know Painter so I didn't bother mentioning him.

And the reason I posted so quick is because when I wake up in the morning I keep refreshing the thread until you post it. My day doesn't officially begin until I post here. So please keep that in mind Trevor. The longer you wait, the longer my kids have to wait for their breakfast. They were really hungry today.

B5Erik

rocket1312

But in all seriousness Trevor, this has been a lot of fun. My family's on vacation this week and I've taken the opportunity to read a lot of comics inspired by this thread.

majorjoe23

I like Clowes and Ware, but I wouldn't put them in my top 10. Sometimes reading a Chris Ware book feels like homework.

Trevor

Thanks, I was hopeful that it would go over well here. A lot of the names I barely recognize, but seeing other people in the three forums doing this sing their praises is adding to my backlog with new areas to explore.

Josh-da-man

IKWYM.

I remember, about twenty years ago, when everyone was gushing and raving about Acme Novelty Library, I bought it blind, and the thing just bored the fuck out of me. It's like reading blueprints and flowcharts. There was just no pleasure or payoff in it for me.

PhantomStranger

Pass on the cartoonists.

Trevor

Day Nineteen Response and Wrap—Up

Love the film and the little of Akira I've read, but it's not enough to put Otomo in my list.

Clowes and Ware are mostly still random highlights of their career sitting in my backlog. I have a treasury-sized volume of Acme Novelty Library and it intimidates me every time I start to read it.

With Gary Panter I’ve probably only read a couple bits in Raw, but everything I hear makes me think I will love his stuff.

So no additions again today. My list so far:
Frank Miller
Jack Kirby
Carl Barks
Alan Moore
Mike Mignola
Jeff Lemire
Bernie Wrightson

Trevor

Day Twenty Choices

Okay so I feel like I have to at some point offer up Stan Lee as a choice. So today is that day.

And let’s get some other pretty big more modern names out of the way too. Are Matt Wagner, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Jonathan Hickman, Simon Bisley, or Rick Remender on your list?

rocket1312

Stan is a really tough one for me. I'm not one of those folks who feel the need to denigrate his contributions to early Marvel and claim he took all the credit and did none of the work. There would be no Marvel today if not for Stan Lee. That said, I also don't actively seek out Stan Lee written comics like I do the other creators on my list. I'd argue his greatest legacy as a comics creator (besides more or less conceiving the entire Marvel Universe) was his long run on Spider-Man post-Ditko. I have enjoyed all that I've read, but I haven't read all of it and Spider-Man was never one of my favorite characters. If I were ranking his work, FF and Thor would be next, but for me those two titles are more about Kirby and his wild imagination. As for the other titles/characters he helped create, I feel like other creators far surpassed his work after he had left. So while he would definitely be in the next tier, I'm going to have to say no. But I feel terrible about it.

Matt Wagner is a guy I'm familiar with. I've read some of his DC stuff, but in general he's a major blindspot. No on Wagner.

JLGL is a legend. Thanks to his style guides, his versions of DC characters are more or less the default versions. That's said, I've probably read like two comics he's drawn. So no.

Bisley is a great artist, but I mostly associate him with Lobo and I don't give a rat's about Lobo.

Hickman and Remender are two guys who rose to prominence after I stopped reading monthlies. I've read a little bit from both, but not nearly enough to include on my list. Hickman, in particular, I've been meaning to do a deep dive on, but what little I have read has left me sort of cold. I was particularly disappointed in his X-Men run. I had heard his was the best since Morrison, but I really didn't care for it.

B5Erik

Stan was the man! The popular modern take is that he did none of the work and took all of the credit. Neither of which is really true. He was an idea man, and he left it to his collaborators to flesh out his basic ideas, and then he wrote his snappy dialogue and narrative captions. Take Spider-Man, for example. He wanted to do a character named Spider-Man who could stick to walls and walk up the outside of buildings. Jack Kirby came back with a really weird concept featuring an adult Spider-Man. Stan didn't like the idea at all, so he went to Steve Ditko and told him the same thing he told Jack, with the added direction - make him a nerdy teenager with all the usual teenage problems. Ditko took that and ran with it and the rest is history.

