10. Joe Simon

It can be a little hard to sort out some of Simon's long career in terms of what he wrote and drew, especially his early collaborations with Kirby since they both did both. But I'm including Simon for his bonkers 70's output, particularly Prez, The Green Team, The Outsiders, Strange Sports Stories, and more. I suspect he had a hand in some of the weirder Young Love and Young Romance stories of the early 70's as well when he was editing those titles. Just weird, bizarre, crazy comics at their best.

10. Jason Aaron

Because of his epic Scalped. The depravity of living on the Rez! Getting dirty, trying to get out, the crime, the poverty, the gambling, the drugs, the sex, the killings, the blurring line of good/evil wrapped up in a brutally gritty real world. A life of desperation, shattered dreams, lost hope, lies, delusions and fractured humanity where souls are crushed, destroyed or used like pieces in a real life game of chance.

I stumbled upon this by accident browsing in the LCS and it was issue 3 and marked for $1 as the store would post worker comic book choices each week. It looked different and interesting. Picked up issues 1 and 2 along with 3 to read. It blew me away and it was on my pull list from there on in.

Aaron did his homework and didn't pull any punches in his writing. He showed the full dirty details with an emphasis upon a grit and brutality of growing up, living and leaving only to find yourself back on the Rez, a place you tried to get away from but is so deep in your blood that you can't. It is powerful writing that gained him great attention and brought him offers at the big 2 for doing his thing on superheroes.

#10- Gail Simone

Selected works: Birds of Prey, Secret Six, Wonder Woman, Batgirl



I became a fan of Gail's work with her Women in Refrigerators website and her column Y'All Be Sorry! at CBR. When Bongo Comics picked her up to do stories for The Simpsons, the ball rolled and DC gave her Birds of Prey at issue 56 back in 2003 and it sealed it for me. Her flair for smart dialogue and banter mixed with super twisty plots makes for fascinating reading. Taking what Chuck Dixon did with Birds of Prey, Gail made it more feminine and gave the ladies a softer side that was sorely missing from the book. It was engaging with personal drama with the heroics thrown in there.

Then it came to Secret Six; rebooting the concept of Grade Z heroes, and they were, into fascinating reads and characters you actually give a care for. Also, giving diversity to the characters; minority characters getting more spotlight. LGBTQ positive heroes, Gail's writing made her community of fan inclusive and a delight.

She's crushing it on Red Sonja right now, but all of her books are a must read for me.

Steve Englehart

I was really into Englehart after his Detective run and the truncated Mr. Miracle—probably the first mainstream writer I followed for any period. Reading his WCA concurrent with the Vision/Scarlet Witch mini was my first real dive into Marvel, and I appreciated the way he was able to provide history and exposition more naturally—even elegantly—compared to the way it was usually handled. I enjoyed his run on GL with Staton, but Millenium + New Guardians was disappointing and helped push me out of mainstream comics. It's a lot of fun, though, reading A Foozle knowing it was originally a Superman/Creeper team-up.

#10 Chuck Dixon

Leaving out things he wrote that have nothing to do with comics, I loves me some Chuck Dixon. Not his Punisher stuff, as I loathe the character. His Batman is pretty good and he created Bane, but, no, not because of that or Tim Drake. He gave us the Birds of Prey; but, no, not that. I love Chuck Dixon for Skywolf.

Who, I hear some of you ask? The Hillman aviation comic hero, featured as a back-up in Air Fighters and Airboy comics. In 1986, Eclipse Comics revived the public domain Air Fighters and Chuck Dixon soon took over the writing, from Tim Truman. Airboy was great, by itself; but, Skywolf was beyond great.....it was classic!

In Chuck's hands, aided by a cast of great, but mostly unsung artists, Skywolf was a trip through the United States' post-WW2 history, from flying air support to the Nationalist Chinese, during the Chinese Civil War to flying F-86s in combat against Migs, in Korea, to being at Dien Bien Phu, in Vietnam. Skywolf took us through Occupied Japan, gangland Hawaii, the KKK in Texas, 50s Hollywood, the Himalayas, Saudi Arabia and more, in classic adventures that harkened back to the great adventure strips of the 30s and 40s, like Milton Caniff's Terry & the Pirates and Steve Canyon, or Frank Robbins' Johnny Hazard. However, Chuck used that template to highlight the history of this country you won't learn in school, like the CIAs involvement in Guatemala, to prop up the interests of the United Fruit Company or the seemier side of Hollywood, where a little creative theft is considered part of the business and Communist witch hunts destroyed careers. All of this from a guy who was pretty conservative, with a big C, writing for an editor who was deeply liberal, with a capital L. Politics were really only there in the morality of things: weaselly bureaucrats who would sell out an innocent man for political alliances or men of the cloth who use their position to incite hatred and murder. Skywolf was a two-fisted, John Wayne kind of guy, caught in a Jimmy Stewart world, as written by Dalton Trumbo.

Chuck even dabbled with doomed romance, as Skywolf falls into the arms of Riot O'Hara, a damaged female pilot who has lost one love and finds herself alone and vulnerable, with a man who is alone and vulnerable and they reach out to one another. They try to make it the American dream and fail miserably.



Chuck could do the wild action, the colorful characters; but, he made them real, flawed human beings.

Aaron came under serious consideration for my list as well, exclusively on the strength of Scalped - because I haven't read anything else by him. It's a really gripping, thought-provoking series.