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I convinced myself this was going to be #1, but now I’m going with Claremont/Byrne’s X-Men. Are you going to reveal what didn’t make the Top 100 eventually? Would love to see what just missed it, and what wasn’t even close.

“Stan Lee was great with dialogue”? Is that some kind of joke?

I have a feeling that my prediction of Claremont and Byrne’s X-MEN is going to win. It will be interesting to see if it will beat out Sandman tomorrow.

Compared to other super hero comic writers at the time his stuff holds up pretty well. Compare it to an old Justice League comic and the difference just shines. He made each of the characters fairly distinct and conveyed their emotion pretty well. His dialogue also had a cool kind of rhythm to it. It was punchy and dynamic and matched Kirbys art perfectly.

I’m also all for seeing the rejected pile. Be cool to see people’s number one picks that just didn’t make it either.

Stan Lee was much better with dialog than many give him credit for. Just compare what he was doing on the Marvel titles to the other stuff being done in that era. He was so much better with defining the different character personalities, with adding a distinct supporting cast, and with playing off his characters’ flaws.
It’s a bit dated now and even sometimes a bit corny but Stan “the Man” revolutionized comics. There is no denying that.

Stan Lee was much better with dialog than many give him credit for. Just compare what he was doing on the Marvel titles to the other stuff being done in that era. He was so much better with defining the different character personalities, with adding a distinct supporting cast, and with playing off his characters’ flaws.

Yep.

Compared to other super hero comic writers at the time his stuff holds up pretty well. Compare it to an old Justice League comic and the difference just shines. He made each of the characters fairly distinct and conveyed their emotion pretty well. His dialogue also had a cool kind of rhythm to it. It was punchy and dynamic and matched Kirbys art perfectly.

Double yep.

My number five and the last of mine to make the list, assuming that Mantlo’s Hulk isn’t number one or two. And no, I’m not counting that super-special where the Hulk and Rick Jones and Morpheus teamed up to fight the Shaper of Worlds.

As good as Lee and Kirby were here, I feel it should be pointed out that no run better exemplifies the value of a good inker. Like a lot of modern readers, I read the first thirty issues in the Essentials and found myself thinking heretical thoughts like “gee, I dunno, this isn’t that great.” Then Joe Sinnott replaced Vince Colletta as inker– WOW!! The art improves 1000 percent. The stories improve too. Vince’s rushed and scratchy work was clearly depressing both Stan and Jack. Add Joe’s deep, rich, expressive brushwork and they just caught fire. Issue 45-60 are good enough to make you weep.

Yeah, we’re having the same debate about Stan’s dialog over in the Spider-Man comments, but since that one is mostly dead and this applies here: I’ll cut and paste this paragraph:

Lee’s gift for dialog is absolutely staggering. Here the best test: anybody reading this, go write a scene where the Fantastic Four watch a dinosaur egg hatch in Time Square. I’ll bet you can do it, even if you’re not normally a writer. That’s because we can all hear those four very distinct voices in our heads. Now write the same scene with the original Justice League. Hell, try it with the modern Justice League. You might hear Batman’s voice clearly, thanks to Denny O’Neil, but good luck with the others. Lee’s dialog was so great because it was filled with character and it was so specific. Reed Richards wasn’t Bruce Banner. Peter Parker wasn’t Johnny Storm who wasn’t Rick Jones. In seventy years, no writer has ever given Superman or Wonder Woman that kind of rich character-filled voice to speak with.

Oh, and it was actually the second issue that introduced the Skrulls. The third issue introduced the original Miracle Man, crazed stage magician. He’ll be at the center of next summer’s cross-over, to be sure.

Wow, so X-Men and Sandman are the top two. I’ll be equally happy with whishever one wins.

The X-Men are what hooked me on comics as a kid, and Sandman is what brought me back as an adult!

Chuck’s got a point about Stan’s dialogue. It looks ridiculous by today’s standards, but for its era it was a huge step forward.

The same could be said for Claremont - it all looks so trite and cliched these days but Claremont gave us even more distinct personalities, each character comic from hisher own cultural context. And some of Gerber’s 70s superhero stuff, like the Guardians of the Galaxy, reads as overly expositional and melodramatic but i was a breath of fresh air when compared with the simplistic narration and dialogue that came before it. It’s not really fair, I suppose, to compare comics’ forefathers’ writing techniques against writers that came down the pike an evolutionary cycle or two later.

Someday I’d still love to see the character interactions — even specific scenes and exchanges — that people like Lee and Claremont set up, re-written in contemporary dialogue a la Brian Vaughan or Matt Fraction.

Shoulda been #1.

Lee was better than the others working at the time, and FF was his greatest work (and the only ’60s run to make my top 10), but despite having clear voices his dialog still feels stilted. I marked Claremont as my #1 run (though I voted for the Silvestri era because when forced to break it down by artist that run had the highest concentration of my favorite stories) because I don’t think his dialog feels stilted. Well, aside from his constant misuse of “to coin a phrase”, which always makes me very angry.
But back on topic, Lee and Kirby both did their best Marvel work on this title (though Kirby exceeded his art quality on New Gods). Kirby usually had a lot more detail than other Silver Age artists, and his use of perspective was fantastic (no pun intended). One of my favorite panels was when Namor and Dr. Doom levitated the Baxter Building. There is a fantastic image of the Baxter building pointing down out of the panel with the city receding in the backgound. My one problem with Kirby’s work on this book was that humans were sometimes shaped a bit funny, but that’s such a tiny problem next to his amazing panel compsition and design. This book essentially constructed the Marvel Universe. Almost every major part of the MU not directly related to Spider-Man, the X-Men, or the Avengers can be traced back to this run on the FF. But as I said in the big debate in the Run #6 comments, in the end it’s the emotional stuff that really matters, and they managed to do so many fantastic stories, especially the ones focusing on Ben. The first Silver Age stuff I read was X-Men, and I had no idea how badly they were both phoning it in on that book.

