The countdown continues!
Here are the next four artists that you voted as your favorites of all-time. Click here for the master list of all of the creators listed so far.
10. Pia Guerra
Pia Guerra's big break came in 2002 when she launched Y the Last Man with Brian K. Vaughan and Jose Marzan. Right from the get go, her striking page layouts and easy-to-relate-to character figures were a perfect mix for Vaughan's story. Just check out the moment when all males on Earth die in #1...
Brutal.
She also was exemplary in what is likely the most famous Y the Last Man story arc, the one where Yorick (the last man from the title) is tortured in an attempt to get to the bottom of what is pretty clearly a death wish on his part (due to survivor's guilt). Guerra is brilliant in this moment where Yorick remembers his first time having sex...
Oh man, those pages still stick to my brain over a decade later.
Guerra was the main artist on Y the Last Man for its entire run and she and Marzan won an Eisner Award for Best Penciler/Inker Team.
9. Amy Reeder
Amy Reeder broke into comics after being part of Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga. This lead to her series, Fool's Gold...
She then became the regular artist for Matt Wagner's Madame Xanadu series at Vertigo. Her heavily stylized and dynamic artwork soon made her a fan favorite...
After a stint on Batwoman, she began to work on her own title, Rocket Girl, at Image (with Brandon Montclare). The kinetic energy of her work is astonishing...
Go to the next page for #8-7!
8. Nicola Scott
After initially working as an actress, Nicola Scott slowly broke in to the American comic book market in the mid-2000s (she is from Australia originally). Her big break was taking over Birds of Prey with writer Gail Simone with #100...
Scott then followed Simone on to the ongoing series, Secret Six. After a couple of issues of Wonder Woman (also with Simone), Scott took her vibrant, action-packed artwork over to a high profile stint on Teen Titans (with writer JT Krul)...
In the New 52, she and James Robinson re-invented the Justice Society in Earth 2, a big hit for DC...
(She worked with veteran inker Doug Hazlewood on all of the above projects, by the way)
She drew Earth 2 for about two years before leaving the book last year. I eagerly await her next project!
7. Colleen Doran
One of the most remarkable aspects of Colleen Doran's decades-spanning work on A Distant Soil is that she could easily have chosen the route of becoming a major artist for Marvel or DC during the 1980s, but she chose to go her own path with her creator-owned book. This doesn't mean that she hasn't done a lot of fine work for Marvel and DC, of course, as she certainly has.
Her work is an impressive mixture of old school and modern elements. Her storytelling skills have also always been top rate.
She did one of the best one-off issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the spotlight on the sad life of the Element Woman...
She even did a fill-in issue of Amazing Spider-Man towards the end of Todd McFarlane's run, where you can really see how her distinct styles co-exist in a modern superhero story...
She has done a number of strong graphic novels over the last decade plus, including perhaps most notably Orbiter, with Warren Ellis, the story of a space shuttle returning to Earth under mysterious circumstances...
Now that she is wrapping up A Distant Soil, I hope to see even more work from her on a variety of projects. She's a true comic book art icon.