I doubt you have a lot of time to answer questions from your readers, but I’m going to cross my fingers in hope that you’ll take a moment to provide everyone, or at least me, with a list of your all time favorite writers and artists. Maybe a list of your top five?

There are some writers that I’ve fallen in love with and try to pick up all of their stuff, first it was Frank Miller, Then it was Jeph Loeb, now it’s Alan Moore, and because you know more than anyone else I can think of, your opinion would mean a lot to me. Who are your all-time favorite writers, whose stories never seem to fail, who should I make my next obsession?

I would absolutely love to know.

Well. That is a tough one, Dave. For the sake of brevity, we’ll table the question of artists for another day. How do you judge “best” or “worst” in any form of artistic endeavor? It’s a near-impossible question, as on any given day you could ask me the same thing and I might give you five different answers, depending on what I’ve read recently, who I’ve been talking comics with lately, and even what mood I’m in. The only fair way is to take a good hard look at the archives here at COMICS 101 HQ, with an eye toward three questions:

1. Whose work do you have the most of?

2. Whose work will you buy, sight unseen, based on the name alone?

3. What books have been most frequently re-read?

With that criteria in mind, assisted by an unavoidable dose of pure favoritism, check out below my “Top Five” writers in comics. At least, that is, for today…

5. Kurt Busiek

Busiek broke on to the scene with his award-winning miniseries MARVELS with Alex Ross, after years in the trenches as a writer of fill-ins, miniseries, and less than blockbuster titles at both Marvel and DC. Smartly, Busiek parlayed that success into something all his own, KURT BUSIEK’S ASTRO CITY, a fantastic new series that combined all of Busiek’s influences from comics and prose and allowed him to create his own super-hero continuity from scratch, tantalizingly parceling out bits and pieces of his characters’ history one storyline at a time. With the partnership of penciller Brent Anderson and cover artist Alex Ross, ASTRO CITY became an even bigger hit than MARVELS, garnering numerous awards and excellent sales numbers.

ASTRO CITY in turn put Busiek in the position to return to Marvel in the catbird seat, taking over the high-profile relaunches of IRON MAN and AVENGERS after the “Heroes Reborn” Rob Liefeld debacle. Busiek’s AVENGERS run cemented his reputation as the go-to man for team books, combining an unerring memory for continuity and characterization with just the right mix of action and drama, and a real knack for the careful use of the subplot. During that Marvel period, Busiek also shocked everyone with his stunning twists and turns on THUNDERBOLTS, and spent a year exploring and correcting the ins and outs of Avengers history in the time-travel epic AVENGERS FOREVER.

But Busiek’s no one-trick pony. Whether it’s the high-octane adventure of the sci-fi aviator series SHOCKROCKETS, the enthralling mix of fantasy and alternate history in ARROWSMITH, or the classic sword-and-sorcery style of CONAN, Busiek has shown the ability to deftly jump to any number of genres, and still tell story after story that keeps the reader coming back for more. And if superheroes are what you crave, you can’t go wrong with his amazing JLA/AVENGERS miniseries, the crossover to end all crossovers. However, for Busiek at his best and most emotionally satisfying, start with his ASTRO CITY collections, which marvelously blend superhero action with compelling human storytelling. Currently at work on CONAN and a new ASTRO CITY miniseries, Busiek just finished up a 6-issue run on JLA.

4. James Robinson

James Robinson’s work first came to people’s attention on the Malibu series FIREARM. Malibu had found some success early on with their “Ultraverse” family of superhero characters, including PRIME, ULTRAFORCE, HARDCASE and NIGHT MAN. FIREARM was the odd man out in the bunch, centering on an all-too-human Pasadena private eye who kept finding himself unwillingly drawn into cases involving “metahumans.” When the “Ultraverse” books folded after Marvel bought up Malibu, Robinson turned his attention to DC, first finding success with the miniseries THE GOLDEN AGE, then making a real name for himself on his new series STARMAN, created with artist Tony Harris under the editorship of the great Archie Goodwin. STARMAN is the generational story of a young man forced into the family business by the death of his brother, only in this case the family business happens to be – what else? – being a superhero.

Over the course of 80 issues and numerous miniseries and specials, Robinson tells a remarkably linear story of one hero’s career, beginning to end, and does a far better job than most of making the series’ protagonist, Jack Knight, feel like a real person. A good writer can make you identify with his protagonist, but more than that, I really felt like I knew Jack Knight, and silly as it sounds to say it, I miss him now that he’s gone. That, to me anyway, is the mark of a great writer. We’ll have more to talk about regarding this can’t-miss series, probably my favorite to this day, when I eventually get to my Starman column, but suffice it to say that purchasing the TPB collections of STARMAN, now finally available from beginning to end, would not be dollars poorly spent. And if you’ve got little ones looking for some good comics to read, Robinson’s series LEAVE IT TO CHANCE, produced with his GOLDEN AGE partner Paul Smith, is another winner. These days Robinson is making a living for himself as a screenwriter, but here’s hoping that someday soon he gets the itch to return to comics.

3. Will Eisner

What’s there to say about Eisner that hasn’t already been said? The man was a visionary, a genius of visual storytelling, and the patron saint of comics as “art.” With all that, it’s easy to forget that Eisner was also a damned good writer. His postwar work on THE SPIRIT (stories that are just now being reprinted in current editions of DC’s THE SPIRIT ARCHIVES) crackled with a wit and energy that his more formulaic SPIRIT offerings from early in the series’ run lacked, especially as Eisner became more willing to move the Spirit into the background in stories like “Ten Minutes” and “The Story of Gerhard Shnobble.” Later in his career, Eisner produced novel after novel, full of compelling stories about real people, having given up the easier route of action-adventure, telling tales about the kinds of things really interested him, the joy and heartbreak of living. A CONTRACT WITH GOD, THE BUILDING, INVISIBLE PEOPLE, MINOR MIRACLES, TO THE HEART OF THE STORM, the list goes on and on.