So even Ben Grimm, the blue eyed hero of my distant youth, can’t take down the Lord of the Night and a few mutants?? That’s fighting talk…. or to use the correct terminology : “Its clobbering time”.

Even the villains had personalities of their own. Read the early Frightful Four dialogue and the distinctive tones and vocab set each one apart. I’d go so far as to say that each of the characters had pretty individual motivations and perspectives. There was no mistaking the voices of Von Doom, the Sub-Mariner, the Surfer, Willie Lumpkin or the Watcher.

Another aspect of the classic issues that is hard to convey to more modern readers is that in a real way this was a dark, almost visceral comic in its time, funny as that sounds after four decades of Frank Miller et al.
I got my first issue (#76 I think) when I was about seven, and found it both strangely fascinating and somehow vaguely repellent, as well as almost incomprehensibly confusing to a first-time reader in grade two. The intensity of the personalities, the sheer emotion that fueled the story, the peculiar mix of animosity and devotion between the four members, the jagged bombast and heavy dark inks of the art (”nauseating” as one DC editor described it at the time) , oh, it was all too much to a kid who at that point had been limited to the early LSH, Aquaman and Gold Key’s Mighty Samson.

I didn’t buy another FF for five years, and then I bought every issue until the mid-nineties.

FF 1 - 67. Best comics run ever.

Just because Stan Lee was better with dialogue than his colleagues, it doesn’t mean he was GOOD. He was not GOOD. And his writing is downright BAD, in fact. There’s really no need to stand on tradition and say that guys back then were writing BETTER comics than the ones we read today. Comics have gotten BETTER.

Sure, there were some pretty cool, wild, inspired plotters back then, but the dialogue makes it so clunky and difficult to enjoy.

Just because Stan Lee was better with dialogue than his colleagues, it doesn’t mean he was GOOD

Oh, totally agreed. “He was better than other bad writers” is not much of an argument - I think folks are just pointing that out as WELL.

The good stuff about his dialogue was that it was good - rich characterization (outside of Sue), quick connections to each character (even Sue, although her quick connections were bad ones), occasionally something funny.

His dialogue was the basis behind the personalities of characters who have not changed since, that’s how strong of a job he did with them back then (except Sue).

Comics haven’t gotten better, just different. The whole idea that comic book characters should speak “realistically”, or at least like characters in a movie or TV show, is relatively recent. In the Sixties, with a more compressed storytelling model, the writing had to carry more of the weight of the story than it does now.

Lee’s dialogue for the FF wasn’t realistic, but it was snappy and jazzy and fun. There was a love of wordplay to it, and the characters had very strong voices. It’s memorable in a way that a lot of comic writing then and now isn’t.

Great run, but it was not the instant hit that you describe. In its second year, it was not even in the Top 50:
http://www.comichron.com/YearlyRankings/1960s/1962/tabid/200/Default.aspx

Nor was it in its third year:
http://www.comichron.com/YearlyRankings/1960s/1963/tabid/201/Default.aspx

Imagine a title publishing three years, every month with the same creative team and not cracking the top 50. That is a lot of faith.

Nope, comics have gotten worse. But don’t worry, they still reprint the old stuff. The modern IS the best era for comix readers, but only because the availability of the classics is better than its ever been before. The new stuff is okay, too, but it doesn’t compare.

Relative terms, Dean.

As you note, Marvel only had a few titles in the Top 50. so Fantastic Four was an instant hit for THEIR purposes.

(By the by, for 1964’s list, Miller notes that he didn’t have the numbers for FF that year, as he didn’t have it until 1966. So did he have their numbers for 62 and 63?)

Sue, Sue, Sue.

Brian, I’m getting the sense you maybe had a big sister.

Or the scripting for Sue was just really bad, which it was. I’m a fan of Stan Lee, but even on the recent Last FF story that he did with JR Jr his Sue still seemed stuck in the late 50s. He didn’t write women too well.

There’s a story of someone complaining that they finally read “Hamlet”, and didn’t understand what all the fuss is about. “It’s just a collection of famous quotes strung together!”

I think the difficulty some younger readers (say, born since 1985, to take a wild guess) have with 60’s “clunky” dialog (not singling anyone out, several have used the term or similar, in this thread and others) is analogous to people who “can’t” watch a black-and-white movie (let alone a silent one), or who can’t enjoy, say, Demon in a Bottle because the characters are wearing flares, and that makes them think the work is “dated”.

If one looks past the superficialities of the “currently” fashionable conventions (then and now) of both the creators and their creations, one is in a position to reap a rich reward of enjoyable appreciation of masterpieces of all eras.

Current comics are in my opinion essentially no more “realistic” than those of the 60s; they just obey a more recent set of artificial conventions. Is it more “realistic” to use thought balloons, or not? In a sense, neither; it depends on if you’re trying to make your comic more like (to use a simplistic comparison that has many exceptions) a novel or a movie. Is it more “realistic” to put your exposition in captions, or dialog, or inside the front cover in a “Previously in Hero Man” text piece? Is it intrinsically better to identify your characters for new readers via dialog, or captioned labels, or logos stuck next to their first appearance? All these choices are equally conventions.

