Our every four years countdown of your all-time favorite comic book writers and artists continues!

Here are the next five writers 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.).

10. Brian Michael Bendis – 1,303 points (11 first place votes)

It is kind of funny, we're all so used to it now because he has become such a successful and omnipresent fixture in the world of comic books, but man, Brian Michael Bendis' dialogue REALLY stands out. It's his trademark and it is really most likely the best thing about any given Bendis comic book. It is powerful, it is bold, it is practically poetic while it also naturalistic and believable. A particular approach Bendis does that I like a lot is when he uses the dialogue to both set up a scene and also to set up how outlandish it is, so it is a winking admission that the scene as shown is going to be kind of out there, but in a good way.

Here's an example from his excellent series Jinx, about a bounty hunter who falls in love with a con man. This is the introduction of Jinx in the series...

That's so Bendis and it is so compelling.

By the way, as an aside, years before there were as many strong female characters in comics as there are today (and obviously there could easily be even more), Bendis was big on cool female characters - Jinx, Jessica Jones, Deena Pilgrim, Ultimate Aunt May and Ultimate Mary Jane Watson are all very strong characters.

After cutting his teeth on creator-owned indie comics (that he drew himself), Bendis began to branch into mainstream work with a stint on Sam and Twitch for Todd McFarlane and then he used his distinct style on the Ultimate reluanch of Spider-Man. His superhero work was so popular that he was slowly brought into more superhero work. First Daredevil, which was a noir-ish book, so it perfectly fit Bendis' independent works and then the R-Rated Alias, which introduced the world to Jessica Jones (very much in the line of Bendis' Jinx series), but then as time went by, Bendis began doing more prominent superheroes works, first by launching the best-selling New Avengers revamp of the Avengers , which he stuck with for nearly a decade and then writing Uncanny X-Men and X-Men before taking over Iron Man, introducing RiRi Williams, the new hero known as Ironheart.

Recently, Bendis left Marvel after nearly two decades to move over to DC, where his creator-owned work appears while he also has taken over the reins on the Superman titles.

9. Warren Ellis – 1,307 points (14 first place votes)

Warren Ellis had worked for some small comic book houses in the early 1990s, with the most notable result being his great Lazarus Churchyard series. After a few years, Ellis began working at Marvel, with a notable run on Hellstrom and Doom 2099. His longest run at this time, though, was on Excalibur, where he introduced the world to Peter Wisdom.

After working on a number of projects for Marvel during the mid-90s (including a memorable Thor storyline), Ellis began his longest-running project yet (issue-wise), with his creator-owned series Transmetropolitan, with artist Darick Robertson, about the journalist Spider Jerusalem, who tries to take down a crooked president in the future. In one issue, the President has successfully declared martial law, but before he can fully take control, Spider takes his shot...

Ellis had already been working for Wildstorm (notably on DV8), but he took his work to a whole new level when he took over Stormwatch (Stormwatch actually predated Transmetropolitan). That series led to two of the great comic book series of the late 1990s and 2000s, the Authority and Planetary (Planetary was not tied into Stormwatch, it just launched the same time as Authority).

Planetary was about a group of (this is what is on the cover of the first issue) "archaeologists of the impossible."

Essentially, Planetary explores unexplained phenomena and, if there is any practical use to mankind out of said phenomena, they extract it. The Planetary team consists of the super-strong Jakita Wagner, the "plugged-in" Drummer and the century-old Elijah Snow. The team is funded by the mysterious "Fourth Man." The first "season" of Planetary ended with the discovery of just WHO the Fourth Man is and how that revelation changes the game plan of the title for the rest of the series. Each issue of Planetary explored the concept of "what if all popular culture characters existed, in some form or another, in the Wildstorm Universe?" So each issue, Ellis and Cassaday examined a different notable pop culture figure, almost always with analogues for the characters who are not yet in the public domain (Doc Brass, for instance, instead of Doc Savage).

As the series went by, we learned that there is a group out there with an entirely different focus than the Planetary folks - this group, known as The Four (based on the Fantastic Four, naturally), wants all of the "super-science" of the world to themselves - they don't want the rest of the world to have any access to these wonders. That, and the identity of the Fourth Man, were the key points of plot development over the first 12 issues of Planetary. The revelation of WHO the Fourth Man was excellent.

Authority, meanwhile, was Ellis taking Grant Morrison's "Widescreen" action concept from the JLA and making it even bigger in scale with artist Bryan Hitch. Like when a villain creates a race of mindless super beings at his command, Midnighter literally just used the Authority's giant ship to crash into the villain's island...

For years, Ellis would do short runs on Marvel titles (like the brilliant Nextwave with Stuart Immonen) and mix them in with short runs on independent titles (a lot of Wildstorm and Avatar stuff). In recent years, Ellis has been doing a Wildstorm revamp for DC called The Wild Storm, as well as a number of cool indie series for Image (Trees, Injection and Cemetery Beach).

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8. Geoff Johns – 1,539 points (16 first place votes)

Geoff Johns' first major series was Stars and STRIPE, starring his own creation, Star Girl. The fun and innocent tone of this series was practically infectuous. It is no surprise that Star Girl will soon star in her own series for DC's streaming service. His success on Star Girl led to Johns becoming David Goyer's co-writer on JSA, as Stargirl ended up joining that book after her series was canceled. Johns even wrote a DC crossover event early in his stint at the company, the Day of Judgement, where Hal Jordan became the Spectre. Johns soon he began getting more and more work at DC, including an acclaimed run on Flash following Mark Waid's run.

Johns was particularly notable in his Flash run for spending time on the Rogues. When you watch the "Arrowverse" on television, much of that work put into the various Rogues was part of Johns' run, where he would give each of the Rogues their own spotlight issues, including a brilliant look at Captain Cold's origin with artist Scott Kolins...

