Marvel's Most Versatile Writers in Different Titles

[Charlie_1981]

Roy Thomas' fill-in issues for Spider-Man weren't so good and he admitted that he didn't get the character. Weirdly he got better on the newspaper strip which he has written since 2000.

Yeah, but Thomas did incredible runs from across a lot of books in the 60s-70s like X-men, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Thor, Conan ...

[Anthony W]

Matt Fraction is another one. He wrote one Spider-Man story but that's one of the best Spider-Man issues ever done. Then he did Hawkeye which is this famous run.

Haven't read it. I keep hearing that this is ground zero for everything I loathe about current Hawkeye.

[capandkirby]

I don't know what THE most versatile writer is, but I think Chip Zdarsky recently has proven himself to be one of their most versatile writers. Howard The Duck, Star-Lord, Spectacular Spider-Man, Marvel Two-In-One, Invaders, and Daredevil are all incredibly different kinds of books and on wildly varying scales and tones, and no matter how big a fan I was of his beforehand, he's always constantly surprising me how he handles each series and character so differently.

I second this one, he's rapidly becoming my favorite writer at Marvel.

[capandkirby]

...I also second Stern and Waid. Fantastic writers. Stern only wrote around ten issues of Cap and yet one of them is in my top five Cap issues of all-time.

[Charlie_1981]

...I also second Stern and Waid. Fantastic writers. Stern only wrote around ten issues of Cap and yet one of them is in my top five Cap issues of all-time.

JM DeMatteis also did an amazing run on Captain America and Spider-Man at his time.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

JM DeMatteis also did an amazing run on Captain America and Spider-Man at his time.

Yeah JMD wrote Vermin in Captain America and then took him in Kraven's Last Hunt, JMD's first Spider-Man story. Vermin having prior history with Cap was a part of that story.

And JMS wrote Cap well in the pages of Spider-Man in his Civil war tie ins. The "you move" speech that was JMS.

Great Spider-man writers tend to be cool at Cap as well.

[Winterboy]

New guys:
Chip Zdarsky and Matthew Rosemberg.

[Snoop Dogg]

warren ellis did nextwave and then immediately did that thunderbolts run

spencer was writing morning glories but then superior foes and ant-man at the same time

that's it, that's the post

[jackolover]

I think Bendis failed on X-Men, and that’s no criticism, because great love for his Avengers and Luke Cage/Jessica Jones. He also failed on Spider-Woman, but not a big criticism.

My vote is for Jonathan Hickman. He seems to have delivered on every story he tried.

[Shinglepants]

Others have already mentioned Al Ewing and I’d do so as well.

You have the standard super hero stuff like New Avengers, the high concept Sci-Fi Ultimates and then horror with Immortal Hulk. Think the guys shown pretty good range so far and a consistent quality of writing too.

[ermac]

John Byrne was very prolific, being part of great runs on Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four, She Hulk, Alpha Flight, WCAvengers and Namor. He also wrote Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man!

Roy Thomas also came to mind, having written good runs on X-Men, Avengers, Dr Strange, Conan...

PAD made history on Hulk but did good on X-Factor (two times) and even on a 2099 title!

[Revolutionary_Jack]

John Byrne was very prolific, being part of great runs on Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four, She Hulk, Alpha Flight, WCAvengers and Namor. He also wrote Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man!

His run on Spider-Man was among the worst there was.

Roy Thomas also came to mind, having written good runs on X-Men, Avengers, Dr Strange, Conan...

His Spider-Man issues were not good. But he's improved on the newspaper strip, so yeah, he's up there.

PAD made history on Hulk but did good on X-Factor (two times) and even on a 2099 title!

Not just any 2099 title. The 2099 title - Spider-Man 2099 which lasted longest.

And yeah PAD counts.

[responsarbre]

I'll go with Fabian Nicieza. It's impressive how he's managed to adapt his style to many different approaches. When he was writing New Warriors and X-Men and X-Force they were very different team books, running the gamut from the house style of early '90s X-Men to the EDGY EXTREME style of Liefeld to the lighter teen-angst style of New Warriors. And then he was able to write in the late '90s neoclassical style and successfully take over from Kurt Busiek on Thunderbolts and other projects, and to the '00s on Cable & Deadpool.

It says something that he was able to successfully write the original version of Deadpool that he co-created and the very different version of Deadpool that other writers built up.

Seconding FabNic! He was a real workhorse like Soule was a few years ago, but he also had a really strong creative spark. He's a writers' writer.

[KC]

Charles Soule. He has done Daredevil, She-Hulk, Wolverine, Inhumans and Star Wars books.

[Iron Maiden]

Add another vote for Roger Stern for all the reasons cited but esp his Avengers run and the GN Triumph and Torment. Currently, I'll go along with Chip Zdarsky too.