He’s been gone six months now, but his newest book, THE PLOT, is just now hitting stores. Pick it up – I intend to.

2. Alan Moore

Longtime readers of this column might have noticed that whenever new readers ask for graphic novels to pick up, I tend to recommend the same ones: WATCHMEN. V FOR VENDETTA. SWAMP THING. It’s no coincidence that these and so many more sprang from the mind of Alan Moore, the “mad genius” of comics. There are countless things to say about Moore’s work, but perhaps the most easily overlooked thing is the man’s versatility. He can write anything, and do so with a subtlety and an almost maddening effortlessness that must make lesser writers (meaning, well, everybody else) gnash their teeth in frustration. Moore’s work on SWAMP THING took a second-rate DC horror character and transformed it into an affecting, occasionally heartbreaking work of romance and suspense. His childhood affection for Marvelman, the British version of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel, spurred a startlingly stark and disturbing exploration of superpowers in MIRACLEMAN. V FOR VENDETTA explores Moore’s distrust of government and authority, taken to the ultimate degree, and personified in V, probably the most cheerful and likable anarchist murderer ever presented in popular fiction. And finally, acting almost as a capstone to this period of his work is WATCHMEN, Moore and Dave Gibbons’ ultimate deconstruction of the comic-book superhero, pulling in readers with a “real-world” approach, then absorbing them in a work so intricate in its storytelling devices and layered themes, that personally, even having read the book dozens of times, I still discover new nuances every time I read it.

After a bit of a fallow period, Moore roared back to life with scores of new projects. With artist Eddie Campbell, Moore published FROM HELL, a scratchy and chilling look at the Whitechapel murders that put forth as good a theory as any about the identity of Jack the Ripper. Working for Rob Liefeld’s publishing company, Moore wallowed in his love for all things Silver-Age Superman in the SUPREME series, a book that subtly mocked and analyzed the classic comics it was at the same time paying tribute to. (Of course, Moore had already written what many consider to be the best Superman story ever in “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” the final appearance of the classic Silver-Age Kal-El before his post-CRISIS John Byrne revamp kicked in.)

Moore’s output took a prodigious leap forward with the creation of his own new comics imprint, AMERICA’S BEST COMICS, published through Jim Lee’s company Wildstorm (which, of course, later was purchased by DC, putting the famously anti-DC Moore in a sticky position which never quite settled itself to Moore’s satisfaction). After a drought of new Alan Moore comics for what seemed like forever, suddenly new and absolutely wonderful series were hitting the shelves practically every week. TOM STRONG channeled the best of Tarzan, Superman, and Doc Savage in a brilliant mix of styles and themes. TOMORROW STORIES gave Moore a chance to flex his muscles with a variety of comics archetypes, most notably Greyshirt, a thinly disguised “Spirit” pastiche that let Moore really show what he could do with the eight-page short story in Eisner’s style. All of Moore’s new interests in sorcery and the psychology of “magic” showed up in PROMETHEA, and in a notion of sheer genius, Moore combined the superhero team with the storytelling style and interconnected storylines and characters of the TV cop drama in TOP TEN. And as if all that wasn’t enough, Moore took the superhero team back to the Victorian age in LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, uniting famed characters Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll, Mina Harker, Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man in several globetrotting adventures literally teeming with characters, locales and concepts from the literature of the period, so carefully and smoothly combined that the casual reader would barely notice. Any one of these books would be enough to cement a writer’s reputation. The fact that they’re all the work of a single man is staggering.

1. Stan Lee

How can it not be Stan? The Fantastic Four. The Hulk. Spider-Man. The Mighty Thor. Dr. Strange. The X-Men. Iron Man. The Avengers. As a kid, thanks to the ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS reprint series, my first exposure to these characters wasn’t necessarily the comics currently being published, but their original appearances by Stan, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Much is made of the fact that Kirby and Ditko don’t get enough credit for their work at Marvel, and there’s no denying that. However, it also always needs to be said that, at least for me, it was the voices of the characters that made Marvel’s heroes more alive than DC’s – the humor and angst of Spider-Man, the depression of Ben Grimm, the cool confidence of Captain America, the tortured soul of the Silver Surfer.

And even with the more than considerable partnership of fine artists and co-plotters like Kirby, Ditko, Gene Colan, John Romita, John Buscema and many others, it often goes unremarked that Stan was for quite a few years writing the bulk of Marvel’s output himself, not only balancing dozens of characterizations, but creating all of the countless connections that were woven back and forth between all the Marvel series, creating the notion of the “Marvel Universe” that DC and practically every other comic-book publisher would eventually imitate.

And on a personal level, it was reading Stan’s introductory chapters in the ORIGINS books that made me realize at a young age that there were people who actually made their living as writers, and that perhaps that might not be such a bad racket to get into.

Luckily, the bulk of Lee’s creative output is now readily available, both in handsome full-cover hardcovers and much more affordable ESSENTIAL black-and-white editions. The ambitious among you should start with FANTASTIC FOUR and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and go forward from there.

Naturally, all Scott Tipton can think of now are all the people who were left off the list and shouldn’t have been: Barks, Gaiman, Waid, Gruenwald, Miller, Fox, Broome, Johns, Sim, O’Neil, Conway, Binder, Stern, and the list goes on and on…If you’d like to argue with my choices or name your own, send your e-mails here.

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