Beyond coming up with revolutionary ideas that were different than what the Distinguished Competition was doing (A super team that's like a family and fights among themselves? A teenager who isn't just a sidekick? That's crazy talk in 1961!), Stan wrote some great dialogue, something that Kirby wasn't able to do when he was writing his own a decade later. Ditko wasn't able to write dialogue as good as Stan's, either. Now, sure, Stan's dialogue is somewhat dated today, but it's far better than what you read from the competition at the same time.

So, yeah, ABSOLUTELY Stan Lee makes my list!

Everyone else listed for today? No.

So my edited list...

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

Hokeyboy

Two names here worth discussing (for me): Stan Lee and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. I'm a big fan of both Matt Wagner and Rick Remender though. Fantastic creators.

Stan Lee is Stan freakin' Lee. He is Marvel, period. But strictly for his work on Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man alone... and that's just the first two books he did at Silver Age Marvel. His larger-than-life persona permeated everything Marvel in the 60s and 70s (80s was more Jim Shooter, 90s was a total forgettable mess, and 00s on was the whole Quesada/Jemas thing).

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez goes on my Chopping List, but near the top. He is the living breathing emblem of 80s DC in terms of style and feel. And what an amazing, amazing artist.




My Top Ten:
John Byrne
Chris Claremont
Garth Ennis
Neil Gaiman
Jack Kirby
Stan Lee
Frank Miller
Alan Moore
Grant Morrison
George Perez

Chopping List:
Neil Adams
Ed Brubaker
Darywn Cooke
Steve Ditko
Jose Luis Garcia Lopez
Geoff Johns
Keith Giffen
Denny O'Neill
Walt Simonson
Marv Wolfman

B5Erik

I should have made something clearer, but I was in a hurry - I really like the work of Jose Luis Garcia Lopez a lot. Great artist. I wish he had done more interior work than he did (for a while he did more covers than interior art), but what he did was really good to great. His work on Batman VS The Hulk was phenomenal, and that was my first real introduction to him since I was much more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy.

He might not make my Top 20, but he's an artist whose work I really like. I have a ton of respect and admiration for him as an artist.

davidh777

What does “knocked out” mean? That they couldn’t participate anymore? But I guess if you were at nine and people guessed their tenth they’d technically be finished anyway. Though then people could always reject the guess if they wanted to stay in. “No, Starlin really ISN’T in my top 10!”

Trevor

No one would be knocked out of commenting and even possibly changing their picks. It was that you would ‘knock out’ their 10th person and that creator would enter the pool as like a bonus pick off the normal morning schedule.

Not the greatest twist, but I think it could have been fun if I had made the rules more firm from the beginning. In the place where this originated we’ve had many people hit 9 on their list and others take guesses at their 10th, but only one correct answer/bonus creator iirc.

PhantomStranger

Stan Lee is not in my top ten. His writing really hasn't aged that well. Credit to him for shepherding most of Marvel's formative years, but it's hard separating his contributions from his collaborators.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is one of my favorite artists, but he is just on the outside looking in for me. He shaped how so many people view the DC characters through his character designs.

Trevor

Day Twenty Response and Wrap—Up

Matt Wagner an easy in for me. Mage and Grendel are top ten works, and I love all his DC work too.

Remender is probably top ten if it was writers only.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, praise be his name, makes my art only list. I grew up a DC kid, and his art is still the template I see when I think of those main characters. Even though I now tend to dislike ‘normal’ super-hero artwork, I’ll always love JLGL.

I like Bisley’s style, but not top ten.

I appreciate Stan Lee for his championing and furthering of the industry, and love comics of that era, but can't stand his writing.

Hickman is working his way up the list. Still have dozens of his runs to read or finish someday.

My list is now at eight creators:
Frank Miller
Jack Kirby
Carl Barks
Alan Moore
Mike Mignola
Jeff Lemire
Bernie Wrightson
Matt Wagner

Trevor

Day Twenty-One Choices

Why not, let’s have another Strip Sunday! Please, stay dressed everyone.

Do any of the following make your list? Gary Larson, George Herriman, Hal Foster, Walt Kelly, or Alex Raymond.

rocket1312

I appreciate them all, but again, nott a strip guy. I did used to get the Far Side one-a-day calendar for Christmas every year though. Those were fun.

