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.).

46. John Ostrander – 211 points (2 first place votes)

John Ostrander got into comic book writing relatively late, as his first career was in the theater. He has more than made up for lost time over the last thirty years, first at First Comics, writing Grimjack and then at DC Comics, writing the Suicide Squad and Firestorm and later The Spectre (plus various other mini-series and a run on Martian Manhunter).

Ostrander excels at coming up with multi-faceted characters and then playing them off against each other in thoughtful plots. His work on The Spectre had some of the most interesting comic book discussions of religion out there. In the Suicide Squad, he developed one of the great new characters of the 1980s in Amanda Waller, the conflicted head of the Suicide Squad. Check her out standing toe to toe against Batman (who had infiltrated the prison that the Suicide Squad used as a home base to investigate rumors of the government using supervillains as operatives)....

Another major character who was introduced in Suicide Squad was Oracle. You see, after the Killing Joke, Ostrander and his wife, Kim Yale, were irritated at how Barbara Gordon was used in that story. Yale, in particular, really wanted them to try to find a way to give Barbara Gordon some agency back, so the two of them came up with the idea of making Barbara a computer hacking superhero, all while in a wheelchair, thus giving the world the most notable hero in a wheelchair since Professor X!

Ostrander also wrote for Dark Horse's Star Wars line for years, including launching one of the best Dark Horse Star Wars series of all-time, Star Wars Legacy (set 125 years after Return of the Jedi).

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45. Jaime Hernandez - 213 points (4 first place votes)

Jaime Hernandez has been telling the story of his famed creation, Maggie, for almost forty years now, and what is particularly amazing to me is the way that he has been using that history to make the comics even stronger in recent years. Take the brilliant "The Love Bunglers," where Maggie gets a second chance at love with Ray, her former love interest (most famously from "The Death of Speedy Ortiz" in the early 1980s). Hernandez has done such wonderful work with Maggie over the years that we know her as well as we know any longtime friend or family member. We know how she works. We know her quirks. We know her best qualities. We know her worst qualities. And all of them are at play when she gets involved with Ray again, with both now middle-aged. Hernandez's skills are readily apparent in the control he maintains over their interactions, both with the dialogue and also his incredible skills with characterization. It's stunning, really, to see how good he was with these characters almost forty years ago and yet he is even BETTER now!

That said, I can't help but also want to show off the tremendous ending of the most famous Love and Rockets story of all time, the aforementioned "The Death of Speedy Ortiz." Look at how well Hernandez wrings every possible emotion out of these pages...

Such beautifully haunting work.

More recently, Jaime has been having a lot of fun with the character of Tonta (within Maggie's same "universe").

44. Al Ewing – 217 points (7 first place votes)

Al Ewing got his start working in indie comics in England before starting to get regular gigs at 2000 A.D. In 2007, Garth Ennis hand-picked Ewing to succeed him on his Dynamite series, Jennifer Blood. At the time, I thought it was an absurd decision to continue the series, as the Ennis-penned issues had a fairly definitive end, and so I thought Ewing was walking into an awful situation. Somehow, though, Ewing made it work, essentially deconstructing the very IDEA of a "justified vigilante" by showing us that our "hero" really wasn't all that heroic after all.

Ewing began to get assignments at Marvel Comics, and he became well regarded for both his sense of fun, but also his wonderful way of utilizing continuity. Ewing is well-versed in Marvel history, and his stories often use Marvel's long history in a new and clever way.

His breakout series for Marvel was Immortal Hulk, a series that followed up from a plot line introduced in the "No Surrender" arc of the Avengers that Ewing worked on with some other writers, where we learned that the Hulk was, well, you know, immortal. However, Ewing basically redefined the history of all Gamma-related beings in a fascinating new way.

Meanwhile, at the same time, his works were HEAVY in characterization, like this origin sequence for one character's feelings about the Hulk, spotlighting how destructive the Hulk's past rampages were...

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Ewing continues to be one of Marvel's top writers, showing off his range and his sense of mixing continuity with strong chracter work, like this bit from his series, X-Men: Red, featuring Magneto...

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A series that spotlighted Ewing's sense of fun and his inventive new takes on continuity was the anniversary miniseries, Ant-Man, which spotlighted all of the heroes to have used the name, Ant-Man, including a new futuristic Ant-Man, with Ewing using the very nature of comic book storytelling a part of the issue with a futuristic technology filling in for a "Marvel" syle story...

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complete with the trademark cliffhanger mode...

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Very clever work from a very clever comic book writer.

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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​43. Paul Levitz – 220 points (3 first place votes)

Paul Levitz got his start while working on the respected news fanzine, The Comic Reader, while he was still a teenager. He spent enough time communicating with DC Comics that he was given a few freelance gigs at the company, including doing text pieces, short stories and assistant editing. While he was in college, he began getting more and more writing assignments to the point where he was essentially a full-time writer at DC before he was even 20. Levitz had been attending college for a business degree, which likely served him well later in his career when he became a longtime executive for DC Comics.

One of Levitz's first regular assignments was on All-Star Comics, where he picked up from Gerry Conway on the revitalized new team of younger heroes following in the footsteps of the original Justice Society of America. To this end, Levitz created the Huntress along with artists Joe Staton and Bob Layton, having her be the daughter of Batman and Catwoman on Earth-2, who becomes a hero to avenge her mother's death...

Paul Levitz had already had a short, but well-liked, run on the Legion of Super-Heroes during the 1970s, so when he returned to the book in 1981, readers had reason to be excited, but after a short run with Pat Broderick, Keith Giffen joined Levitz, and when the got together, they clicked in a way no one could imagine – and soon, the Legion was probably DC’s second biggest title, next to the New Teen Titans (Giffen joined the book with #285 and Larry Mahlstedt joined with #290).

It was not long on the book before Levitz and Giffen began the epic storyline that became their most notable work, the Great Darkness Saga, which introduced Jack Kirby’s Darkseid as a villain of the Legion, in a brilliantly moody action adventure story that saw the Legion involved in a battle greater than any they had seen before (or at least more visceral).

Check out the amazing reveal that Darkseid is the villain (right after Brainiac realizes that Darkseid has turned the entire population of Daxam against the Legion)…

What a stunning reveal.

Giffen’s artwork handled both action scenes and character moments with equal greatness, and Levitz was sure to give him a lot of both, keeping the book extremely grounded in humanity, while also keeping the action at a breakneck measure.

After the Great Darkness Saga, and a few character pieces, they had the landmark 300th issue, after which Giffen began to experiment with his artwork while, at the same time, he began to have more of an influence in the writing department.

Levitz, Giffen and Mahlstedt launched a brand-new Legion series together, a brutal storyline that left one Legionnaire dead, and Giffen departing the book.

Levitz continued his run with artists Steve Lightle and Greg LaRocque, until eventually Giffen returned for the conclusion of the new volume of the Legion, at which point Levitz basically retired from writing to concentrate on his executive position at DC (decades later, Levitz returned to writing the Legion before and after the New 52).