I wrote of William Messner-Loebs, whose Epicurus is one of my personal favorites; but whose Jonny Quest is a pure delight of classic adventure and character pieces.

Mike Bar is another, though not for his DC work, as much; Oh, I enjoy his Batman graphic novels, with Ra's al Ghul, which he handled better than anyone but Denny O'Neil. No, for me, it is Maze Agency. It is fair-play mystery with two of the most engaging characters in comics, catching a classic mystery vibe, mixing Nick & Nora Charles with Ellery Queen, while giving it a modern sheen, ala Moonlighting and Remington Steele. Not only that, but there was a sweet little romance there, and some damn fine writing.

Mike Baron was a consideration for Nexus; Pierre Christin for Valerian and his work with Bilal, Kazuo Koike for Lone Wolf and Cub and Crying Freeman, Paul Levitz for the pre-Crisis Huntress and Legion of Superheroes. I would include Peter O'Donnell, for Modesty Blaise, but that is a comic strip, reprinted in books, though he did write the one-shot that Dick Giordano drew, for DC, which was based on the plot to his first Modesty novel (which was adapted from his unused screenplay for the Joseph Losey film of the 1960s).

Len Wein and Marv Wolfman were also considered; Len for Swamp Thing and his Batman stories, as well as some of his Justice League. Marv for New Teen Titans, his Daredevil run (which I love) and Tomb of Dracula. Don McGregor is one I feel is much maligned, without understanding. He is wordy; but, he is also philosophical, existential and anything but ordinary. He mixed satire, sci-fi, urban adventure, social muckraking, philosophy, crime fiction, mystery and just about anything that filtered through his mind.

Eliott Maggin I would suggest for his sheer number of great Superman stories; but more for his two novels. His Kingdom Come novel also offers both an expansion of the story and a new viewpoint on it. It gives it greater depth.

One name that was not out there that I think should be considered as one of the best voices to come through comics was Will Franz. Franz is known for his writing on Charlton's war comics, working with Sam Glanzman. These aren't your run-of-the-mill war stories; in my eyes they surpass Kanigher and even Kurtzman, to a certain extent. Franz and Glanzman collaborated on two features at Charlton; the lesser known is The Iron Corporal, in Army War Heroes. It tells the story of an American soldier, serving with an Australian unit, in the South Pacific, who suffers a grave injury that requires him to wear an iron corset to protect his injuries, which gives him some protection against bullets. That is a bit far fetched, but, it tended to feature some realistic stories of fighting and Franz did his research, enough to impress a veteran (both of comics and WW2) in Sam Glanzman.

Franz's real masterpiece, though, is The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz, a feature that carried multiple issues of Fightin' Army. Schultz is an American officer, the child of German immigrants. He is framed for a murder and escapes after being court martialed. he finds himself behind German lines and puts on German uniform to hide out, safe in his perfect German accent. however, he soon finds himself caught up in the fighting, on the wrong side, as he grows to become friends with some of his fellow soldiers, while also seeking not to fight his own side. The feature was one of the best examinations of enemy soldiers as human beings, rather than caricatures, even more than the excellent Enemy Ace. Hans Von Hammer was a natural killer, who had remorse, but kept on flying and killing. Willy Schultz is just a guy caught in an extraordinary situation, who just tries to stay alive.

Yep, the 'writer only' rule also confounded me a bit, and I still considered putting in a few names of writer-artists by citing the stuff they only wrote, like Joann Sfar for the delightful Professor’s Daughter or Walt Simonson for last leg of his legendary run on Thor and a few other things. But I quickly decided against doing that, as I didn't want to engage in any clever rules-lawyering - and it seemed to go against the spirit of this year's theme anyway.

Steve Gerber was one of the last ones to get cut - and I'm still thinking maybe I should have included him. By the way, in the other write-up by members who included him, I was a bit surprised that Howard the Duck was mentioned so often as a favorite. I never read that series back at the time, and when I did much later, like about 10 years ago, I thought it mostly didn't age well at all. Personally, I'm far more fond of his work on Defenders, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Phantom Zone mini, Nevada, A Bizarro, his Superman Elseworlds stories and, especially, Man-Thing, and the absolute best story in his run, in Man-Thing #9-10 (the 'Dawg' story):


A few others who came under serious consideration:
Bruce Jones for Ka-Zar the Savage in the early 1980s. I regretfully cut him because I no longer have any of those comics, haven't read any of them since my teens, so I couldn't go through and re-evaluate them.
Mike Barr, mainly for his Batman stories.
Tony Isabella for his work on Black Lightning.
(Mary) Jo Duffy for her work on Power Man & Iron Fist.
Kurt Busiek for Astro City (of which I've so far only read the initial 6-issue series) and Arrowsmith.
And Len Wein, Steve Englehart and Roy Thomas, but I figured a lot of others would choose them as well.

As I said before, I'm kicking myself for forgetting Harvey Pekar, who should've been 2 or 3 on my list. Another that probably would've been in the top 12 if I remembered in time is Frank Robbins.

The ones who made the initial cut but not the final include Tom Veitch, Bruce Jones, Mark Evanier, Nicola Cuti, Gardner Fox, Bob Haney, and Stan Lee.

The ones who I would've considered if I had read more of their work include Charles Biro, Richard Hughes, Paul S. Newman, and Carlos Sampayo.

I knew I was going to include one golden age writer among Gardner Fox, Jerry Siegel and Bill Finger. Finger got the nod, so the other two were near misses.

James Robinson and Steve Englehart got serious consideration but they both have too many stories I just plain disliked in addition to the handful of runs I adore, so they got a passed over. One of them might have gotten the nod if I decided against including Warren Ellis, but would have been lower on my list than Ellis was.

Alan Moore got consideration, and again had it been a best list instead of favorite, he would have been on there, but too much self-indulgent stuff like Birth Caul, Snakes and Ladders, the disappointment of later LOEG installments and my meh reception for a lot of his pre-Swamp Thing stuff made it easy for me to pass over him in favor of other writers who more consistently hit it for me.

The no cartoonist rule was the biggest factor in shaping the list, as several of my favorite writers do their own art. I considered sneaking Jeff Smith in there on the strength of the Rose mini with art by Charles Vess, as it is one of my absolute favorite books he has done, but it felt too much like gaming the system for me, so I went in another direction.

Others getting consideration, but eliminated early on were Mike Grell (too much of his oeuvre was also drawn by him), Mark Waid, Harvey Kurtzman, Christopher Priest and Andy Diggle )too recent for most of the stuff I like from him).

-M

I've not read The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz.  I supported a Kickstarter for its re-printing.  We'll see if it ever materializes.  

I had another one on the next page:

Jerry Ordway

Most Writer/Artist when they only write, particularly on titles they once illustrated--Grell, Chaykin, Simonson, Jurgens (I’m sure I’m forgetting some)--seem to lose something in translation. Not with Ordway. I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody here too but definitely Ordway belongs on this list. He could bring the same level of quality without pencil hitting the page.

Yeah. I think so. But I’ve kind of been waiting for the actual book.