Classic hard boiled detective fiction was all exterior. The omniscient narrator would follow the private eye and tell us everything he did and everything he said, but never any single thing he thought. Is that intrinsically better or more realistic than an interior novel that dwells in depth on the thoughts and feelings of its characters? Isn’t there room for both styles, and can’t masterpieces be created in either form?

One thing is absolutely certain - in 30 years from now in one of these polls (long may they run!) some now-recently released work that is currently considered the epitome of hip and gritty realism (something by Bendis perhaps? Or Ellis? Or Brubaker? Insert your own prediction, it doesn’t affect what follows) will make the grade, and some in the new generation of readers will decry how old-fashioned, cliched, laborious and fake-sounding is all the dialog in it, not like the really good stuff they have now.

Some of this is still going on the Ditko/Spiderman thread (#6), too, for those interested

Stan deserves the title of the best comic book dialogue-r ever for just being ABLE to put punchy, readable dialogue over Kirby’s art (you try and do it!). Remember, a lot of the times he’d barely know what the story was before he sat down to script it. I tell ya, it’d take someone a lot smarter than me to write well that way.

Well since the Lee Ditko Spidey didn’t win I was sure this would. Have to be honest quite glad it didn’t I’ve been reading it in the Essentials (only just finished Volume 3) and while its been fun I don’t think it got good until around issue 30ish. Ok before then it was doing new things and introducing new characters and concepts but innovation alone isn’t enough to make something my favourite. That said after issue 30ish its been an absolute blast.

I think Matt Bird might be being a little hard on the pre Sinnott inkers. While I completely agree Sinnott really adds the polish to Kirby’s inks and the art improves in leaps and bounds when he takes over I think some of the work by Chic Stone and Colletta wasn’t that bad. I certainly don’t think it was holding back the stories which for me really took off not because of the introduction of Sinnott but about a year or so before hand when Lee really start to open the stories out and the spralling multi-part ‘epics’ which really gave the whole thing room to breathe and grow.

Actually, most people back then didn’t write women in general all that well. Look at X-men, Jean was the weakest link originally, like Sue, in terms of character, power levels, and usefullness. And like Sue, later writers developed her into one of the more powerful characters, and fleshed out her character and gave her depth. The same was true for characters like the Wasp. It wasn’t just Stan/Marvel, Wonder Women was supposed to be one of the most powerful characters in the DCU, and in the JLA, she was the…secretary. Never mind that she could’ve wiped the floor with Aquaman, Green Arrow, the Flash, Green Lantern maybe as well…

(By the by, for 1964’s list, Miller notes that he didn’t have the numbers for FF that year, as he didn’t have it until 1966. So did he have their numbers for 62 and 63?)

Well, he lists a lot of Marvel titles, so I figured it was a safe assumption. Also, in ‘65 he noted that Marvel heroes had grown to the point that “Thor” had broken the Top 50.

It is just an interesting contrast. Lee and Kirby were apparently given 3 full years to make the FF work from a sales perspective. The genre was not what was selling for Marvel at the time. I mean, “Millie, the Model” was their top seller. Imagine Marvel launching an entire line in an entirely different genre and staying with it for years until it found an audience.

It took a lot of guts. It seems as though it is very hard for anything really new to make a go of it with comic fans anymore. It seems unlikely that a title in its 34th issue that was shipping 40k would be adding readers. The myth that the Marvel line was an “instant hit” encourages the viewpoint that the really good stuff is viable instantly. It just seems like we lost whatever the new FF, or X-Men, or Daredevil would have been during the last couple decades.

All those titles were given a lot of slack to find their groove.

It’s baffling how anyone could have the gall to question Lee’s ability to dialogue with the best of them. When his smart, sassy and wonderfully expressive scripting is put into context, when you take account of the drab, all-plot-and-no-characterisation tendencies of the guys across the other side of the street at the time, you realise just how pioneering Lee was in the early 60s in his use of dialogue that could be both grand and intimate in scale, that brought these vibrant new creations to life and spawned an industry that continues to flourish today. Kirby’s concepts and artwork were astounding but, as shown in later years, his scripting was pretty abysmal. Without Lee, the Marvel Age would never have happened. And the reason it happened so enduringly was because his scripting was so damn good.

Like some others, I agree this should have No. 1. That’s not to take anything away from Claremont/Byrne X-Men or Gaiman’s Sandman - both enormously inflential titles in their own right - but there’s never been a more inspirational and enjoyable run of superhero comics than FF 25-67. And 51 is probably up there as the best single issue in comics history. Hey, there’s an idea for another Top 100…

Stan deserves the title of the best comic book dialogue-r ever for just being ABLE to put punchy, readable dialogue over Kirby’s art (you try and do it!). Remember, a lot of the times he’d barely know what the story was before he sat down to script it. I tell ya, it’d take someone a lot smarter than me to write well that way.

It definitely is true that some of Lee’s worst dialogue was when he had to change stuff up based on what Kirby drew, like the classic scene where Lee attempts to explain why a Skrull disappeared from FF #2!

Well, he lists a lot of Marvel titles, so I figured it was a safe assumption. Also, in ‘65 he noted that Marvel heroes had grown to the point that “Thor” had broken the Top 50.

Yeah, but couldn’t it be that Thor was the only book he had numbers for?

Actually, most people back then didn’t write women in general all that well. Look at X-men, Jean was the weakest link originally, like Sue, in terms of character, power levels, and usefullness. And like Sue, later writers developed her into one of the more powerful characters, and fleshed out her character and gave her depth. The same was true for characters like the Wasp.

I do agree that the person writing Jean and Wasp also did a bad job with their dialogue/characterization.

