Gerber: Use of “moral crusaders” as villainous or antagonistic types (The Foolkiller in Man-Thing, the Kidney Lady and the Sinister Soofi in Howard the Duck, Iprah (sorta) in MAX Howard the Duck). Kinda funny that he had this tic even before “moral crusader” types caused the cancellation of Void Indigo…

Straczynski: Telekinetics who can only manipulate very small objects being used in black ops because the carotid artery is a very small object (used in both Babylon 5 and Rising Stars, explained in nearly the exact same manner).

Ellis: That one bar in Russia where people nuke themselves to avoid being used in the war machines of heaven and hell (both Stormwatch and Planetary).

Sam Kieth: Traumatic female childhoods/adolescences (at least three seperate plotlines in the Maxx touch on this, as do Zero Girl and Zero Girl: Full Circle).

Milligan: Heroes descovering/embracing queer (I am one, so I can use that word) identities (Enigma, X-Force/Statix… others?).

Other than less specific ones (Gaiman loves archaisms, Johns loves legacy heroes, Simone loves Kung Fu), that’s all that’s coming to mind at this moment.

Oh, and dave, about Claremont? He was born in London, so it’s reasonable to assume he’s set foot in England.

Or, if he has, he was wearing earplugs at the time.

He likes to put in lots of other accents too, but I can’t comment on their accuracy.

Ennis: Irish and German characters, bars, smoking

Ellis: Smoking, characters threatening use of unsual phycial harm

Waid: Peter David-like one liners, characters. speaking. in. one. word. sentences

Moore: Alliteration, time paradox storylines

Morrison: the use of the prefix “Hyper”

David: Recycled jokes (ex. never assume–the ASS of U and ME joke)

Bendis: Against genetic self-manipulation

Personally I find I can be motivated to do almost anything by the prospect of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

I just about added Wolverine’s origin to that list, but I’m still not sure how much of that was Barry Windsor-Smith’s doing and how much of it was Claremont’s overall direction for the character.

Also, while we’re on the topic of Morrisonisms, I think we have to add in “large, mindless monsters that shout ‘AUUUUUUUU’ ” and “Experienced ‘mentor’ heroes and characters who say ‘Hhh’ or ‘Hrrrh.’ or some close variant thereof.”

Also, at least one character will deliver a somewhat lengthy monologue infodumping the details of some real-world alternative science theory or other in everything he writes, most recently the Masaru Emoto stuff in Frankenstein! #3 (which was, in fairness, relevant to the plot). Other examples: Crazy Jane going on about Gysin’s dreamachine to no plot purpose in one of his early issues of Doom Patrol and James Highwater talking about M-theory in Animal Man in the car trip out to the peyote mesa. There’s thematic justification for it most of the time, but it’s not woven into text or subtext quite as subtly or cleverly when we get characters basically giving us Grant Morrison’s own speeches.

Warren Ellis and Alan Moore do much the same, of course. It’s just that all three of them have moments in their work where you can literally hear the plot grinding to a halt so the hobbyhorse can be ridden.

Another Claremont tic – really awkward fanfic-style (sorry brian!) flirtation between two platonic friends that comes out of nowhere and sounds really corny and is never followed up on again.

- Bondage/Leather clothes, even when not age or situation appropriate.
- Possession and/or mind control, often used transformationally (Now Foobar is…..Dark Foobar, body and soul!)
- Characters that are part animal/furries.
- The aformentioned torture/stress as a change agent for female characters (never male ones).
- Teen girls mentored by adult women, ‘soul bond’.
- Telepathy as ‘mind rape’.
- Kidnapping/transportation to a fantasy setting, always geining a skimpy outfit along the way. In Asgard, the X-Men don’t wear armor. They go shirtless or wear bikini dresses.
- Britain. There’s always a reason to go to the U.K. or deal with British people.
- Musicians or rock stars.

Morrison tics:

- Nonsense words presented as ‘fait accompli’ concepts. Such as: ‘Keynesian Antimatter Drive Precepts’ presented as a crucial plot device.

- Seamless interaction with alternate worlds, or alternate versions of the characters.

- Scotland, particularly the stereotype of the Glasgow ‘hard man’ or gangster. Managed to work it into ANIMAL MAN, which takes place in San Diego. Nice.

- “Superheroes are stupid”, there is almost always a point where someone acts like a traditional Silver Age comic book /hero villain and is easily defeated because the dream logic of comics really does not make sense in other contexts.

JMS’ heroes all get stories that reveal that they received their origins through some kind of consciously-directed intervention, and there are no random, empowering accidents: see Spider-Man, the Strange miniseries, his first FF arc, and Rising Stars.

Frank Miller seems to use a lot of prostitute characters — Sin City uses Old Town, and Miller’s Catwoman from Year One and DKR, like MIkho in Sin City, is a martial arts expert who turns tricks. That’s probably more a genre element, but it does seem like a lot of his prostitute characters are martial artists, which isn’t a genre element.

Jack Kirby worked the idea of lab-grown superhumans into Thor, the Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #78, and his Fourth World work. Since he’s the first creator I can remember using the concept, it’s all cool.

To add more evidence to Ken’s point, James Robinson also used the “old movies” thing in his Legends of the Dark Knight arcs — in “Blades,” the Cavalier runs through a litany of old-school swashbucklers; in “Siege,” the two cowboy mercs have a lengthy conversation about Peckinpah western films vs. John Ford westerns. And Starman, of course, was replete with such stuff, the most noticeable ones being Frankie Soul’s bizarre diatribe on Phillip Marlowe film adaptations in “Sins of the Child” and the extended Shade text story that existed solely to write director Tod Browining into the backstory.

Len Wein recycled the resolution of Amzing Spider-Man v. #156 for Gunfire #6 — in both stories, the hero beats a villain who creates endless holograms of himself by dropping a large, cieling mounted object that hits all the “villains” at once.

This one’s pretty obvious, but Neil Gaiman always has a meta-contextual framework to his stories. There’s always a “story within a story” or even an explanation of some explanation that involves “well, that’s just the way wizards wash their clothes.” It gives the feeling that someone is, in fact, telling this story to us.

And Garth Ennis is forever writing about WWII fighter pilots. He did it in Hellblazer, Preacher, Enemy Ace and Thor: Vikings.

That is a little odd – especially since one of his characters (Bullock) actually has a long, previously-established history of being obsessed with old movies!