The countdown begins now!!!
Here are the first five artists that you voted as your favorites of all-time (out of roughly 1,008 ballots cast, with 10 points for first place votes, 9 points for second place votes, etc.).
EDITED TO AMEND: There were so many ties on the list that I accidentally ended up with an extra artist on the countdown, so everyone needs to be pushed back a space. So you get a sort of BONUS artist on the list this way!
51 Greg Capullo – 220 (1 first place vote)
After getting his big break on Quasar for Marvel, Greg Capullo became best known for his two stints succeeding famous Image Comics co-founders. First, Capullo took over X-Force after Rob Liefeld left that series. Then, Todd McFarlane personally chose Capullo to succeed McFarlane as the artist on Spawn. Capullo worked on Spawn for years.
After taking a break from comic books for a few years, Capullo returned to work on a new Image series by McFarlane and Robert Kirkman before then re-launching Batman with Scott Snyder in 2011 as part of DC's New 52.
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....
After a long run on Batman with Snyder, the two teamed up again for the over-the-top awesomeness of Dark Nights Metal, a major DC crossover that spun out of their Batman run. They are soon to team up again on a new Batman project.
50 Carl Barks – 222 (2 first place votes)
For decades, the creditless Donald Duck and later Uncle Scrooge comics written and drawn by Carl Barks would stand out so much compared to the other "Duck" comics that people began to identify his work despite the lack of credits. He became known all over the world as "the good Duck artist." See his skills in action in this sequence from one of his earliest Donald Duck adventure stories...
Barks could tell sweeping adventure stories with outlandish plot twists, but he never lost track of the character work behind it all.
49 Chris Bachalo -225 points (2 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.
While Bachalo's work with Buckingham was great, Buckingham was such a strong penciler in his own right that I sometimes like to look at Bachalo's later work when demonstrating his style, since Bachalo and Buckingham were so wrapped up together back then.
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 odd years, especially in the X-Office, where he has had multiple stints on Uncanny X-Men plus launching Wolverine and the X-Men.
Here is some Bachalo from his launching of Uncanny X-Men with Brian Michael Bendis. Tim Townsend has been Bachalo's most consistent inker in the years since Buckingham, but Bachalo often works with a few different inkers.
See how vibrant his stuff is?
47(tie). David Aja -227 points (3 first place votes)
David 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 things kicked it up to another notch when Aja and Fraction teamed up again on Hawkeye.
Aja tried all sort of different storytelling techniques on the series and it was a heck of a treat to see such an accomplished artist so effortlessly mix things up with the results remaining engaging even as he experimented wildly.
His most famous experimental issue was Hawkeye #11, told from the perspective of Hawkeye's dog...
Most recently, Aja has done strong work on the Dark Horse Comics series, Seeds, with writer Ann Nocenti.
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47 (tie). Jaime Hernandez –227 points (2 first place votes)
Jaime Hernandez has been drawing his characters in the pages of Love and Rockets for almost forty years now. Heavily influenced by the work of the great Dan DeCarlo, Jaime Hernandez's blends that Archie-like artwork with a more realistic setting. More important than his influences, though, are his storytelling skills. Check out how well he tells these pages...
His writing is excellent, as well, but it has always been his storytelling that really drives home the pathos in his work.
46. Joe Madureira – 232 points (8 first place votes)
The influence of manga on American superhero artwork began much sooner than the 1990s and Art Adams is probably the creator best known for bringing that influence into the world of American superhero comics, but Joe Madureira took things to a whole other level when he took over art duties on Uncanny X-Men in the early 1990s. In a field filled with Jim Lee clones, no one else looked quite like Madureira. His work was dynamic and bursting with energy. Much like how Bill Sienkiewicz opened fans horizons in his 1980s New Mutants work, so, too, did Madureira expand what fans expected in terms of "realistic" portrayals of characters. The Neal Adams ideal had been the dominant one for years, but Madureira opened up a whole new approach with his style.
The Age of Apocalypse crossover was especially important when it came to Madureira's work, as it allowed him to re-design all of the X-Men for this alternate reality and the sheer creativity at work in his designs was shocking...
Eventually, Madureira left to launch a creator-owned title, Battle Chasers, and he then got into video game design for many years. He still occasionally does comic book work and it is just as dynamic as it always was.