Stan Lee’s dialogue in Fantastic Four was incredible and really well done especially when you compare it to …. Stan Lee’s dialogue. Stan could not write dialouge to save his life when it came to characters like the Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil and the X-men. Those runs were terrible by todays standards and in contrast to his work on Doctor Strange, Spider-man, Captain America and the Fantastic Four they don’t ever match up.

You want the truth? If you had asked me at the very beginning of all this, I would have said the Lee/Kirby FF might place somewhere on the Top 100, but I never would have expected it to get nearly this high. I didn’t even consider voting for it as a “Top 10 Favorite” on my ballot, and I had no idea that 37 people would actually give it First Place on their own ballots!

Well, live and learn . . .

One thing I remember finding amusing when I was reading the first “Essential FF” b&w volume, and maybe the second (I forget how long this lasted), is that at least a couple of times I believe the FF read some of their fan mail (apparently adapted from mail Stan was actually receiving from readers of the comic) and they would see people complaining that Sue was something of a drag on the team, instead of a huge asset to it. Reed, and probably others, would then give lectures about how it was ridiculously unfair to say that Sue’s non-violent power to simply turn invisible was preventing her from “pulling her own weight” in real emergencies. They seemed very firm about this . . . right up until Stan and Jack finally saw the light and gave her those nifty force-field powers that let her take a much, much stronger role in slugfests, both on the offensive and on the defensive, as the circumstances might require! Apparently they finally realized that just calling Sue’s critics mean-spirited wasn’t going to solve the fundamental problem which, I gather, a great many readers persisted in complaining about! I guess it’s true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease?

Published figures for FF:

“Also significant about 1966 is that Marvel finally ran its first figures for Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man, in issues #61 and #47 respectively. By this time, both titles were well established, many classic stories having already appeared — and we find Spidey selling over a third of a million copies. We don’t know what sales were for these titles between 1962-1965, but it’s interesting to note that while they grow throughout the rest of the 1960s, that growth is not dramatic.”

http://www.comichron.com/YearlyRankings/1960s/1966/tabid/204/Default.aspx

Lorendiac, I think Alan Moore brought this up briefly in the FF pastiche he did for 1963 with…what was her name, Neon Girl or Neon Queen? Of course, he kept one of the FF members a sexist pig, who agreed with the letter writers. Oh that Moore, him and his mysogeny…;)

wwk5d — Suddenly I realize it’s been a heck of a long time since I actually sat down and reread those 1963 issues. I just vaguely remember the Thing-knockoff (what was he called, The Planet?) reading a fan letter asking where his extra fingers go when he transforms into his super-strong, green-sphere-headed, four-fingers-on-each-hand (or was it only three?) form, and after reading the question aloud, he mutters, “Darn good question, come to think of it!” or words to that effect. I don’t remember the criticisms you refer to about the Invisible Girl-knockoff, but I’m willing tot take your word for it that they were there.

Of course, I still nurture the hope that someday the Grand Finale to that 1963 series will come out! The one where a bunch of Moore’s retro-Silver Age heroes clash with a bunch of the Image Founders’ hard-boiled 1990s heroes? Heck, I’d settle for just being allowed to read the full script for it!

Only 2 more first place votes than Starman.

Guys. Has anybody started a “I can’t believe this didn’t make the top 100″ thread yet?? If so, point me to it and I’ll start preparing my treatise on Peter David’s Young Justice.

Guys. Has anybody started a “I can’t believe this didn’t make the top 100″ thread yet?? If so, point me to it and I’ll start preparing my treatise on Peter David’s Young Justice.

Tell y’all what - if everyone makes up a funny caption to go with the cover of a popular run (like what The Mutt did with this Suicide Squad cover for the Top 100 Characters list: ), then I’ll pick one that I like best and have it as a post on Saturday.

Sound good? If so, make your image and e-mail it to me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!

It really is a joke to call Stan Lee a good dialoguer. He’s a FANTASTIC dialoguer. Yes, his scripting is heavily stylized, but so were the Beat Poets. Stan Lee turned out vivid, charming, inventive dialogue that really made the characters live in a way that no other scripter of his era ever did. Not only that, but he turned his letter columns and ‘Bullpen Bulletins’ into a sort of performance art, a folksy PT Barnum-esque hucksterism that charmed readers with a picture of Marvel as a place where good friends made good comics. Stan Lee not only made you feel like there was something special about Marvel, he made you feel like there was something special about you for liking Marvel.

When I was nineteen, reading ‘Sandman’ and ‘Doom Patrol’, I thought Stan Lee’s dialogue was corny too. I’m proud to call my nineteen-year-old self an idiot.

Actually I think Stan was far better at coming up with characters (Spidey, X-Men, Fantastic Four) and plots than actually writing a great story. Still good to see people remember the advent of Marvel (and modern age superhero comics). Rick Moody must be over the moon about this placing.

Stan Lee pratically created moral complexity in superhero comics. The earlier Ben Grimm, that would as sooner punch a teammate than a villain; the Human Torch, who was actually interested in cars, girls, and fame (simple, but what a novel concept when compared to earlier iterations of the superhero); Sub-Mariner, who was the “hero-villain” (today he’d be called anti-hero); Doctor Doom, the villain who had been born due to tragedy; Galactus, who actually was no villain at all.

Stan is often underestimated. While Jack Kirby may have supplied energy, vitality, life to the comics, it was Stan Lee that gave them humanity. Alan Moore wrote in an article in the early-80s that he owes Stan Lee for blazing the trail. That is how important Stan Lee is.

I do agree that he wrote most of his women as “girly girls” (though many of his men were boys’ boys too), and seemed particularly averse to have women with the kinds of powers that would allow them to punch people. Different times. In many other respects, Stan Lee was much ahead of his contemporaries.

