Here are the next ten artists that you voted as your favorites of all-time (out of roughly 1,040 ballots cast, with 10 points for first place votes, 9 points for second place votes, etc.).

NOTE: Don’t be a jerk about creators in the comments section. If you are not a fan of a particular creator, that’s fine, but be respectful about it. No insulting creators or otherwise being a jerk about creators. I’ll be deleting any comments like that and, depending on how jerky the comment was, banning commenters.

40. Joe Kubert - 307 points (6 first place votes)

Very few artists could ever claim to be regular working artists in the Golden Age of comics and still working as a regular comic book artist after 2010, but Joe Kubert is one of those people. He remained an acclaimed artist all the way until he passed away, still working on new comic books for DC Comics.

While Kubert was an excellent superhero artist and if you asked him, he'd probably say he preferred drawing stuff like Tarzan or his caveman character Tor best of all, he is most known for his work on DC's war comics. He was so good at it that they up and GAVE him the books to run eventually.

His most famous character that he worked on was definitely Sgt. Rock. Here is a bit from one of the most famous Rock stories of all-time, "The Four Faces of Sgt. Rock" from Our Army at War #127 (written by Kanigher). It was one of those stories where different people tell stories about Rock from different perspectives. Here's one about how Rock kept getting on a new recruit who kept lagging behind the others. He kept dealing Rock that he really was fast, but he was just loaded down by all his gear. Rock didn't acknowledge it and it drove the kid sort of nuts, to the point where during one battle, he decides to show how fast he really was...









Powerful artwork.

39. Barry Windsor-Smith - 319 points (3 first place votes)

Starting in the 1960s with a highly Jack Kirby-esque style, Barry Windsor-Smith came to true prominence during his run on Conan the Barbarian with writer Roy Thomas. Not content, though, to rest on his substantial laurels, Windsor-Smith continued to develop his style dramatically, keeping his excellent storytelling skills and adding in more and more stylized touches. One of his most famous works was a one-off issue of Uncanny X-Men that he did with Chris Claremont. Check out how much stunning detail that there is in this work while never sacrificing fluidity of movement....









This is roughly his current style, and whenever he comes out with a new comic book work (which is sadly rare nowadays), you know it is going to look excellent.

38. Chris Bachalo - 322 points (6 first place votes)

After making his debut with some Sandman work, Chris Bachalo became a star artist through a long run on Shade the Changing Man with writer Peter Milligan and inker Mark Buckinghma. There, Bachalo's sense of wild design made him stand out from most artists - he has a manic energy to him but he is able to keep the story on point.

His early work with Buckingham, though, got to the point eventually where Buckingham's style was almost overwhelming Bachalo, to the point where the initial samples I used from late in their Shade run could almost be seen as either artist, so I'll instead go with some later Bachalo.

Bachalo left Shade for a prominent gig on a new X-title, Generation X. It was here where Buckingham and Bachalo parted ways and Bachalo got even more frenetic with his work. Bachalo has worked mostly for Marvel the past twenty years, especially in the X-Office, where he has had multiple stints on Uncanny X-Men (including launching the current Uncanny X-Men series) plus launching Wolverine and the X-Men. He also had a short stint as one of the regular artists on Amazing Spider-Man. It is here that I'll use as a modern Bachalo sample, since it is a Spider-Man/Wolverine team-up, so you get the best of both worlds!









Go to the next page for #37-34...

37. Jim Aparo - 330 points (3 first place votes)

While perhaps not to the level of Curt Swan, Jim Aparo was still one of the most amazingly consistent artists you'll ever see. His inks started to lose a little focus towards the end of his career and DC stopped letting him ink himself, so a little bit of the magic was lost, but he was still producing top notch work well into the 1990s.

To show off how consistent he was, check out his very first Batman work, from 1971's Brave and the Bold #98 (co-starring The Phantom Stranger, whose ongoing series was Aparo's second assignment at DC Comics - the concept of the issue is that strange things are happening at the home of the widow and son of a friend of Batman's who just died - this being a Bob Haney story, we just meet this longtime friend of Batman's out of nowhere this issue right before he dies - and Batman is investigating)...









That bit was from 1971 and yet it just as well could have come from 1981. Or 1991. Or 2001. That story had all of the hallmarks of a Jim Aparo story - great storytelling, the patented Jim Aparo facial expressions, the fluidity of the character action - just great work. Aparo took over Brave and the Bold a couple of issues later and then drew it for the next TEN years until it ended. Brave and the Bold led into Batman and the Outsiders. After he drew that for roughly three years, he had a bit of a break. Soon, though, he was right back to work drawing Batman for Jim Starlin (including the death of Jason Todd) and Marv Wolfman (including the introduction of Tim Drake) and then to Detective Comics for Peter Milligan and then back to Batman for Doug Moench (where Aparo was the artist who drew Bane breaking Batman's back). After his regular work on Batman finished, he still did occasional fill-in work. He was still doing occasional artwork (like a cover for a collection of Batman stories) almost right up until his death in 2005.

36. Todd McFarlane - 339 points (8 first place votes)

One of the more surprising things to me about 2010's list is that Todd McFarlane really did not do well in the voting. That corrected itself this year.

If you had to pick the three artists who most defined the look of Spider-Man, obviously Steve Ditko is one of them (since he, you know, created the look of Spider-Man) and then John Romita, for the changes he made to the book after he took over from Ditko that defined the look of Spider-Man for years, but Todd McFarlane is clearly the third. From the moment he took over Amazing Spider-Man with issue #298, the dynamic designs of McFarlane wowed comic book fans and literally changed how Spider-Man would be drawn from that point on.

