Here are the next ten writers 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. Dan Slott - 355 points (1 first place vote)

Despite writing comics since the early 1990s (with great work on licensed humor titles like Ren and Stimpy and Beavis and Butthead), Dan Slott has become a lot more famous in the world of comics since taking over writing duties on Amazing Spider-Man in 2008 (first as one of the Spider-Man team of writers who launched Brand New Day in Amzing Spider-Man #546 and later the sole writer of Spider-Man with Amazing Spider-Man #648.

Slott also pulled off quite a feat when he had Peter Parker be replaced as Spider-Man for over a year by Doctor Octopus and have the resulting storyline, Superior Spider-Man, work out really really well.

Slott's best traits on Amazing Spider-Man have been the way that he follows in the strong suit of past Spider-Man writers of mixing action-packed adventures with character-driven stories in a blend that feels like a natural extenuation of whatever is going on in the book at that time. So a big event where everyone on Manhattan gets Spider-powers is personalized by the fact that Peter Parker's girlfriend has the powers, too, and it leads her to figure out that Peter has been lying to her about his secret identity. Or, in one of the strongest one-shot issues of Slott's run, Amazing Spider-Man #665, we see the trade-off for Spider-Man and Peter Parker both becoming so successful (Spider-Man being on two Avengers teams and the Future Foundation and Peter now becoming a successful designer at a think tank reverse-engineering the gadgets he creates as Spider-Man into useful technology for everyday life), which is that he is too busy for people like his closest friends. So when Betty Brant is assaulted after Peter stands her up for a standing movie date, Peter vows revenge (naturally) but what does that look like to his friends and family? Peter is out finding Betty's assailant, but to everyone else, he is not there for Betty when she needs it the most. Aunt May calls him and reads him the riot act and brings up something shocking to Peter, that the way SHE recalls the night of Ben Parker's death, she just remembers Peter running away when she needed him the most.

Daaaaang. See? Now that's some character-driven twist right there. And that's the sort of approach Slott takes to his whole Amazing Spider-Man run, you never know exactly how he will zig or zag on any given plot point/character interaction. It makes reading Amazing Spider-Man a true roller coaster ride of never knowing where he will be headed. And when he slows down for the character-heavy stuff, he nails it, like Peter's reaction to the death of J. Jonah Jameson's wife, which was essentially "one death too many" for Peter. Peter vows that he will not let anyone die. And naturally, that cannot work out long term, so seeing him deal with it when it DOESN'T is powerful.

And, of course, Slott knows how to bring the funny. He is bringing much of those same mix of qualities to his current run on Silver Surfer.

SLott's first major Spider-Man work was a Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series with Ty Templeton that was excellent. Here are some pages from that series that show prime Slott...









39. Walter Simonson - 357 points (9 first place votes)

There's not much cooler of a way to introduce yourself to a title then to break the old logo of the book in your first issue and debut a new logo the next one. And that's just one of the dramatic things Walter Simonson did with his first issue of Thor, a book that was not selling particularly well, so Simonson had a great deal of freedom to TRY these dramatic things. The other dramatic event in the first issue of Simonson's Thor was just WHO it was that was wielding Thor's hammer on the cover - some weird looking creature!

Beta Ray Bill, the noble alien who was found to be worthy enough to wield Mjolnir, was an attempt to shock readers, and to give his book a try, as Simonson spent the next thirty issues or so both writing and drawing an eventful time in the world of Thor, as Simonson used his extensive knowledge of Norse mythology as the foundation for his stories, which were a bit more serious and true to Norse culture than previous writers.

Simonson's stories were mostly plot-driven, but he gave a number of interesting character moments along the way, as well, and of course he delivered that fantastic, stylized dynamic artwork that he is so well known for using.

There was a major story with a fight between Odin and Surtur that took advantage of Simonson's ability to draw really outstanding fight scenes, but perhaps the most notable storyline during his run was when a number of souls of living Earth people are trapped in the land of Hel. Thor, Balder and a few other people lead a rescue mission to save them, and the evil toady of the Enchantress, Skurge the Executioner, asks to be allowed to help, too. At the end, when they are about to be overrun at a bridge by the hordes of Hel right before becoming free, Thor vows that he will stay behind and hold off the hordes himself while the humans escape. Skurge knocks Thor out, and while everyone at first thinks he is being a traitor, he is instead opting to take Thor's place.









It's an amazing sequence of events, beautifully written and drawn by Simonson.

In the years since, Simonson has brought that same compelling grandiosity to great runs on Fantastic Four and Orion. And, of course, he is also an amazing artist.

