Jerry Siegel for both his Golden Age and Silver Age runs.
Among the modern writers, Morrison. Still Greg Pak is my favorite. Such an underrated and "unlucky" run.
Jerry Siegal
Otto Binder
Grant Morrison
Alan Moore
Mark Waid
Kurt Busiek
Eliott S! Maggin
John Byrne
Cary Bates
Mark Millar
Dan Jurgens
Jack Kirby
Geoff Johns
Other
See Results
Jerry Siegel for both his Golden Age and Silver Age runs.
Among the modern writers, Morrison. Still Greg Pak is my favorite. Such an underrated and "unlucky" run.
As a Superman collector over the majority of the past 35 years (gosh, I’m the 42 year old old guy now), I have to give it to Jurgens. Given, I dropped Superman with the new52 until Rebirth because, simply put, that wasn’t my Superman. I did love Morrison’s take on Supes in JLA and, as a stand alone, All Star was great. I liked Byrne for his innovative changes, even if some of it is outdated. The Superman/Clark that resonates with me is Jurgens. He found ways to reintroduce silver and Bronze Age things and really made the supporting cast pop. He handled big intercompany crossovers well and found ways to make even the most weird stories halfway decent. He also has longevity and he keeps coming back.
Dini for S:TAS
McDuffie for JL(U)
I can't vote. Really. Every writer add something to the character from a different perspective and under different times and with varied talents. Moore did few stories but they still resonate and are iconic; Morrison wrote a rtrascendental maxiseries; Byrne redefined the hero for a generation; Millar was capable of destilate the essense of Superman in Superman Adventures (overlooked great series); and so many others.
So, under such impossibility I will chose the creator of the character, Jerry Siegel, as the definitive writer. Without him, the rest had nothing to work about. I mean, Alan Moore would had ended working as a banker or Morrison could be a lawyer today.
"Never assign to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity or ignorance."
"Great stories will always return to their original forms"
"Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable." James Baldwin
What? No Bendis? Just kidding lol. Good list.
I haven't read a lot of superman but my favourite is peter tomasi
For me, in order to qualify on this list the writer had to have an actual run with the character. I think it's easier to write an amazing one-off Superman story or to write him in an ensemble than it is to actually do a 2 year or so tenure on one of his titles. So while Alan Moore and Mark Waid have wrote some amazing Superman stories, I can't count them as the definitive Superman writer because neither did it consistently for an extended period of time.
So I suppose with that criteria, I'll go with Grant Morrison, John Byrne, and Dan Jurgens in that order. Strange list considering the three were very different from one another. However, All Star Superman ranks as one of the greatest Superman stories of all-time in my book and Grant followed that up with a really solid run on Action Comics. John Byrne was the Superman I started reading when I first got into comics and I felt like he captured the Golden Age incarnation of the character while simultaneously modernizing him for a new generation of fans. And while Dan Jurgens will always be tied to Death & Reign, I think given that he wrote the character for a decade it was a very consistent, very underrated period for the character that gets a bad rap because it ran out of steam in its final 2 or 3 years.
Morrison followed by Byrne and Jurgens.
J Michael Straczynski
Chuck Austen
Mark Schultz