From the little things (like drawing Spider-Man's web line thicker) to the larger things (drawing Spider-Man as almost a contortionist in the air), McFarlane's designs defined an entire generation of Spider-Man comic books.

Not just his character design work (which led to Venom becoming the breakout character that he was - without McFarlane's design of Venom, with the spooky teeth, it is doubtful that Venom ever would have been so famous) but the way he laid out pages. He broke free of the traditional panel arrangement that most Spider-Man artists were using at the time and made the stories seem to fill to the edge of the page.









What people now forget is just how TIMELY McFarlane was on Amazing Spider-Man. There is a good chance that the momentum of his artwork would not have had as much of an impact if he wasn't consistently delivering it on time. He penciled Amazing Spider-Man #298-323 without missing a single issue. Most remarkably about that run is that #300 was 40 pages and that #304-309 were BI-WEEKLY! In fact, it was only a second bi-weekly event that saw him miss his first issue of Amazing, as Erik Larsen stepped in to alternate issues with him for a few issues.

McFarlane then launched Spider-Man, which he wrote and drew, making it the highest-selling single comic book issue in the history of comics. He wrote and drew the book from #1-14 and then a finale in #16 when he left Marvel to launch Spawn for Image Comics.

35. Gene Colan - 346 points (2 first place votes)

Gene Colan became famous at Marvel for his energetic work coupled with his unique panel arrangements on the Iron Man feature. However, I think perhaps his strongest work is the slightly less frenetic Tomb of Dracula with writer Marv Wolfman and inker Tom Palmer.

Here is Colan from the classic twenty-fifth issue where a woman hires a stereotypical private investigator (straight out of a Raymond Chandler story) to find out who murdered her husband (hint - it's Dracula). But is the P.I. who he seems?











What a great reveal and what excellent storytelling by Colan!

Colan continued to be a top notch artist right up until his death a few years ago.

34. Greg Capullo - 358 points (4 first place votes)

Perhaps even more surprising than McFarlane's poor showing was the poor showing of the man who succeeded McFarlane on Spawn, Greg Capullo, who did not even PLACE in 2010, and I went all the way back to #125 that time! 2010, of course, was a year before Greg Capullo returned to mainstream comics in a big way as the regular artist on DC's best-selling comic book, Batman, so it makes sense that fans were reminded how much they liked Capullo, who was a top artist for years on X-Force for Marvel and then Spawn for Image.

The trademark of Greg Capullo is DYNAMISM. His work is some of the most kinetic out there. Check out this sequence where he just KILLS it with the action...

Capullo's art style is incredibly dynamic and stylized. Here is an action sequence from early in his Batman run....









What's amazing about Capullo is that he is one of the few modern artists who can keep up with this level of energy on a monthly basis. He is killing it monthly on Batman. It'll be fascinating to see what he does when his run on Batman comes to an end.

Go to the next page for #33-31...

33. David Aja - 371 points (1 first place vote)

Another high-riser who was not even on the 2010 extended list, Aja was already an acclaimed artist whose work was a focal feature of Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker's epic Iron Fist run (Aja's depiction of martial artistry was stunning), but obviously things kicked it up to another notch when Aja and Fraction teamed up on Hawkeye.

Aja has tried all sort of different storytelling techniques and it has been a hell of a treat to see such an accomplished artist so effortlessly mix things up with the results remaining engaging even as he experiments wildly.

His most famous experimental issue is Hawkeye #11, told from the perspective of Hawkeye's dog...









Clever stuff.

32. Dave Gibbons - 383 points (3 first place votes)

It says a lot about how amazing Dave Gibbons was on Watchmen with writer Alan Moore that it's almost thirty years later, he's done tons of excellent work since then and still that series holds such a powerful hold over readers.

The detail Gibbons put into Watchmen is legendary. There’s a sequence set in the past when the heroes were still all pretty naive (Rorschach was not even using his scary voice as of yet), and Gibbons gives us, ALL IN THE BACKGROUND, a beautiful depiction of Doctor Manhattan flirting with the Silk Spectre, all while his wife is right next to him. As the panels go by, not one doesn’t show some sort of interaction in the background of the panel – all of it is important to their characterizations, but none of it is central to the main story being delivered in those panels – so Gibbons basically was giving us two stories at once. The one Moore is telling with the speech balloons at the “front” of the panel, plus the one Gibbons is telling in the “back” of the panel through body language.







That's the sort of thing you get from Gibbons on pretty much every project he does. He isn't content with just being an excellent artist on the "main" story, his work always has those little background touches. He's such a master.

31. Fiona Staples - 384 points (8 first place votes)

I am not actually positive about this, but I'm pretty sure that this is the biggest debut of any artist or writer on the list. A big congrats to Fiona Staples to go from not placing in 2010 to nearly the top 30!! It's funny, I totally forgot that we did a spotlight on Staples back in 2009 when Frazer Irving chose her as his choice of an artist he wanted to see people pay more attention to. You got your wish, Frazer!

Staples is one half of the amazing creative team on Saga, where she and writer Brian K. Vaughan have created a number of compelling characters that we'd like to follow through a rather unvarnished fantasy world where a young couple (Alana and Marko) is on the run with their baby. Slowly but surely, Vaughan and Staples populated their world with a variety of fascinating characters. Most notable are the the bounty hunters who hunt down the couple and their child and the robot prince who is tasked with their capture, as well, in an official governmental capacity.

On Saga, Staples' designs are excellent, her character work is sublime and she is an amazing storyteller. Vaughan sure is lucky to be working with her.

Here we see Alana, Marko and their nanny try to head for a rocketship forest to find a way to get away from the people tracking them down...









Excellent work.