Best Comic Book Writer of All Time

Started by Digi4 pages

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
Not necessarily at all and absolutely not as far as my intended message when I said that is concerned. I feel it goes without saying that what people consider the best in fields such as writing and storytelling is largely a subjective process and that rarely would somebody choose to ignore the subjective areas and focus solely on the objective merits of those disciplines. That is absolutely how I meant it, and how I feel most people would approach this topic, to the point that I feel it isn't worth making the extra effort to specify as much.

People see the word "best", their natural approach is what they personally consider the best, likewise if they see the term "of all time" usually they think of applying a universal standard. Being unnecessarily exact in these matters can be a subtle form of inefficiency.

Not necessarily as the people who mentioned Stan Lee maintained that position after I drew the distinction between "best" and "greatest" and -PR-'s response seemed to indicate that he simply valued certain aspects of his style and methodology, and his imaginative character-building over such things as dialogue and scientific accuracy, in considering him the best.

Good story. I didn't really want to get into this with you. There was some confusion, and I offered some advice for disambiguation. Take it or leave it in your threads. It's not worth playing "yuh-huh, nuh-uh" over who's right.

kittymeow

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
Not necessarily as the people who mentioned Stan Lee maintained that position after I drew the distinction between "best" and "greatest" and -PR-'s response seemed to indicate that he simply valued certain aspects of his style and methodology, and his imaginative character-building over such things as dialogue and scientific accuracy, in considering him the best.

Don't put words in my mouth, please.

Well I did say "seemed to indicate"...

Okay.

I think the most versatile writer on this list is Gaiman and Morrison.

Originally posted by Digi
Good story. I didn't really want to get into this with you. There was some confusion, and I offered some advice for disambiguation. Take it or leave it in your threads. It's not worth playing "yuh-huh, nuh-uh" over who's right.

kittymeow

Concession accepted. 😄

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
Have you checked out his Batman run? It's his best work imo and my personal favorite comic book continuing storyline ever.

Morrison's Batman run was a contrived, convoluted mess.

If I were to break it down like Digi said, I'd probably separate it in to things like scope, dialogue etc.

Scope would be Morrison. No writer in this day and age thinks on the same level he does, or as abstractly, imo. Honourable mentions would be guys like Mack, or Gaiman.

Dialogue? I'd have to go for someone like Whedon. He's what Bendis should be, in that he writes realistic dialogue without sacrificing characterisation. Honourable mentions would be guys like Morrison, Johns and Gillen.

General storytelling? Guys like Byrne, Claremont back in the day, Johns right now, Morrison too. Jason Aaron when he finds a character that suits him, is awesome.

Revamping/referencing: Johns. I don't think any writer alive can take a stupid concept, or an old concept, and give it a new lick of paint and a modernised spin as well as Johns can. His work on GL alone is indicative of that, imo.

Favourite writers right now? Gillen, Hopeless, Aaron, Johns, Simone.

Originally posted by srankmissingnin
Morrison's Batman run was a contrived, convoluted mess.

Well not everyone can be a fan I guess...

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
Well not everyone can be a fan I guess...

Best thing I can say about Morrison's run is that it never made me drop the title... which is more than I can say for Synder.

I'm sure THAT will piss some people off. 😈

People are mentioning Whedon when he completely and utterly killed Runaways. He had a good X-Men run and just about everything else he's written has been garbage in my opinion 😛

I'm not seeing any mentions of Remender and while some of his stuff might not be for everyone he's basically one of the two writers that are keeping me in Marvel nowadays.

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
Jeff Lemire's great but I've found him to be a bit more hit or miss then someone like say, Scott Snyder.

When you bring up I'm not really a fan of his Superboy stuff, at all.

Originally posted by srankmissingnin
Best thing I can say about Morrison's run is that it never made me drop the title... which is more than I can say for Synder.

I'm sure THAT will piss some people off. 😈

I'm not familiar with Snyder's stuff really.

Only read Batman (overrated trash imo) and American Vampire (still enjoying this).

I'm surprised you don't like Morrison's New x-men stuff though? As it's basically the only one I've read, outside of the latter New X-Men stuff, where the x-kids felt realistic.

Spoiler:
Not enough Wolverine feats?

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
He wasn't included in the poll for good reason, and that is because he was not a very good writer. Co-creating some interesting characters and an interesting setting means little when you cannot tell a particularly interesting story. Try reading some of his older comics, the plots were incredibly simplistic and formulaic and the dialogue was practically infantile. Comics of that time were simply nowhere near the literary medium that they are today.

I'm not sure about that, the original Galactus trilogy (FF #48-50) still holds up well today IMO. It's certainly better than a lot of modern stuff.

For the current ones i'm rather fond of Jason Aaron.

Originally posted by Kazenji
For the current ones i'm rather fond of Jason Aaron.

Depends on what he's writing imo.

His Ghost Rider and X-Men run have been fairly lackluster. I wouldn't even call them bad but we're discussing the absolutely best comics here. His Punisher run was good but both Rucka and Hurwitz blow him out of the water 😛

Imo Scalped is the only comic that lets him compete here.

And I guess someone has to bring up Ennis...

Originally posted by curryman

His Ghost Rider have been fairly lackluster.

To hell with you

😐

Stan Lee's stuff might be dated to read now, but no writer ever changed the industry like he did (though he had lots of assistance from the king, Jack Kirby.)

Jack Kirby hardly gets mentioned these days when Stan Lee gets brought up, Its always he created all these characters....pretty sure he had from other people.

Originally posted by Kazenji
To hell with you

😐

Eh, nevermind 😛

I was thinking of road to damnation and Ennis wrote that one.

Though I liked Trail of Tears (Ennis) and the Daniel Ketch mini better than I liked Vicious Cycle and Heaven's on fire 🙂

Aaron didn't even have anything to do with Vicious Cycle, That was Daniel Way he basically started off that Ghost Rider run and then Jason Aaron took over around issue #20.

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
Concession accepted. 😄

Because everything on the internet is a competition. Keep trolling...

🙄