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.

30. Robert Kirkman – 453 points (3 first place votes)

Kirkman is most famous, of course, for co-creating the cultural phenomenon known as The Walking Dead, which he has been writing for over ten years now, including writing for the hit TV series adapted from the comics. However, Kirkman is a lot more than just that one hit comic book. In fact, while obviously The Walking Dead is what made him famous, for a while there his work on the superhero series, Invincible, was nearly just as well known within the world of comics as his work on The Walking Dead. If I had to pick a particular "style" for Kirkman, I would say that his work tends towards having plots that take a "realistic" look at what it would be like if X happened. For instance, if we lived in a world of superheroes, what would that really look like? That's what Invincible often looks like - there is a lot of death and destruction. Plus, Kirkman has always been willing to kill off characters in his titles, because, again, that's a very natural thing to happen.

Also, another strength of Kirkman's is how he comes up with compelling characters very quickly, to the point where you're quickly interested in seeing what happens to that character and that you become invested in the world of that character. A good example of this writing strength is the debut issue of his newest series, Outcast (with artist Paul Azaceta), where we meet Kyle, a man who has seemingly lost everything due to the way that he attracts demon possessions, who is being brought back into that world by a Reverend who needs his help...











That's a strong set piece in a book filled with them.

29. Brian Azzarello – 463 points (2 first place vote)

Something that I really like about looking at the various writers on a list like this is just how UNIQUE so many of these writers are - we really are lucky to have so many great writers who have such unique voices. Azarello's approach has always been to build the dialogue of a story first and then go from there. That's his mission statement - build the character up through the character's dialogue and end up with a character so well-defined that he can practically give his artist the bare minimum, plot-wise, and the story will still work, because the character has been defined THAT well. Take something like his Flashpoint Batman series, for instance. That series starred Thomas Wayne as Batman, driven to become a hero due to the death of his son, Bruce. That series was extremely grim but very strong, and the heart of it all was how well defined Thomas Wayne was - everything worked in the story BECAUSE we knew Thomas Wayne so well.

Azzarello just came off a long and acclaimed run on Wonder Woman where he achieved that feat, as well, by introducing a whole load of interesting supporting characters to Wonder Woman's overall journey. His most famous work, 100 Bullets, was all about these opening arcs where we meet new characters only to then work those characters into increasingly interconnected stories as the series went on.

We see it even in how well he defined Gotham City right off the bat in his acclaimed stint on Batman...







As you can also see, Azarello's distinct "voice" is also a trademark of his work. You always know when you're reading a Brian Azarello comic book, that's how strong his voice is.

28. Steve Gerber – 470 points (7 first place votes)

Few writers were as much "ahead of their time" as Steve Gerber. Nowadays, it seems like every other writer is bringing a "real word" vibe to their superhero comics, but back in the 1970s, when Gerber decided to bring "real world" issues into his comics, it was a lot more novel of a concept. He was not alone in doing so, of course, but unlike say, a Don McGregor, Gerber managed to do it in a way that also still appealed to a mass audience. He got in his real world topics through entertaining characters and bizarre plots. Gerber was certainly one of the more outlandish writers of his day, something that was spotlighted in both his acclaimed Defenders run and his stint on his most famous creation, Howard the Duck.

It was during his run on Howard the Duck that he wrote one of the most outlandish comic book stories ever, the issue-long ode to writer's block, "Zen and the Art of Comic Book Writing,"









Even in his later years, Gerber still managed to be ahead of the game. He wrote an acclaimed series for DC, Hard Time (about a young teen who has powers that flared up at the wrong time and made it seem like he was a murderer, so the series follows his prison life), that would have fit in beautifully as a modern-day Image series. At the time it came out, though, it was a bit of a square peg in a round hole.

Go to the next page for #27-24...

27. Mark Millar – 483 points (6 first place votes)

Mark Millar's comics career has been marked by his bold ideas. That's what marks most of his greatest works - he comes up with a bold idea and then formulates the story around it, fleshing said idea out. "What if Superman landed in Communist Russia?" "What if superheroes decided to interfere in the politics of the world?" "What if Wolverine was killed and resurrected by the Hand to serve them?" "What if Ocean's Eleven has super powers?" "What if Batman was a super-villain?" It is uncanny how many ideas Millar is able to come up with. A famous example of his fertile imagination came in Superman Adventures #41, which told 22 one-page stories in a single issue...













That's how creative Mark Millar is. He's bursting with interesting ideas.

26. Marv Wolfman – 498 points (3 first place votes)

What I think has always made Marv Wolfman a compelling writer is the way that he lets his characters drive his series. His most famous work at Marvel is probably his long run on Tomb of Dracula, and there, he was able to write such effective horror stories because he was so good at developing the characters within the series so that when bad things happened to them, there would be more of an impact to them. In addition, he has always been adept at quickly introducing characters and getting you to care about them - Blade was a cool character right off the bat and Hannibal King has one of the all-time great introduction issues. His work on Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man were a bit more plot-driven but then he came to likely his most famous work, the New Teen Titans, and there it was ALL about characters - and what characters! Wolfman and George Perez created in Raven, Cyborg, Starfire (plus essentially brand-new takes on Changeling and Wonder Girl) characters so interesting that decades later they were easily adapted into a hit cartoon series. As much as we were reading the New Teen Titans to see superhero adventures, we were reading it to check in our "friends," and to see how they were progressing in their lives. That's what made moments like New Teen Titans #39 resonate so much, where Dick Grayson gives up being Robin...









See how each character is given a chance to shine in very little space - that's Wolfman to a tee.

25. Will Eisner - 504 points (8 first place votes)

For years, every week Will Eisner had to come up with a compelling Spirit story in just eight pages. His approach was to embrace the odd format and use it to try out different and sometimes outlandish idea. Like this early Spirit story where a crook is about to kill a "rat" when a scientist approaches him to have him test a drug that lets people see the future....