So will American Splendor be #1 or #2? I’d put Eightball at #1 and American Splendor at #2, but you could make a case for either, I guess.

So much love for Stan Lee. That’s awesome. Evan really nailed it: Back when big stories were compressed into a single issue, the characters shouldered much of the responsibility for exposition. It’s easy to have lots of naturalistic dialogue when you can stretch a story arc over six issues and afford to have an eight-page conversation between two characters on the Fantasti-Car. And even with the constraints at the time, Lee provided concentrated bursts of character in his dialogue. It’s a particular kind of poetry, and Lee was expert at it. It’s compact, it’s punchy — haiku with muscle.

Also glad that Brian pointed out that FF was responsible for charting the Marvel Universe, and that this year’s big Marvel “event” goes right back to characters introduced in FF #2. (Is there such thing as an original idea any more, or just refined iterations of the original?)

Still holding out for Cary Bates’ “Flash.”

FF #51 always blows my mind. You would think it would be a big letdown after the Inhumans/Silver Surfer/Galactus storyline, but no way. Check out the letters on it a few issues later. Imagine a superhero comic from that time period where not a single punch is thrown.

With these last two runs (and Claremont/Byrne’s X-Men to come) we’ll finish it with the Marvel Universe with a comfortable lead. The 60s are the next-to-last decade in points, but mostly because the 70s got all the points for Miller’s Daredevil. It also seems that Stan Lee will be second in the list, unless Sandman or X-Men has an incredible number of points. Jack Kirby jumped to 5th, but Claremont and Byrne will surpass him.

We have 100 runs so far (and 27377 pts)

- 37 runs are set in the Marvel Universe (10680 pts)
- 10 runs are X-Titles (2123 pts)
- 2 runs are Ultimate titles (679 pts)
- 39 runs if you get Marvel plus Ultimate Universe (11359 pts)

- 25 runs are set in the DC Universe (8139 pts)
- 3 runs are Bat-Titles (452 pts)
- 9 are Vertigo comics (3106 pts)
- 29 runs if you get DC plus Vertigo sub-universe plus Plastic Man retcon (8359 pts)

- 5 runs are set in the Wildstorm Universe (994 pts)
- 5 runs have female protagonists (960 pts)

- 83 are superheroes or close enough (22769 pts)
- 17 are non-superhero (4608 pts)

Sorted by decade the first issue in the run was published, we have:

- 1980s (31 runs - 8487 pts)
- 1990s (26 runs - 7181 pts)
- 2000s (25 runs - 6297 pts)
- 1970s (10 runs - 2558 pts)
- 1960s (6 runs – 2555 pts)
- 1940s (2 runs - 299 pts)

Sorted by associated creator:

- Grant Morrison (6 runs - 2754 pts)
- Stan Lee (5 runs - 2446 pts)
- Alan Moore (6 runs - 1851 pts)
- Garth Ennis (4 runs - 1579 pts)
- Jack Kirby (3 runs - 1322 pts)
- Warren Ellis (5 runs - 1285 pts)
- Keith Giffen (3 runs - 1278 pts)
- Frank Miller (2 runs - 1199 pts)
- Brian Michael Bendis (4 runs - 1079 pts)
- Steve Ditko (2 runs - 1034 pts)
- James Robinson (921 pts)
- Brian K. Vaughan (2 runs - 854 pts)
- J. M. de Matteis (742 pts)
- Ed Brubaker (3 runs - 739 pts)
- John Cassaday (2 runs - 722 pts)
- Marv Wolfman (643 pts)
- George Perez (643 pts)
- Chris Claremont (5 runs - 638 pts)
- John Byrne (2 runs - 627 pts)
- Peter David (2 runs - 624 pts)
- Howard Porter (574 pts)
- Pia Guerra (547 pts)
- Kurt Busiek (2 runs - 541 pts)
- John Ostrander (2 runs - 541 pts)
- Geoff Johns (3 runs - 534 pts)
- Walt Simonson (514 pts)
- Alex Maleev (480 pts)
- Bryan Hitch (2 runs - 474 pts)
- Bill Willimgham (428 pts)
- Darick Robertson (418 pts)
- Mark Waid (2 runs - 378 pts)
- Dave Sim (370 pts)
- Gerhard (370 pts)
- Mark Bagley (364 pts)
- Roger Stern (2 runs - 334 pts)
- Paul Levitz (328 pts)
- Brent Anderson (323 pts)
- Jeff Smith (321 pts)
- Mark Millar (315 pts)
- Adrian Alphona (307 pts)
- John Romita Jr. (2 runs - 276 pts)
- John Romita (270 pts)
- Denny O’Neil (2 runs - 261 pts)
- Peter Milligan (2 runs - 255 pts)
- Brothers Hernandez (236 pts)
- John McCrea (232 pts)
- Joss Whedon (229 pts)
- Steve Gerber (218 pts)
- David Mazzucchelli (211 pts)
- Tom and Mary Bierbaum (208 pts)
- Tom Mandrake (205 pts)
- Will Eisner (204 pts)
- Joe Kelly (202 pts)
- Steve Englehart (184 pts)
- Mike Mignola (179 pts)
- Frank Quitely (176 pts)
- Mike Baron (174 pts)
- Steve Rude (174 pts)
- Neal Adams (162 pts)
- David Michelinie (152 pts)
- Bob Layton (152 pts)
- Mike Wieringo (150 pts)
- Brian Azzarello (150 pts)
- Eduardo Risso (150 pts)
- Kevin O’Neill (148 pts)
- Alan Grant (146 pts)
- Norm Breyfogle (146 pts)
- Michael Avon Oeming (134 pts)
- Paul Smith (133 pts)
- Marc Silvestri (133 pts)
- Christopher Priest (130 pts)
- Greg Rucka (122 pts)
- Alan Davis (122 pts)
- Paul Chadwick (120 pts)
- Joe Casey (117 pts)
- Robert Kirkman (115 pts)
- Mike Carey (114 pts)
- Peter Gross (114 pts)
- Ryan Kelly (114 pts)
- Mike Allred (113 pts)
- Sean Phillips (113 pts)
- Sergio Aragonés (110 pts)
- Mark Evanier (110 pts)
- Roy Thomas (109 pts)
- Jim Starlin (109 pts)
- Mark Gruenwald (107 pts)
- Mike Grell (104 pts)
- Stuart Immonen (103 pts)
- Michael Gaydos (101 pts)
- Kazuo Koike (100 pts)
- Goseki Kojima (100 pts)
- Denys Cowan (99 pts)
- Matt Wagner (98 pts)
- Stan Sakai (98 pts)
- Terry Moore (96 pts)
- Chris Ware (95 pts)
- Doug Moench (95 pts)
- Jack Cole (95 pts)