38. Jeff Lemire - 358 points (1 first place vote)

Jeff Lemire is a fascinating example of seeing a writer bring his independent sensibilities to mainstream comics and having the result work out very nicely. Lemire is currently writing Justice League United and The Valiant and in the past wrote Animal Man and Green Arrow (he is also going to be the writer on Hawkeye for Marvel). What I love about Lemire's work is how unique it is - his approaches are unlike most other comic book writers and the results often throw you off balance, but in a very compelling way. One of my favorite Lemire works was the 2012 original graphic novel Underwater Welder. In it, Jack Joseph is 33 years old, the same age his father was when Jack was born. Jack's wife is in the final trimester of her pregnancy with their first child, a boy. Jack lives in the same town where he grew up and works as an underwater welder on a rig near the city. His father was a diver who often searched for "treasure" and drowned years ago on Halloween when Jack was a boy.

Jack is drawn to the water and his father's path in life and it clearly weighs on his wife. After all, his wife is soon going to be having a baby and Jack is going off to work on a rig for a few weeks!

While Jack is working on the rig, though, something weird happens. He begins to hear a voice saying his name...









This sends Jack adrift as he deals with his unresolved feelings over his father's death. The watch plays a key role. Jack is driven. There is SOMEthing in the water that will tell him what really happened to his father. He knows it. Even if it is tearing his marriage apart (much like how his parent's marriage fell apart) he is driven to find the "truth" out there in the deep. As he explores the deep, Jack goes on a journey into both the past (where he visits himself as a child) as well as the future. At the heart of the comic is a man who feels that he is tied to a certain path in life that he can't avoid no matter how hard he tries. He cannot escape this town and this life, even if it ruins his life and turns him into basically his own father. Can he break free of this? Can he break free of that description of himself? Jack Joseph, underwater welder? If he doesn't, he will likely lose everything.

That is the exact sort of dazed brilliance that we see in many Lemire creator-owned works, like Sweet Tooth and the recent mini-series, Trillium (Trillium is really like no other comic book). The comics world needs voices like Jeff Lemire's.

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

37. J.M. DeMatteis - 360 points (5 first place votes)

Few comic book writers are quite as dedicated to the inner workings of the human mind as J.M. DeMatteis. His works have consistently explored the inner depths of the human condition, often in ways that did not exactly scream out as being obvious at the time. For instance, likely his most famous work deals with the depression and then manic breakdown of an old Spider-Man villain, Kraven the Hunter, who had almost become a joke by the time DeMatteis wrote Kraven's Last Hunt. In it, Spider-Man underestimates Kraven and is nearly killed. Instead, he is buried alive while Kraven takes over as Spider-Man, proving himself to be (in his mind) a superior Spider-man.

Spider-Man's eventual escape was another journey to the mind of someone, this time Peter Parker...





Similarly, DeMatteis wrote a classic stretch of stories spotlighting the slow descent of Harry Osborn into madness beginning with the Child Within storyline in Spectacular Spider-Man, where we see just how badly emotionally abused Harry was by his father Norman (a few years later, DeMatteis would re-visit this idea in a Spectacular Spider-Man Annual where Spider-Man relives Harry and Norman's childhoods). Meanwhile, the fact that Harry knew Peter's secret identity was being used by Harry torment his best friend...now his enemy.

Things seemed to come to a fever pitch in #189...



Also similarly, DeMatteis wrote a classic story of the Joker dealing with seemingly killing Batman and then, well, "Going Sane."

DeMatteis is not just concerned with madness, though, of course. In Moonshadow, we see a wonderful coming of age tale. Or in "The Gift" (aka the death of Aunt May) we were treated to one of the best handlings of death in a superhero comic book that you'll ever see.

All of this doesn't even TOUCH on his wonderful work on the off-kilter superhero stories of Keith Giffen in Justice League International, where DeMatteis' dialogue brought characters like Blue Beetle and Booster Gold and Maxwell Lord fully to life. He and Giffen continue their great partnership on Justice League 3000, which has been a good book.

36. John Ostrander - 362 points (3 first place votes)

John Ostrander got into comic book writing relatively late, as his first career was in the theater. He has more than made up for lost time over the last thirty years, first at First Comics, writing Grimjack and then at DC Comics, writing the Suicide Squad and FIrestorm and later The Spectre (plus various other mini-series and a run on Martian Manhunter). He then wrote for Dark Horse's Star Wars line for years, including launching one of the best Dark Horse Star Wars series of all-time, Star Wars Legacy (set 125 years after Return of the Jedi).

Ostrander excels at coming up with multi-faceted characters and then playing them off against each other in thoughtful plots. His work on The Spectre had some of the most interesting comic book discussions of religion out there. In the Suicide Squad, he developed one of the great new characters of the 1980s in Amanda Waller, the conflicted head of the Suicide Squad. Check her out standing toe to toe against Batman (who had infiltrated the prison that the Suicide Squad used as a homebase to investigate rumors of the government using supervillains as operatives)....









