Here are the last three 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.

3. George Perez – 1907 points (52 first place votes)

Perez first began working at Marvel Comics in the mid-70s on a few different, lower rung titles. Eventually his skills got his promoted to major titles such as Fantastic Four and the Avengers. Right off the bat, Perez' storytelling skills were excellent, but style-wise, he seemed to be trying a bit too hard to draw like a sort of Marvel "House Style."

Check out these Perez pages from Avengers #143 (inked by Sam Grainger)...





They're definitely good pages, but it's almost difficult to see the Perez in them. This likely had a lot to do with Perez trying to hit deadlines, as well.

Fast forward less than twenty issues later, and you now see the Perez we've all come to know and love, with the detailed lines and the intricate panels...







In 1980, while still drawing the Avengers, Perez began to work for DC drawing Justic League of America, becoming the first artist ever to draw the Avengers and the Justice League!



While Justice League was the carrot that initially drew Perez to DC, it turned out that his legacy was going to be relaunching the Teen Titans' comic book with Marv Wolfman. The New Teen Titans quickly became DC's hottest book, and Perez's art was clearly a huge part of that success. His work on their private lives instantly humanized him...







Of course, he could also draw action if need be.



Perez's talents ended up leading him off of the New Teen Titans, as first he drew the massive DC crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths and was soon convinced to relaunch Wonder Woman. He drew it as well as plotted it (and for a while scripted it, as well). Perez also wrote and drew Action Comics for a spell.

In the late 1990s, Perez proved that you CAN go home again when he returned to the Avengers for an acclaimed run with Kurt Busiek...



More recently, Perez has debuted a new ongoing series for Boom! Studios called Sirens.

Go to the next page for #2-1...

2. Frank Quitely – 2553 points (92 first place votes)

After getting his start in independent papers in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, Vincent Deighan (AKA Frank Quietly) began to get more high profile work in England.

He also began to get assignments from DC Comics (particularly their Big Book line). His first major assignment for DC was on the Vertigo mini-series, Flex Mentallo, with writer Grant Morrison.







That series showed us what we were going to see for the rest of Quitely's career - one of the most imaginative comic book artists ever, but also one who mixed that imagination with detailed craftsmanship and a dynamic edge that is hard to beat.

Other assignments followed, including a Batman prestige one-shot with writer Alan Grant.

Quitely also drew an acclaimed JLA graphic novel with Grant Morrison introducing the new versions of the Crime Syndicate of America into the DC Universe.

Quitely's next major assignment was as the regular artist on the Authority, with Mark Millar, as the successors to Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch on the popular title.

Quitely's run was aborted, though, when Morrison got him the gig drawing New X-Men for Marvel.





Since New X-Men, Quitely has almost solely worked with Morrison on a number of popular and critically-acclaimed comics, including We3, about a trio of animals turned into killing machines and then turned loose by their trainer before they were set to be liquidated...





and All Star Superman...





and the initial arc of Morrison's Batman and Robin series....





Most recently, Quitely drew an issue of Morrison's current event series, Multiversity.

1. Jack Kirby - 3859 points (200 first place votes)

Jack Kirby broke into comic books in the very early days of the medium. He and his partner, Joe Simon, created the classic character Captain America for Timely Comics. Here's some Kirby penciled pages from the third issue of the series...







Kirby and Simon were one of the few "superstar" creative teams of the era, and after Timely failed to take care of them, they signed a lucrative deal with DC Comics, producing a number of popular comics for them, including the Boy Commandos.

World War II interrupted their early success, and after Kirby returned from the War, he and Simon moved on from superhero comics (which were a bit on the wane) and began working on comics in many different genres. Together, they basically created the romance comic book.

They also did horror comics, crime comics, western comics, pretty much everything.

Eventually, Simon and Kirby's work began to dry up a bit, so they split to pursue work on their own. Kirby worked for DC Comics for a bit, including introducing the Challengers of the Unknown, but ultimately ended up back at Timely Comics, now known as Atlas, and soon to be known as Marvel.

Kirby was one of a small crew of artists working at the company, and editor-in-chief and main writer Stan Lee gave Kirby a lot of responsibility for how the stories were told at Atlas (Lee would go over a basic plot with Kirby, Kirby would then draw the story and Lee would add dialogue to the finished story).

In the early 1960s, after DC was starting to see a lot of success from their superhero revivals, Marvel got back into superheroes, and Kirby and Lee created almost all of them, most notable being the first major Marvel superhero comic, the Fantastic Four.

While there, Kirby drew some of the greatest moments in comic book history, from the time that the Fantastic Four first saw Galactus...





to the formation of the Avengers...



to Doctor Doom stealing the Power Cosmic...





Kirby was all over it during the 1960s.

He particularly enjoyed working on Thor, and here are two of his very best Thor pages, from Thor #130...





WOW, the power in those pages is jaw-dropping!

By the end of the decade, though, Kirby was unhappy with Marvel. At least part of the reason for his unhappiness was that he felt as though he was not getting enough credit for the work he was doing (on Fantastic Four, for instance, Kirby was effectively plotting the book himself, only Lee would change stuff at a whim, forcing Kirby to re-do future issues). Whatever the precise reason, Kirby split from Marvel and signed a major deal with DC Comics, where he created a number of major characters for them, including the Fourth World line of comics. Here are some stunning examples of his art from the Fourth World, as well (one of the pages is included almost solely because it has literal Kirby krackle in it!)...







Ultimately, Kirby soured on DC, as well, and actually went back to Marvel for the rest of the 1970s, although he was given the freedom to basically do what he wanted with the titles he was given (Captain America, Black Panther and his own creations, the Eternals and Devil Dinosaur, etc.).

He left comics for a time in the early 1980s to work in animation. Also in the 1980s, he would do some creator-owned work for Pacific Comics and other places (which was a big deal at the time), He he also did some more work for DC in the mid-80s on his Fourth World characters.

His last major comics were done with Topps Comics in the early 1990s as well as Phantom Force (which Image Comics ended up putting out), before Kirby passed away in 1994.

Okay, that's the list! Hope you enjoyed it!