- 83 are superheroes or close enough (22769 pts)
- 47 are traditional superheroes (14237 pts)
- 36 are non-traditional superheroes (8522 pts)
- 12 are nonpowered superheroes (2182 pts)
- 8 are comedic superheroes (1749 pts)
- 34 are team books (9883 pts)
- 17 are non-superhero (4608 pts)

“So will American Splendor be #1 or #2? I’d put Eightball at #1 and American Splendor at #2, but you could make a case for either, I guess.”

Nah, Brian Cronin featuring Rob Liefeld’s Captain America in his newest Urban Legends column must be a hint that Liefeld’s seminal work with the Sentinel of Liberty will take one of these spots. :p

To be fair, I did wish in retrospect that I’d voted for Eightball.

Because that’s a great book.

Surprised this wasn’t number 1 just for sheer accomplishment (100 solid issues that built the Marvel Universe and redefined superheroes) but also understand how some people might not find the actual stories holding up.

I recently got Essential FF vol. 3 and was very psyched to finally read the first appearances of Inhumans, Galactus, Black Panther, plus some classic Doom, but I’ve got to admit there was a lot of eye-rolling going on as I trudged through. Charming, but really clunky by today’s standards.

Stan’s dialogue, while entertaining, definitely stood out as one of the more awkward parts of the book for “modern” readers (the sexism against Sue is hilariously brutal). But looking back I don’t think it’s just Stan’s words that took me out of the stories.

I think what really kept taking me out of the stories is actually one of the most celebrated aspects of the run: the birth of “the Marvel method”. On many occasions it reads like Stan himself is desperately trying to figure out what the hell is happening in the panel. There are many panels with script like, “Oh no, Medusa was behind the corner” or “Watch it, he had a paste gun hidden”, where Stan seems to be bending over backwards to justify developments appearing out of nowhere.

Again, there’s lots of entertainment to be found, but lots of unintentional comedy, too. I’m very glad Moore, Gaiman and the rest of the British invasion brought fully-scripted plots back in style.

No Kanigher. No Kubert. No Haney. No Aparo.

~sigh~

Also, I’m no Stan Lee fan, as I’ve mentioned in other threads, but FF is by far my favorite of his work. It has a certain “pop” that the rest of his stuff seems to be missing. I’ve actually thought many times about reading the rest of the run (I’ve read the first two Essentials and a few other random later issues). And Kirby’s terrific, of course.

I have no problem at all with FF as #3.

Stan Lee and John Byrne brought ideas and plots to comic books that simply had never been seen before and, in the case of Byrne, continue to do so. Coming up with character traits and motivations is not dialog, that scripting so it’s the same thing. Both these guys’ dialog reeked like week-old fish (in the cases of Byrne, still does). But when you look at their stories as a whole, they are big and wild and just crazy cool.

While I loved Young Justice, I’m not surprised it didn’t make it. The print run was always low and the book flew under the radar most of the time. It’s def in my Top 10 though.

Dr. Doom is the greatest super-villain in history? Thanks, I needed a good laugh this morning. Perhaps the greatest super-villain in Marvel history but he is not even the same league as the Joker and only on some levels comparable with Lex Luthor.

Kind of surprised this didn’t make #1; it certainly deserves it.

One of the things surprises me whenever I go back and reread it, because it doesn’t get mentioned as often as Lee’s character-driven dialogue, Kirby’s bombastic art and the fantastic (rimshot) plots, is the humor. A lot of those stories had some great gags and wordplay going on alongside everything else. As tragic a figure as Ben was, he was also a pretty funny guy.

(crossing fingers that X-Men beats Sandman…)

Oh, and I should add there is humor to be found beyond the hilarious-by-today’s-standards sexism leveled at Sue

I wonder if the people who think that Stan Lee can’t write dialogue are thinking of his AWFUL job on Ravage 2099?

Theno

Which Luthor, the whiny scientist who started on the road to villainy because Super-boy accidentally burned his hair off? Awesomest back story for a villain if there ever was one.

And the Joker only became interesting in the 1908s, to be honest. He was always a gimmick villain (though one of the better ones, I’ll admit). I just don’t see him having the depth of someone like Doom, despite the work Moore tried to invest in him in ‘Killing Joke’.

Er, I meant the 1980s for the Joker…

Hey, David.

