The countdown continues! Here are the next four comic book writers that you voted as your favorites of all-time (out of roughly 1,023 ballots cast, with 10 points for first place votes, 9 points for second place votes, etc.).

30. Kieron Gillen – 339 points (4 first place votes)

After making a name for himself on the creator-owned series Phonogram, with artist Jamie McKelvie, Kieron Gillen began to bring his particular sense of style over to Marvel Comics, most notably in a run on Journey Into Mystery where Loki has been reborn as a pre-teen after sacrificing himself during Siege. Stuck in a land where everyone knows him (and hates him) for the evil he did as an adult but can not bring themselves to get rid of him as a pre-teen (the fact that his brother, Thor, insisted that he stick around certainly helped). While apparently not evil like his older self was, Loki still has all of the skills he had in his past life, including a strong ability to con people. Gillen introduced a few notable supporting cast members, including Ikol, a magpie who is the representation of Loki's former evil life and Leah, a handmaiden of Hela, who was ordered to help Loki. Gillen's stories were marked by both clever plots and clever dialogue, not to mention really heartfelt ideas of the very notion of whether someone truly CAN be redeemed.

After a forward-thinking run on Young Avengers (with McKelvie), Gillen and McKelvie went back to their creator-owned roots with the enthralling Wicked + Divine series.

Recently, Gillen returned to Marvel for some high profile series, like Immortal X-Men, leading into the current crossover, Judgment Day. In Immortal X-Men #1, Magneto resigns from the X-Men's Silent Council...

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Here, we get to see Gillen cleverly sum up the various characters...

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Gillen's work is so well-developed and heartfelt. It's a real treat.

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29. Mark Millar – 378 points (3 first place votes)

Mark Millar's comics career has been marked by his bold ideas. That's what makes most of his greatest works stand out - 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 bold, high concept 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.

Before deciding to concentrate on his creator-owned work, Millar first was one of the top-selling writers for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics. For DC, he did The Authority (picking the book up from Warren Ellis) and then at Marvel, he launched a number of comic books for the Ultimate Universe, including the first few years of Ultimate X-Men and then inventing the Ultimates, a new take on the Avengers that greatly influenced the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe...

Millar moved over to Marvel's regular universe, working on a number of short but notable runs on a lot of major characters, like two stints on Wolverine - one of them having Wolverine get killed and resurrected by the Hand and Hydra as an assassin. When he was cured of the brainwashing, he then hunted down and killed all of the members of the Hand and Hydra. Later, Millar introduced the concept of "Old Man ____" by showing Old Man Logan's adventures. He did a year-long stint on Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. His most significant work in the Marvel Universe, though, was one of their most successful crossovers of all-time, Civil War. That, of course, also influenced the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Not only did Millar's work influence the MCU, but his Ultimates work also saw the Marvel Universe adapt in response to the Ultimate Universe.

Many of Millar's creator-owned works have been adapted for hit films, like Wanted, Kick-Ass and The Kingsmen.

Millar currently has his own little comic book empire for Netlix where he creates a bunch of awesome new comic book series, like his most recent books, Magic Order (with Olivier Coipel), Prodigy (with Rafael Albuquerque), Night Club (with Juanan Ramírez), King of Spies (with Matteo Scalera) and more.

28. Jason Aaron – 390 (4 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 studies like Southern Bastards (with Jason Latour) and Scalped, the series he did with R.M. Guera about the residents of a reservation. Unsurprisingly, Aaron has done especially strong work on characters like Wolverine and Punisher.

Like most of the great comic book writers out there, Aaron's best work is a wonderful mix of epic stories and character-driven moments. For instance, his long run on Thor led to the original Thor losing the ability to be "worthy" enough to wield Mjolnir, so Jane Foster had to take over as Thor. However, she was in the middle of getting treatment for Stage 4 cancer, so whenever she transformed into Thor, it weakened her mortal body and it came to the point where she could not survive transforming back into Jane Foster if she became Thor ever again. So she agreed to not use her hammer. They even gave her a pet demon dog, Thori, to protect her from the hammer in case it came to her. However, when she learned of Asgardia being destroyed, she made the noble sacrifice...

Goodness, that Thori bit about "murder...self" is brilliant. Aaron is currently Marvel's biggest star writer and is finishing up an epic run on The Avengers.

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27. Jeff Lemire – 422 (10 first place votes)

Jeff Lemire is a fascinating example of seeing a writer bring his independent sensibilities to mainstream comics and having the result work out very nicely, instead of the writers who seem to adapt to the different types of comics. Lemire is currently writing series for practically every comic book company around, from Marvel to DC to Dark Horse to Image to Boom! and more! What I love about Lemire's work is how unique it is - his approaches are unlike most other comic book writers and the results often throw you off balance, but in a very compelling way.

A great example of this is his brilliant series, Black Hammer (with artist Dean Ormston), about a group of superheroes who became trapped in a small town following an inter-dimensional crisis (essentially, what happens to the heroes who were "erased" from continuity during Crisis on Infinite Earths?)

Lemire has one of the most impressive voices in comics. He has also been able to adapt his skills to all sorts of different types of books, from the Justice League to the X-Men to Green Arrow to Old Man Logan to the Sentry to the Terrifics to Moon Knight to Animal Man to all of his outstanding creator-owned works like Black Hammer, Essex County, Sweet Tooth, Descender, Gideon Falls and The Nobody. One of my all-time favorite Lemire works was the graphic novel, The Underwater Welder.

In it, a man is tormented by his memories of his dead father (and the way that his father was when he was a alive, as well), and now that he has reached the same age that his father was when he died and he is expecting his first child (a boy), he becomes obsessed with finding out the "truth" of how his father died so many years ago. During all of this, he gets caught in a journey into both the past (where he visits himself as a child) as well as the future. At the heart of the comic is a man who feels that he is tied to a certain path in life that he can't avoid no matter how hard he tries. He cannot escape this town and this life, even if it ruins his life and turns him into basically his own father. Can he break free of this? Can he break free of that description of himself? It's such a great book.