-Some demanding git

Consequently I'd love to see it make the list.

It's more likely to make the list than the DeFalco/Frenz run which was number 8 for me!! Obviously an underrated classic!

JMS spidey run was fine. A fine comic with swell art when Romita Jr was writing. However, I doubt JMS would take offence to any reader not particularly liking some of his run. I would speculate that any author grounded in reality would be less put off by critics then they would be by fans who consider non-appreciaters "narrow-minded and moronic".

Now I love Spidey. But if I got that high-handed about it, I would rely on a friend to slap some sense back into me.

Ross Andru did some amazing artwork that saved the stories.

But maybe his Spidey run deserves to be listed for historical impact alone. It took some guts to kill Gwen Stacy after only 6 issues in the title, and that left a mark in comic book history.

For what it's worth, here's the way I think I remember Conway's version, as related in an essay he wrote for the "Clone Genesis" TPB which collected that material about the "return" of Gwen Stacy (or her clone, as it turned out) from the mid-70s.

Conway swears that Stan was definitely consulted regarding the proposed death of Gwen Stacy as a way to really shake things up in Peter's life for the first time in years, or words to that effect. And he swears that Stan definitely approved of the idea at the time.

He also says that after the story was published, and the fans realized she was really, really dead, they started screaming bloody murder -- sometimes at Stan when he was speaking on college campuses or whatever -- and Stan starting backing away from it, because he was a very easygoing guy who didn't like to make people unhappy, so he started saying something like, "That was Gerry Conway -- not me!"

(I gather that Stan's effort to shy away from accepting any blame apparently triggered an urban legend among fans at the time: "Stan had nothing to do with the murder of dear, sweet Gwen! He never would have let that happen to her! Gerry Conway, that dirty rat, managed to sneak that story into production when Stan was out of town on a long vacation or something!")

Eventually the hate mail from the fans reached the point that Gerry was ordered to find some excuse for bringing Gwen Stacy back. No matter what it took. At that early point in the Marvel Universe, this was an unusual idea in cases where the story about a character's death had made it very clear that a recognizable corpse had definitely been available, and it had been positively identified, autopsied, and then buried during a regular funeral. (As opposed to all those deliberately ambiguous stories where someone says at the very end: "The Master Villain must be dead -- no one could have survived that terrible explosion! We barely escapedm ourselves, and he didn't follow us out in time!" -- but no identifiable corpse ever turns up at the scene, after the smoke has cleared.)

So he finally used "cloning" as a way to "bring her back" -- with all her memories up until a certain point -- while simultaneously keeping it in continuity that Gwen's dead body was really and truly still in that coffin at the cemetery!

In other words, Stan Lee was involved in the decision to kill Gwen, and then someone (I forget whether Stan was part of this decision) laid down the law that Gwen must be brought back, somehow, for awhile, to placate the mutinous fans. Conway, if left to his own devices, would have been perfectly happy to just leave her moldering in the grave forever, with no clones anywhere in sight!

I ask because if that's what you meant, then it doesn't exactly display an inspiringly "open-minded" attitude on your part!

But everyone considers Byrne and Stern’s tenure on Captain America a run, right?

It’s ALWAYS been referred to as a run, no?

A run, really, is just consecutive issues by a creator - I made the six issue limit just so we wouldn’t have stuff like, Alan Moore’s “run” on Superman, etc while still managing to include Byrne/Stern and Miller/Mazzucchelli.

Oooops... My reply didn't post earlier.

Brian, hindsight is famously 20/20 and you did a great job creating an entertaining list. I had never given a thought to what a comic book "run' was until these started appearing. I am sure you would have gotten howls of protest if the rules exclude Miller-Mazzucelli on "Daredevil", Claremont/Smith on "X-Men" and Stern/Byrne on "Captain America". However, the line between those and, say, "Batman: Year One" is fuzzy at best. The preference for writers over artists, new stuff over old and for widely read are all vexing. However, many of these are not even apples-to-apples comparisons.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, I would define a "run" as:

A series of contiguous, or nearly contiguous, issues on the same title by the same writer and artist lasting a minimum of 13 issues, or one calender year.

I thought it was a little strange not to be in there...

ok, then replace Thomas's Avengers with Rucka's Queen and Country

(which really really should be on this list...)

(in no order)
Waid's Captain America
Thomas's Avengers
Miller's Sin City
Starlin's Dreadstar
Conway's Spider-Man
Vaughan's Ex Machina

Yeah, for example, it is often forgotten that Irv Novick drew the second part of the Ra's Al Ghul four-parter in Batman 232, 242, 243 & 244. So when DC brought out their super delux 'Batman illustrated by Neal Adams' they didn't print issue 242.

I always wondered how readers who were not familiar with the saga were meant to make head or tail of the story.