What is so special about pre-Crisis Lex Luthor, except the fact he was the arch-enemy of the greatest superhero of all time? Examine Luthor, just Luthor, separated from the Superman mythos, and he is essentialy a bald, egocentric, mad scientist. What is so original or brilliant about that?

I think Doctor Doom is miles ahead in personality and originality.

I have a bit more fondness for the post-Crisis, businessman Luthor, but many people still says he is just a thinner Kingpin…

I’ll concede that the Joker is a great villain though, post-1970s. But the post-1980s mass murderer version still presents the uncomfortable dilemma of a scary murderous villain let loose in a superhero universe full of heroes that seem unable to do anything about him.

>>Great run, but it was not the instant hit that you describe. In its second year, it was not even in the Top 50:
http://www.comichron.com/YearlyRankings/1960s/1962/tabid/200/Default.aspx

I should note as the collector of those figures that Marvel did not publish Statements of Ownership in Fantastic Four (or Amazing Spider-Man, for that matter) until 1966:

http://www.comichron.com/YearlyRankings/1960s/1966/tabid/204/Default.aspx

…so they are not included in earlier rankings for that reason. Publishers would wait to run sales figures until a title had been going a few years (in the case of Iron Man, a dozen years!). It’s why about all we have from Marvel in the early 1960s are the numbers from the former horror titles, which had already been running.

I love this run of the F.F. It’s my number 1. I’ve always had issues with Stan’s sometimes corny dialog, but the charm is still there. Stan and Jack could pack more into a single issue than most current creators can fit into a mini-series. Mostly I want to praise the King here. His creative outpouring during this run is unmatched. The amount of new caractures he created are far too numerous to list. The action set the industry standard and the machinery was like nothing ever seen before. Jack will always be the King!

When he’s on - And, well, he often isn’t - I think Stan’s the best writer in comics in using dialog to define character. (Which is the primary purpose of dialog, really.) You can read one page of pretty much any issue of Fantastic Four and figure out the characters basic outlook on life and motivation.

Can’t do that with Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Brian Michael Bendis… (Garth Ennis is pretty good at this, though.)

If none of ‘em are as effective at using dialog to do what it’s supposed to do, I’d have trouble calling ‘em better - At least in that particular aspect of writing.

Personally I will be happy to Sandman at number 1. I was hoping Spidey (and the FF) would be fighting it out with Gaiman, but in truth Sandman was unsurpassed.

God forbid that the stale old Cyclops-Wolverine-Phoenix love triangle (that recycled the Cyclops-Angel-Marvel Girl of the earlier X-men) should be voted best comic run ever. Though I did like it. But then I like Tintin & Snowy. And Asterix. And Lucky Luke. Any good story that holds together and is well drawn.

Go Gaiman!

(Now I’ve doomed him to second place…)

“Stan could not write dialouge to save his life when it came to characters like the Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil and the X-men. Those runs were terrible by todays standards and in contrast to his work on Doctor Strange, Spider-man, Captain America and the Fantastic Four they don’t ever match up.”

John, I think Stan Lee’s Thor and Iron Man were pretty good, when he hit the stride.

His X-Men suffers when compared to the FF, but was still an impressive creation.

Avengers got good after issue 16. Before that, there was a bit of a sameness when Thor, Iron Man, Cap, and Giant-Man were together.

Yeah the FF entry should have been number one. The stories were epic. Jack’s art was at its peak. And I loved Stan’s dialog. You have to put yourself in that time period to really appreciate it. (Now if we’re talking about, say, the Spider-Man newspaper strip …. well let’s just change the subject, shall we?)

Now it’s down to the X-Men vs. Sandman; I like Sandman, but I’ll have to cheer for my childhood heroes, the X-Men.

Regarding villains, I’d say Magneto is the greatest supervillain (though because of Claremont, not Lee), though Doom is great too.

“God forbid that the stale old Cyclops-Wolverine-Phoenix love triangle (that recycled the Cyclops-Angel-Marvel Girl of the earlier X-men) should be voted best comic run ever. ”

That is a bit of a myth, Nick. The triangle was almost exclusively in the Dave Cockrum stories. It was barely aluded to in the John Byrne ones. A pair of panels in one or two stories, if anything.

That the triangle was supposedly so all-important is a sort of myth that was feeded by the X-Men movies, the cartoons, and stuff like that. It was never really a big part of the comics, even in the Cockrum run.

A myth “fed” or perpetrated would be better. Sorry, English isn’t my first language.

That’s true. I tend to think of Cockrum & Byrne as the same run. Even though Byrne could draw a lot better. But I think the Logan holding a torch cropped up a few times under Byrne. I’ll have to look…

This run would have been my choice for #1, if I’d met the deadline.

Thought I’d check back to see if I misread this earlier. Nope. Still number 3.

I’m glad to see this at # 3, though, I’ll sound blasphemous when I say it wasn’t on my Top 10. I’ll probably be tarred and feathered, but first let me explain.

I love this run and think it’s probably the best of Lee / Kirby. The energy that just popped and the ideas that it constantly cranked out. Some of my first comics were the 70’s Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprints as well as those wonderful Marvel Treasuries with their huge oversized Kirby art. Talk about packing a punch ! That’s how I first read the Galactus trilogy and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’ll never forget the wonderful orange cover with Dr Doom snarling down at the FF and the Frightful Four story inside. The 70’s Pocketbook reprinting of the first 6 issues was absolute gospel too.

As much as I love this run and am glad to see it place so highly, it got squeezed it by my personal preference for other runs that I just got more sheer enjoyment from. Right or wrong, it’s my opinion. I’ll be the first to say that this run is historically significant in many, many ways.

