This subject reminds me of George Perez. He was big in the 80's and kinda vanished only to get a second life when he did the Busiek Avengers run.

I think Perez might have been pigeon-holed as the groups-of-superheroes guy, and that was all the audience really wanted from him. (Although, honestly, I think his strengths are 100% orientetated towards doing Moebius/European style sci-fi fantasy books.)

Although Kirby had a similar career trajectory, moving from a cover-featured artist in the '40s and then kick-staring the genre that propped the entire industry up to.... not much of nothing in the mid-to-late-fifies and then being the most important artist in American comics in the '60s.

People with a classic style tend to remain popular if they ever get popular in the first place. So someone like Wally Wood or George Perez will always remain popular I think. People with a more unique and stylized look can gain noteriety and then lose it when mainstream tastes change, the whole Liefeld look is a good example.

I don't think Kirby ever lost popularity, but I think his popularity was among people less likely to try something new. They wanted Kirby on Spiderman or nothing. They weren't going to try anything creator owned by him, but would have lined up to buy his return to Avengers like it was the new Star Wars movie. I think those people's tastes are nostalgia based though.

It's an interesting question, and I think there's no one answer. First, the industry is kinda fickle, and fans tend to like what they like. Someone like Frank Brunner doesn't get that much attention these days because he had a relatively small body of work, and that's because he didn't really play the industry's game. I'd put someone like Alan Weiss in that category, too-- they produced fantastic work and have their fans, but their names weren't as big as Steranko's or BWS', so they never quite grew out of cult status. On the other hand, someone like Rich Corben, who would have been classified as a cult artist in the '90s, seems to be enjoying his greatest popularity these days since the '70s, and I'd say that's because he was willing to start taking more mainstream/commercial work, beginning with his Hellblazer work with Azzerello through his stuff with Mignola.

Second, I think Jim Lee's art endures because it's kinda baseline for what we expect from a superhero comic these days. He very much follows an Adams/Byrne template with a little Chaykin and BWS thrown in. You know what you're getting from a Jim Lee comic. As familiarity tends to rule in comics these days, Lee's art is comfort food. That's why DC uses his art as their model these days. I mean, they're not going to push, say, JH Williams III's style on most artists because they realize that Williams is a harder act to follow. (Although I guess they did do that with Amy Reeder and Trevor McCarthy.)

As far as Stephen Platt, he's actually shifted his style quite a bit, and most of his work these days is in the European market, which shocked me when I first heard it. I haven't read any of his Euro work, but I've seen scans and it actually looks very solid.  He's not Moebius or Bilal, but he's producing some interesting stuff. 

Stephen Platt's making mad ass money working in Hollywood as a designer. He doesn't need comics these days.

I thought I read that IDW is putting out one of those fancy art books of Thorne's Red Sonja. Brunner, as someone mentioned, didn't have a large body of work. And I think Bode's early death really put a crimp into his cartooning career.

(More seriously, while Bode was a good friend of Wrightson, Jones, and that group, he was mainly published in undergrounds and fanzines, but never accepted by most of the underground artists as one of them. Maybe 'cause he came out of SF fandom. But if there was more existing video of his cartoon concerts, I think he'd be quite the cult figure today.)

i think I'm more surprised by someone like Steranko, who produced some innovative comics for three or four years and has managed to milk them for another forty.