(How cool is the nice little touch with all of Cold's panels slightly askew?)

Johns most notable character work for DC has been his work revitalizing older characters like Hawkman, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. Johns memorably brought Hal Jordan back as Green Lantern, making Green Lantern one of DC's biggest titles.

This then led to Johns' Infinite Crisis, an epic DC crossover that brought the Multiverse back to the DC Universe. After that series was over, Johns was one of four writers to take on the classic 52 maxiseries (a year-long series that showed what happened when Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman all took off for a year - what happened to the DC Universe in their absence?)

One of his biggest innovations was the introduction of OTHER colored rings, which came to the forefront in the Sinestro Corps war.

This epic crossover brought to fruition a number of ideas first introduced during Green Lantern Rebirth (the storyline where Geoff Johns returned Hal Jordan to life and the Green Lantern Corps to existence). Sinestro had returned during that storyline and in this story, he returns to vex the Green Lanterns with his OWN Corps - the Sinestro Corps! The idea of a Corps of yellow-ring wielding villains (chosen because they possess the ability to instill great fear in others) was an amazing high concept. Kyle Rayner had temporarily been the host of "Ion," the entity that essentially powered the Green Lanterns. In the debut issue of the story, Sinestro not only removed Ion from Kyle, but substituted Parallax, the YELLOW entity (that Johns had introduced in Green Lantern Rebirth).

The Sinestro Corps War came to Earth and specifically Hal's former home of Coast City, which had been destroyed once before. Hal shows up to convince the people there to evacuate, but like Green Lanterns, they have no fear and they lit green candles to show their faith in their hero...

How sweet of a moment was that?

Johns used that story to introduce the other members of the Lantern "Emotional Spectrum," like Red Lanterns, Purple Lanterns, Blue Lanterns and, finally, Black Lanterns and White Lanterns. Those last two were used as the inspiration for the major DC crossover, Blackest Night.

Johns then gave Barry Allen much of the same treatment as Hal Jordan, revamping his origin and introducing the idea of Flashpoint (where Flash goes back in time to help save his mother from being killed, but when he returns, the world has been altered based on his trip to the past). Flashpoint was yet ANOTHER major DC crossover written by Johns.

When Flashpoint ended, it altered the DC Universe again, for the New 52. Johns took control of the Justice League, revamping them and adding Cyborg to the membership. It is mostly Johns' version of the League that made it into the DCEU film. Johns also took over Aquaman with his long time collaborator, Ivan Reis, and a lot of their work on that character influenced the recent hit film, Aquaman.

John then wrote another crossover for DC, Forever Evil, giving him probably more crossover events than any other writer in the history of comics. More recently, Johns then revamped the New 52 itself with DC Universe: Rebirth, which helped to bring some of the old style of DC Comics to the New 52. Johns is currently writing Doomsday Clock, a Watchmen/DC crossover that might finally explain the New 52. In addition, Johns revamped Shazam (Johns' take on the character is the one that will be used in the upcoming film) and is writing a Shazam ongoing series.

Few writers so exemplify a comic book company as Geoff Johns does the DC Universe.

7. Mark Waid – 1,727 points (31 first place votes)

Mark Waid came on to the Flash with a strong opening arc that was literally Wally West: Year One. Waid then solidified one of the best parts of Bill Loebs' previous run, the relationship between Wally and Linda Park. And then, Waid did something REALLY clever...

In "The Return of Barry Allen," Wally's greatest dream turns into a nightmare as his uncle, Barry Allen, the Flash before Wally, returns to life. Only thing are not what they seem, and soon Wally is forced to collect a group of speedsters to confront Barry, who has returned...different. This storyline introduced Max Mercury to the title and really began the whole "Speed Force" idea that became such a major part of the title. In any event, while Wally gets help from the other speedsters, he soon learns that it ultimately comes down to him and his own fears of replacing his uncle to win the day. Waid planned it this way, to show that the only way for Wally to truly be accepted as a Flash by the fans is for Wally to accept HIMSELF as the Flash.

Epic.

Waid went on to write the Flash for roughly 100 issues, including a few more great epic tales. He wrote the epic Kingdom Come for DC Comics while also doing an incredible run on Captain America with Ron Garney that was sadly cut short by Heroes Reborn. In the last issue, Captain America is hunting down Sharon Carter, who has a coin on her with a lot of sensitive information on it. He catches her up at a labor camp that she had been held prisoner in years earlier. They escape as she talks about how they have to slowly build up the resistance to eventually free the prisoners from the camp. Captain America, though, doesn't believe in that. He frees all of them at once and he single-handedly covers their escape while a SHIELD helicarrier that Captain America called in brings the prisoners to freedom...

Like I said before - Epic.

Waid is particularly good at doing relaunches of comic books, since he is such a strong student of comic book history that he knows precisely what kind of comic books to keep and what to drop. He did excellent relaunches of Archie for Archie Comics (where they renumbered the book for the first time in many decades), Superman Birthright for DC Comics (Waid's take on Superman's origin was particularly inspired by one of Waid's favorite Superman writers, Elliot S! Maggin), plus the Legion of Superheroes TWICE, once after Zero Hour and once again roughly ten years later! In both of those cases, Waid would have preferred to just use Superboy, but since that was off limits, he came up with clever alternatives to the formation of the Legion.

Most recently, Waid has been busy at Marvel Comics for the last decade. He did an amazing run on Daredevil (with Paolo Rivera, Marcos Martin and then Chris Samnee for most of the run), plus impressive runs on Avengers, Champions, Black Widow and a return to Captain America. Currently, he is writing Doctor Strange for Marvel.