35. Steve Englehart - 363 points (4 first place votes)

Steve Englehart started at Marvel Comics when he was a young man, quickly coming up with epic runs on Avengers and Captain America. He married the Vision the Scarlet Witch and in the pages of Captain America, he had the freaking PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES kill himself in front of Captain America as the capper to a long storyline.

He left Marvel in the later half of the 1970s and did a great Justice League of America run as well as a classic Batman run in Detective Comics. Initially working with Walter Simonson but ultimately with Marshall Rogers, Englehart's Batman run was in many ways based on a similar structure to Jeph Loeb's later Hush series, in that Englehart tried to work in as many major Batman villains into his story as he could, including re-introducing two early Batman foes that had fallen into disuse. Both of the villains, Hugo Strange and Deadshot, were rejuvenated by Englehart's useage and later went on to prominent appearances in later stories. Deadshot, in particular, was an extremely minor villain that saw his coolness factor shoot up 736% percent when Marshall Rogers gave him one of the coolest costumes you ever will see (years later, it was that cool costume that piqued John Ostrander's interest and got Deadshot a spot on the Suicide Squad).

Englehart had a good Penguin story, he had a good story involving Robin (he wanted at least one issue to involve Robin) and in the Laughing Fish, he had one of the best Joker stories of all-time (the Joker tries to get a federal trademark on fish that he has altered to have his Joker grin).

Englehart introduced a crime boss named Rupert Thorne who became a notable part of the Bat-mythos, as well as Silver St. Cloud, one of the best love interests Batman has ever had.

In one issue, Englehart even did some metafictional stuff by having Batman fight Deadshot on giant typewriters (evoking the 1950's Batman comics) and in the fight, Silver makes a realization that few people ever had before...







Enlehart's Silver was one of the best love interests Batman ever had.

Englehart later returned to both Marvel and DC during the 1980s for strong runs on Green Lantern for DC and West Coast Avengers for Marvel.

34. Jim Starlin - 386 points (1 first place vote)

Jim Starlin had already established himself as a tremendous cosmic writer with his work on Captain Marvel, but his run on Warlock (spanning FOUR different titles) really cemented that reputation, with his back-to-back classic arcs, The Magus Saga and then whatever you call the story with Thanos.

Starlin had Adam Warlock face off against an evil religious empire, also Magus, his evil future self, not to mention Thanos, who is, as you know, an evil guy who loves him some death. Warlock and Thanos teamed up to fight Magus...







Starlin introduced some notable supporting characters, too, with Pip the Troll and Gamora, the "deadliest woman in the universe."

Sadly, the books didn't sell that well, so Starlin had to use other comics to finish his story, with the two Annuals, which ended with, well, everyone dying. :)

Starlin left superhero comics to do an extensive run on the science fiction epic Dreadstar. He then did a stint on Batman for DC where he came up with the KGBeast, the Cult mini-series and wrote the story where Jason Todd was killed.

Starlin would later revive all his Warlock characters for new stories at Marvel, including the classic crossover storyline, The Infinity Gauntlet, which would lead to a number of other crossovers over the years. He has recently returned to his Thanos creation on a series of stories, including a current Thanos vs. Hulk mini-series.

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

33. Rick Remender - 407 points (3 first place votes)

Rick Remender has been writing complicated tales about complex lead characters for over a decade now, only now instead of his projects being smaller projects, he is working on a much larger scale, with him currently writing Marvel's company-wise crossover, Axis. However, one of the great things about modern comic books is that top level talent like Remender aren't simply saying, "Okay, time to go write superheroes and be done with my other work." No, Remender is writing Uncanny Avengers and All-New Captain America (plus the current Axis crossover) but he is ALSO doing outstanding work on creator-owned titles Deadly Class and Black Science for Image.

My buddy Joe Rice recently described Deadly Class thusly:

The high concept pitch I've heard used for Deadly Class is "John Hughes does Hogwarts for criminals." And on its own, that's kind of a little too on the nose, right? But, hell, I gave it a shot. And it grabbed a hold of my brain's testicles and hasn't let go yet. Cause that pitch is just the window-dressing, awesome though it may be. This is a book about growing up in the 80s and all your teen angst is right. Your government is led by a shithead ex-actor with shenanigans aplenty that by the present time have really come back to bite us in the ass. We were right. They WERE assholes. It's about that frustration of knowing the powers that be are, in fact, horrible human beings and what can you fucking do about it? You're a kid!

The central character's main goal is the assassination of Ronald Reagan. See, the John Hughes comparison is bullshit. Yeah, it's school kid outcasts in the 80s, but this isn't the sanitized (and weirdly pro-rape) stuff where it all works out in the end. This is actual punk rock, boomers already up their own asses, fuck you 80s. And it is glorious. Though the kids are mostly children of crime families throughout the world, they translate perfectly to the social deathtrap that teenage politics can be. Every move seems fraught with emotional peril. Every heartbreak monumental. All in all it is a tasty cocktail of hash and stolen beers that does my brain right.

