Don't know enough about Fox specifically to comment. But historical significance and "great writer" are surely different things. Often it's hard to separate one from the other - as with Kirby and Lee - though of course they both have enough great work to be discussed in a thread like this. It's just hard to judge them on merit alone. At least imo.
Anyway, no arguments on the Kirby inclusion, and I like the nod to the past. But I'd put the question to you: was Fox also a great writer? Or more a significant one?
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his flash stuff was visionary at the time too. as to digi's question: there is certainly a distinction to be made between significant and great, but i'm not sure the degree of separation is that great in most/many cases. i think any GREAT writer, obviously carries, or has contributed work that would be considered SIGNIFICANT.
the obverse isn't necessarily true--someone can have a significant piece of work but not BE great, in terms of consistency. f scott fitzgerald, harper lee and jd salinger come to mind as novelists, but there are several more, and more current examples.
in fox's case though i would say he could be considered great. not only for his vision and impact, but for having written some truly great stories. problem is people reading them today--kids, young adults--may not see them as great NOW. does that mean they shouldn't be considered great? subjectivity is a beeatch.
Good post, not much to add. I had some really old JSA stuff at one point (reprints, not originals, but from the Silver Age) that would fall into that subjective sinkhole as well. I always enjoyed them, at least.
Frank Miller might be a good candidate for the "significant, not great" category. His best work is excellent but I'm not sure it's aged as well as some? I may be wrong.
Or Loeb. The Long Halloween is one of my favorite comics ever (and heavily influenced the Nolan movies), and he has other important works as well. But he's also been a pin cushion for criticism.
Loeb at his peak is great. The problem is he can also be bottom of the barrel stuff ever since his son went on a vacation to Valhalla.
Bendis used to be pretty good too. Nowadays he is more often than not complete trash. Which is why I was interested in someone making his best and worst lists. I don't know what happened to him though. His brain died?
He wrote Hush too, yeah? He gets Batman. Even if his "average" was far below those, I'd be cool having him on Batman indefinitely if we got work on that (or Long Halloween's) level every handful of years.
I was never terribly into Bendis, so I'm less interested there. Johns is another interesting case study, since he earned his "golden child" status at DC on things like JSA, GL and Infinite Crisis. Then he cooled considerably.
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miller is an interesting one. his best is truly great. dk is one of the greatest comics ever written, for certain. i think some of his dd stuff was truly great as well. batman year 1 was one of my fave batman stories ever and i loved wolverine. many loved ronin too. i dunno man, hard to leave him off a list of greatest comic writers of all time imo. his best matches up with almost anyone's....
bendis had some good stuff but i certainly wouldn't put him on a GREAT list yet. i'd place hickman above him, and probably johns too in terms of 'recent greats'.
not sure if anyone mentioned starlin, but as terrible as he has been (and i think his recent work has taken him OUT of any all time great list, he had some seminal works in the past and certainly deserves mention as significant, if not great.
You convinced me on Miller. I forgot he did "Year One" and I guess I haven't read as much of his stuff as I thought. I thought of Starlin briefly too, but yeah, agreed.
Bendis does very little for me. Hickman's fine. Johns was on fire for a period of time, but has cooled imo.
This is all subjective, but it's worth having the discussion just to remind us of certain writers and books. Ellis is my #1 as well, but I won't argue too hard if someone else is repping most of those mentioned in this thread, bc it's splitting hairs after a while.
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Feb 28th, 2018 04:37 PM