A whole fight sequence set in the FUTURE! That's a cool idea NOW - in 1941 it was exceptionally trippy.

After The Spirit ended in the early 1950s, Eisner spent the next two decades working for the military on various publications and also working as a freelance designer. In the late 1970s, he returned to comics with a series of graphic novels of a personal nature - most famously "A Contract With God."

24. Jason Aaron – 512 points (3 first place votes)

Jason Aaron is one of those rare comic book writers who can seamlessly move between the grittiness of creator-owned work and the brighter area of superhero comics while keeping his styles for each one distinct. It's not like he's just doing gritty superheroes or he's doing fantastical creator-owned work - he caters his style to the book that he's writing. He can do the epic action of Thor and the character-driven fun of Wolverine and the X-Men/Amazing X-Men and also do the dark, character study that was Scalped, the series he did with R.M. Guera about the residents of a reservation. In this brilliant sequence, Lincoln Red Crow, had been tasked with taking care of the soul bundle of the slain Gina Bad Horse. Lakota tradition dictates that the guardian of the bundle maintains a harmonious life for a year, so that the soul in the bundle is purified and therefore allowed to travel into the spirit world. Bad Crow tries to live up this challenge in honor of his old friend, but in the end, he sees his reservation in danger and he feels he must do whatever it takes, even resorting to murder...













Unsurprisingly, Aaron has done especially strong work on characters like Wolverine and Punisher.

Go to the next page for #23-21...

23. Greg Rucka - 547 points (4 first place votes)

One of the hallmarks of Greg Rucka's work is the sheer intelligence often at display in his stories. They are often complex works that rely upon creating interesting conflicts between the various characters. One of his most famous works along this line is the Wonder Woman graphic novel he did with JG Jones where a woman murders the men who raped her. She then goes to Wonder Woman and invokes an ancient Amazon custom where she becomes under Wonder Woman's protection. That's all well and good, except that the woman did her murdering in Gotham City - so teammates Wonder Woman and Batman find themselves at odds with each other. Perhaps the most famous example is Rucka's award-winning Gotham Central storyline, Half a Life, where Renee Montoya is outed in front of her fellow cops while also being framed for murder. In a great scene, she is called into the office of her new boss, who also happens to be a lesbian herself...









Rucka is also noteworthy in how good he is with strong female protagonists - Montoya, Carrie Stetko, Wonder Woman, Batwoman and Tara Chace are just a handful of great female lead characters under Rucka's pen.

22. Matt Fraction – 550 points (2 first place votes)

In his early series, Casanova, Matt Fraction had a good deal of fun with the comic book format and trying new approaches of comic storytelling. That inventiveness has carried over to his recent works, Hawkeye and Sex Criminals, where Fraction uses a blend of humor and compelling characters to tell engaging pairings, like when Suzie meeeting Jon at a party in Sex Criminals #1 (art by Chip Zdarsky). Suzie has the ability to freeze time when she orgasms, so she is shocked when she learns that she is not alone...













This type of offbeat interaction is what drives Fraction's stellar Hawkeye series, as well, where Fraction has developed the female Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, into one of the top female characters in the entire Marvel Universe, while also revitalizing Clint Barton's comic career (Hawkeye hasn't seen critical acclaim like this since....uhm....anyone?).

21. John Byrne – 564 points (5 first place votes)

After cutting his teeth as the co-plotter (and eventual solo plotter) of X-Men with Chris Claremont, John Byrne made the move to the Fantastic Four as a solo writer (as well as artist). Byrne intended to treat his run in a similar manner to what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did on their original run - take the Fantastic Four to far off new worlds, introduce bizarre new characters, while still re-using the really notable ones like Doctor Doom and Galactus (and yes, Diablo, too), and that's exactly what Byrne did.

Soon after Byrne took over the book, he was tasked with coming up with a 20th anniversary story, and he came up with a beautiful one with the Fantastic Four trapped in a world by Doctor Doom where they did not have powers. It was quite a touching story.

Then Byrne launched into his first major storyline with the title, a major tale involving Galactus and the Avengers. Byrne introduced many different new alien races during his tenure with the book, but probably his most notable achievements were with the characters he already had, as Byrne did a great deal of character development during his run, specifically the evolution of Sue from the Invisible Girl to the Invisible Woman, having Sue become pregnant but miscarry, having Thing leave the team (to be replaced by the She-Hulk) and having Johnny Storm become involved with the Thing's erstwhile girlfriend, Alicia Masters. Doctor Doom, who is practically the fifth member of the book, also saw a number of interesting character work via Byrne, especially the story where the Fantastic Four did not even appear!

While on the Fantastic Four, Byrne got a chance to reboot Superman for DC and he leaped at the opportunity. Byrne made a number of changes (although, notably, he also did not change a LOT of the comic - there certainly were more similarities to Pre-Byrne Superman comics in Byrne's Superman than dissimilarities), including reducing Superman's power level to one closer to the 1940s Superman, making Clark Kent more of an important part of the book (including a revamped origin where Clark was more popular as a teen), eliminating Superman ever operating as Superboy (as Clark gained his powers in his late teens), making Superman the sole survivor of Krypton, making Krypton a cold, heartless planet and basically having all the various Superman villains be reintroduced by Byrne or Marv Wolfman (who began the reboot with Byrne, but soon Byrne took over writing his comic, as well).

Lex Luthor was re-envisioned as a ruthless businessman that the public thought of as a philanthropist (this take on Luthor was used in the Lois and Clark TV series). The Luthor change was one of the most notable aspect of Byrne's run, including this famous back-up scene from an early Superman issue...











Awesome villainy right there.