Black Science, meanwhile (drawn by Remender's former collaborator on Secret Avengers, Matteo Scalera), features a group of scientists and various other characters being trapped in other dimensions. This series, besides it literally out of this world sense of epic stories, explores the very nature of who is and who isn't a bad guy and is there really much of a difference when it comes to surviving?

The work that really marked a major change in Remender's career was when he wrote Uncanny X-Force for Marvel, creating a much-loved epic storyline called the Dark Angel Saga, where Archangel turns evil and his teammates must find a way to stop him. Earlier in the series, Remender introduced new horseman for Apocalypse, and WOW, did Remender and Jerome Opena (who got his start working with Remender earlier in his career) do an amazing job here...











32. Peter Milligan - 431 points (4 first place votes)

Peter Milligan first made quite a name for himself in England working on a number of great stories for 2000 A.D. before beginning to work in the United States in 1990 when he took hold of a short-lived Steve Ditko superhero, Shade, the Changing Man, and went nuts with the idea. Ditko's Shade was an other-dimensional agent who was framed, so went on the run with his powerful M-Vest (which stood for Miraco-Vest) to clear his name. In Milligan's take, Shade was sent to Earth to save the planet from a swath of madness - his M-Vest was now a Madness-Vest, and he could use it to alter reality.

Brendan McCarthy designed the characters, and Chris Bachalo, in his first major comics work, drew the series, which drew much acclaim for both its surreal plots and for its intriguing character interactions.

The madness was called "The American Scream," and Shade encountered a young woman, Kathy, who was recovering from some massive trauma (her parents were murdered by a serial killer, and her boyfriend was killed by the police because they felt he was the killer, as her boyfriend was black) - Shade somehow convinced her to go along with him on his journey to stop the American Scream, and the two eventually fell in love (even though when Shade showed up on Earth, he took the body of the serial killer, who had just been executed).

However, a great deal of twists and turns happen along the way, including Shade getting killed, like, five times or so, with him being reincarnated each time in a different dead body (once as a woman!).

Along the way, Kathy and Shade also added another traveling companion, a woman named Lenny. The trio had quite the relationship.

As noted above, the surreal nature of the comic was probably the most striking aspect of the book. Milligan then took that same approach over to Marvel when he took over X-Force from the short-lived "X-Revolution" revamp that involved Warren Ellis revamping titles and having other writers follow him up on the book. X-Force had Ian Edgington follow Ellis on a Black Ops take on X-Force that ended in #115 with all the team supposedly dying. On that cheery note, Peter Milligan and Mike Allred entered the scene with #116 with an X-Force that no one had ever seen before, and it was good. X-Force was now a bunch of publicity-seeking mutant heroes who were looking to cash in on their fame before they inevitably died during battle.

Here is the star of the book, Zeitgeist....







Of course, right after that, Zeitgeist (as well as almost the entire team) is himself killed.

The other surviving members were Anarchist and U-Go-Girl (plus Doop, but Doop is sort of beyond mere team membership). Along with incoming team leader, The Orphan (Mister Sensitive), these three members would become the nucleus upon which X-Force would revolve upon, although one of the three would die before the book was relaunched under the new name, X-Statix (that character's death was a brilliant examination of the very nature of comic book death. Darwyn Cooke did some of the art for this period and it was just an excellent combination of story and art).

X-Statix was a lot more satirical than X-Force (and, heck, most comics, period). The book lasted a strong 26 issues before it, also, came to an end.

31. Scott Snyder - 437 points (10 first place votes)

Scott Snyder is currently best known for writing one of the best-selling comic books out there, Batman, where he has deftly mixed between an action-packed series of stories (to best utilize his partner om the book, Greg Capullo) and an examination of the history of Gotham City and an exploration of the idea of Gotham City as almost its own separate character. It's been a blast.

However, Scott Snyder is a heck of a lot more than just one cool superhero writer. His work for Vertigo and Image has been especially terrific. For Vertigo, he has both created American Vampire, a careful study of the 20th century through the eyes of vampires (with two of the best constructed lead characters in comics with Skinner Sweet and Pearl Jones) and The Wake, one of the more audacious comic book series I've seen in quite a while.

Plus, over at Image, he is currently writing the delightfully disturbing series Wytches, which take the idea of "be careful what you wish for" to an extended limit. For Snyder's sample, I thought a neat idea would be to use the unique preview he did for Wytches #1, where instead of having an actual snippet from inside the comic, he (and artists Jock and Matt Hollingsworth) did a brand-new six-page comic set in the world of Wytches. Check it out...if you dare!