Who are the top 3 comic book writers of all time

[Random4]

2018 update

[Vegan Daddy]

Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf and Cub)

Hergé (The Adventures of Tintin)

Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

[K7P5V]

Charles M. Schulz

Katsuhiro Otomo

Stan Lee

[maklelin highbain]

Stan Lee
John Byrne
Chris Claremont

nuff said

[Jim Kelly]

In terms of output, the most prolific comic book writers are

Chuck Dixon
Paul S. Newman
Gaylord DuBois

Followed by the likes of Robert Kanigher, Gardner Fox, Roy Thomas and Stan Lee. Not that quantity always equals quality.

[Coin Biter]

I don’t believe in top three lists of writers, but this seems to have developed as much into a discussion of fine comic book writers, so all to the good One name which probably should be mentioned more frequently is that of John Wagner.

[Timothy Hunter]

Here are some contenders that I haven't seen brought up, which is quite a shame considering that are probably the best in comics. (Someone please mention if someone did state one of these names before me.)

1. Kyle Baker
Truly the funniest man in comics. While not every work he does is great, but his two standout works, Why I Hate Saturn and The Cowboy Wally show automatically makes him an exceptional author in the comics medium light years ahead of most of his peers.

2. Kim Deitch
No one can write a story like Kim Deitch. He elavates the vulgar and quite honestly pretentious Alternative Comix aesthetics of someone like Clowes or Crumb and elavates it to make his stories so much more. When he writes his tales, he creates entire living breathing worlds. His found footage style of writing achieves the impossible by almost convincing the reader that his ludicrous, larger than life narratives actually could have happened.

3. Pat Mills
If there was someone who you one could point to as the greatest writer to come out of the British Invasion it would be Pat Mills. What Alan Moore was being lauded for doing with his satirical deconstructions of superheroes, his leftist themes, and his knack for his material to transcend the genres he was writing, Mill's did years earlier and better.

Honorary Mentions

4. Mark Millar
While calling Millar underrated would seem farcical, considering how much hatred there is towards his work, it would be reasonable to say that he is underappreciated. While, many in the comics community consider most of his creator owned work to be no more that mere movie pitches, I think they fail to see the sheer, unadulterated amount of heart, craft, and humanity that is present throughout his comics. His comics offer the slickness and accessibility of a Michael Bay film, while still simultaneously being heartfelt, well crafted, and often downright brilliant.

5. Jerome Charyn
Famous crime novelist, but also a criminally underrated comic book writer as well. His comics are dripping with atmosphere, making the experience of consuming them less like reading comic and more like riding an amusment park ride or undergoing a choerent dream. He is very talented at sucking the reader into his narratives, and I can't quite put my finger on why this is.

[Timothy Hunter]

Writers Mentioned Who I Personally Don't Think Are Anywhere Near The Title of the Top Three Comic Writers

These are just my opinions, I can understand why someone would like these writers. I don't wish to derail this thread.

Alan Moore
I found his early work at 2000AD (Skizz, Ballad of Halo Jones) and Warrior (Miracleman) obnoxious and juvenile. I think the only time he really performed exceedingly well as a writer was when he was at DC writing Swamp Thing and Watchmen. However both of those titles in my opinion dropped in quality towards the end, and I always considered V for Vendetta and From Hell to both be convoluted farces. His work for Image and Wildstorm, in which Moore attempted to atone for his previous negative influences on the superhero genre was incredibly bland, aside from Top Ten. His latest work with Avatar isn't even worth reading.

Warren Ellis
He always came off as someone who was trying too hard to be the next Grant Morrison. I felt most of the comics he has written try too hard to be deep or cleaver. Personally some of his stand out material was Desolation Jones and Ministry of Space. Transmetropolitan had his moments. That's about it.

Daniel Clowes
Great artist, terribly smug and pretentious writer. Much of his books, besides With a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Ice Haven, and Patience, feel like they were written by a 12 year old goth girl. A very talented 12 year old indesputibly, but still a twelve year old.

Jaime Hernandez
I want to like this writer so much, considering how much I respect his brother Gilbert, but I just can't bring myself to. I think the magical realism that is rampant in his work just falls flat, and while he definitely is a talented artist, his art is just somehow very uncompelling, in my opinion

[Random4]

Would you guys put Priest on the same level as Moore and Morrison in terms of legacy?

[dancj]

1. Kyle Baker
Truly the funniest man in comics. While not every work he does is great, but his two standout works, Why I Hate Saturn and The Cowboy Wally show automatically makes him an exceptional author in the comics medium light years ahead of most of his peers.

Why I Hate Saturn is excellent, but it's been a long time since I've really loved anything he's written. There were good bits in Plastic Man, but that's about it.

4. Mark Millar
While calling Millar underrated would seem farcical, considering how much hatred there is towards his work, it would be reasonable to say that he is underappreciated. While, many in the comics community consider most of his creator owned work to be no more that mere movie pitches, I think they fail to see the sheer, unadulterated amount of heart, craft, and humanity that is present throughout his comics. His comics offer the slickness and accessibility of a Michael Bay film, while still simultaneously being heartfelt, well crafted, and often downright brilliant.

You're not wrong. Criticism's I see of him tend to target one particular aspect of his work that someone finds distasteful (often "shock value") and then declare that that's all he relies on.

[dancj]

Would you guys put Priest on the same level as Moore and Morrison in terms of legacy?

Not even close.

[Coin Biter]

Pat Mills has probably created more famous British comics characters than anyone, his only competitor for that crown being John Wagner, but I would have to say that while he is still impressively prolific I find him currently almost unreadable. Every weekly strip tends to have a indigestible diatribe concerning the government, or the media, or Christianity, or the 18th Century, or paedophile priests. I’m not criticising the man for being political, he always was, or for being unsubtle, he always was (gloriously unsubtle you might say ), but I do have to remind myself of his early work when reading him in 2000AD these days.

[Random4]

I am interested when the general consensus of Alan Moore being the GOAT writer in comics began

is it right after "Watchmen" that he started to get that title? or was it something that was brewing already before Watchmen

[dancj]

I am interested when the general consensus of Alan Moore being the GOAT writer in comics began

is it right after "Watchmen" that he started to get that title? or was it something that was brewing already before Watchmen

I think it was certainly around that time.

His Swamp Thing was just on a different level than everything else published at the time. Any possible challengers where much lower profile books like Cerebus and American Flagg.

[Coin Biter]

Speaking of Cerebus, Alan Moore's detailed notes at the back of From Hell really proved to be a pernicious example for Dave Sim. His later Cerebus works would have been significantly more readable without wading through his endless discussions of the geopolitical situation, feminism, or how awful Ernest Hemingway was as a writer. What in Moore's hands was playful and informative, from Sim was the equivalent of being shouted at very loudly at a noisy party, while desperately trying to edge away.

I guess I could have ignored them, though, so more fool me

Dave Sim was/is a great talent, who like many other fine writers is generally (not always) more subtle in his actual work than he is when writing about his work, or about other subjects. There is a curious disconnect between the writer and the commentator, and for a wide number of reasons his work was greatly damaged by his desire to merge the roles.