B5Erik

No to all the new candidates for today.

So my list remains...

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

teameck

Naturally, I couldn't get logged-in and comment until now.
Will pay catch-up and with just the ones on my list.
I don't know what my Top Ten list is (aside from three must-haves, two of which I don't believe will ever be "called-up"), but I'll give mine a try.
I wish I could be regular on commenting; I really love the discourse you all have been having.

Keith Giffen -- Number One with a bullet. The dude is prolific as all get-out and rarely does anything "straight". He takes big swings and often misses, but it's almost always original and unexpected. And when he hits, it's brilliant. I was introduced to him (and DC) with J.L.I. and moved to all JL spin-offs, L.E.G.I.O.N., Lobo (not for everyone, but being a Big Two "cape" guy, I couldn't believe what he Grant and Biz were getting away with); Heckler, Trencher, and Agents of Law were also a short-lived favorites. I went to his back issues (an absolutely masochistic prospect; I still have dozens of issues on my want list thirty years later) and discovered Ambush Bug and his first Legion run. I could go on and on, but I'll end with the apex of my comic book and Giffen love: his work on the Five Years Later version of Legion of Super-Heroes. I dropped the title at issue #2 (never had read a Legion book before and had no idea what was happening) but, for some reason, picked up #10 and read this brutal battle with Roxxas which made my jaw drop. Then issue #11 was a comedy with Tenzil Kem, which couldn't been more of a 180 from the previous issue. I went back and got the missing issues and for the rest of his run, I was enraptured.

Gif's the only one I know will be in my Top Ten, but I like the idea of having creators on the list that may fall off if someone else I am reminded of comes up so:

Gary Larson: When this thread started, I wouldn't have have considered him (never thought of him, TBH), but last weekend, I ran across hundreds of his daily calendar pages (I bought them for years) that I saved because they were so great (and still are because I had to read every one). The Far Side is so completely up my alley in regards to humor that I can't disregard his work because it wasn't in comic book form. And while I didn't love them all, the ones I did are such a high percentage of the total, he has to be on my list.

John Byrne: Introduced me to She-Hulk, a title I loved (probably my first comedic comic). I went back and read his Fantastic Four run, which was pretty great. I got into the Superman titles just after he left but went back and got what I was missing since his Man of Steel -- and his was the definitive Superman for me for many years (until Jurgens and Breeding's run). I know many consider his first Uncanny X-Men run as a high point, but I can't say I got too into it (I really need to reread them).

George Perez: I haven't read all of his major highlights (Teen Titans, Wonder Woman), but the man is a master. What I have read (Crisis and Avengers, for two) is amazing, detailed, laid-out wonderfully, and tells the story instead of goes for the splash-page money shots. Any writer he worked with was better because of what he put down on the paper.

Garth Ennis: I was accidentally sent his third issue of Hellblazer when I had to order comics from the mail, and it was my first horror/"Vertigo" issue. Loved his first run on that title (could not believe what I was reading when the plan of how he was going to beat his death was revealed). It took me years to read the complete Preacher, but I reread start-to-finish a couple of years ago and was taken-in with the imagination and the no-idea-what-is-happening-next nature of it. His Punisher runs were insane (I'll never forget Frank running over Logan with a steamroller). His work is often "too much", but it's also often clever in either inventiveness or how someone dies/is maimed. I'm not sure if he can remain on my list, but he's there for a bit.

Geoff Johns: I have not loved all his work (or maybe even most), but he's on this list because of JSA. It's the only title I have read since the 5YL Legion that I loved for years. I remember liking Stargirl, Titans (at least the early part), and Green Lantern. His (Wally West) Flash was solid too, if I recall correctly. Other things I didn't love so much. Hard to say how much he did or did not do with some of DC TV/film work, but none of it I loved, but I'll stick to comics work and include him for now.

I feel sick not including legit Legends (Lee, Kirby, Claremont, Miller in his prime, etc), but this is a personal Top Ten list, and many of those legends' best work was before my main reading era (1985-2000); same with "new"/current creators; I just consume via TPs from the library without much thought to creators, and I miss most indie work (which, frankly, I never got into; I'm a Big Two superhero fan; not much outside that spoke to me then or now).