It’s good to see some love for Joe Sinnott showing up here too. I think he was Kirby’s best inker and the two of them really complimented each other perfectly like a few other great penciler / inker teams, like Miller / Janson, Byrne / Austin, Rogers / Austin, and Swan / Anderson.

I guessed long ago it would come down to Gaiman’s Sandman & the Claremont / Byrne X-Men run for # 1 and # 2. I predict X-Men will take the # 1 spot and admit I probably like it better overall than Sandman, which IMO sometimes gets a little too full of itself and borders on pretentious at times. I don’t think Gaiman meant to convey that. It’s probably just my personal prejudiced that comes through. It’s wonderfully great but I sometimes think it’s overpraised.

I prefer “ambitious” for Sandman, rather than “pretentious”.

Comic Book writers should be bold, don’t you think? All writers, in fact.

Perhaps that is a better appropriate term.

It’s good that Neil shook things up and helped to advance the medium and most certainly the perception of what it’s capable of to the mainstream audience.

“If one looks past the superficialities of the ‘currently’ fashionable conventions (then and now) of both the creators and their creations, one is in a position to reap a rich reward of enjoyable appreciation of masterpieces of all eras.”

I agree with this 100% Bill, and I like your premise. But I wouldn’t say the dialogue issue is entirely about fashion. James Robinson’s characters talk like real people. Bran Vaughan’s, Matt Fraction’s, Mike Carey’s too, for example… Sure, they talk like the real people of THEIR day; Jack Knight’s dialogue would look awfully out of place in 1963, as it will probably sound odd in 2063… but Stan’s characters didn’t sound like real people in the 60s either (nor did Claremont’s in the 70s). Doesn’t mean it wasn’t good writing, ’cause as several people have said here, the dialogue was good enough that they were able to convey the characterization tremendously well; enough that when we were kids, we thought that WAS the way real people talked! (Or at least, I did with Uncanny X-Men).

This is actually one way that I think superhero comics have inherently evolved over time. Like Stan said from the beginning, superheroes are modern mythology. And the thing is, Stan Lee didn’t walk around New York all day hanging out with myths. So how would he know how a myth spoke? Not just a myth, but a new kind of myth. They sort of came into his consciousness as these two-dimensional archetypes, and it must have been strange to give them voice, and it sort of makes sense that he kind of gave them their own language to speak. And that language evolved in time but we can hear superhero language very prominently in the 60s, and then a bit less when we get into the 70s with early Gerber and Englehart, less still with Claremont and DeMatteis, iand it diminishes steadily as we move into modern trimes. I’d say there’s only one truly prominent superhero writer at the Big Two who still uses that language fairly unabashedly, and that’s Busiek; and he knows when to drop it in service to the story, ’cause he doesn’t use in Astro City.

Is it a cuturally-based bias to say that “realistic” dialogue is better than “Hey, hep cat, what’s shakin’?” or “We’re going to crash; Blast it!”
Maybe. But there seems to be an evolutionary curve in the course of comics writing history, away from the genre-specific ghetto-dialect of the superhero, toward a more fully realized portrayal of humans who speak like humans, even as they journey into mystery, so to speak. That steady curve, from (for example) Stan Lee to Roger Stern to Denny O’Neil to Steve Englehart to Chris Claremont to John Marc DeMatteis, then into people like Moore and Morrison in the late 80s, seems more than just cultural. It’s an evolution; we’re getting more and more familiar with superheroes, and we’re understanding how to give them relevant voices.

Hondo said:
I’m glad to see this at # 3, though, I’ll sound blasphemous when I say it wasn’t on my Top 10. I’ll probably be tarred and feathered, but first let me explain.

if it’s any comfort, I’ve already admitted I didn’t vote for this one, and that I didn’t expect it to get anywhere near this high. I’ve also said repeatedly, in various other threads during this countdown of the Top 100, that my voting was not based on such things as historical significance; i.e. “how influential” a run supposedly was on lots of other creators in their later works.

So far no one has actually tarred and feathered me for expressing any of those sentiments. So I think you’re pretty safe. (If you were looking forward to being martyred for your expressed ideas, then I hate it to break it to you, but I really don’t think that’s on the schedule for today! Better luck next time! )

Stan Lee could define his characters, explain away mistakes in the art, and inject humor into or wring sentiment out of a super-hero story. He wrote more engaging material than most of his contemporaries. He should get credit for being the exact kind of scripter super-hero comic book readers were looking for, but didn’t know it, in the ’60s. His writing may be the most influential in the genre.

The words he actually wrote for characters to say, however, can sound dumb to an adult reader. That’s okay, he was writing super-hero comics for an audience of ages, say, 6 - 15. He reached a bit further in Silver Surfer, but he knew his core audience was kids. I like old FF comics mainly for the art and fun, but the dialogue can be groan-inducing. In my opinion, Spider-Man, with Ditko’s moodiness and action, reads better.

I think Roy Thomas, with his literary & pop-culture allusions and overwrought emotionalism, consciously aimed for older readers. Denny O’Neil, maybe, did the same with his topical GL/ GA and moody Batman scripts. Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber, Chris Claremont, and Marv Wolfman on “Tomb of Dracula,” were key in making dialogue more mature. The British writers of the ’80s & ’90s, and the better writers of today, are the culmination of what Stan Lee started, even if their influences came from outside of comics. I would rather read the words written by Alan Moore or Matt Fraction than the words written by Stan Lee. That doesn’t take away from his accomplishments, and it doesn’t make current comics better. Stan Lee scripted my Nos 2 & 3 runs (Ditko Spidey & Kirby FF, respectively). I just have a personal preference for the sound of modern dialogue.