"for the man who has everything" is one of the greatest single issue stories ever and the first time it ever looked like superman had a weakness and an emotional core.

"whatever happened to the man of tomorrow" is the greatest summation of the superman mythos

and then moore's supreme run probably also counts as the best extended run of superman stories.

sure, byrne and morrison's takes have both been good and readable, but moore is the only person that's ever written a superman story that can compete in quality with the better batman stories out there.

Grant Morrison again, with Emma Frost in New X-Men.

Geoff Johns with Black Adam in JSA. Very slick. Also characters like Nuklon and even Jay Garrick, but Black Adam above them.

Keep in mind the two eras of Avengers comics before this (Harass and Liefeld) and you'll understand.

Good-bye 3rd string character, Hello forward-looking and inspirational hero !

While I would love to add Geoff Johns for JSA, Mark Waid for Flash and JMS for Amazing Spider-man, I already liked the characters/team... ... but they did make me go "wow! this is briliant!"

And pretty much anyone that Gage/Slott has written in Avengers: The Initiative.

Then James Robinson came along and he became interesting. Then Joe Casey came along and his story took new dimensions. Then a couple years later David Tischmann gave us what's still in my mind the definitive Cable; not just a super-powerful mutant and a time-traveling messiah, but also a world-traveling revolutionary that actually made the book genuinely radical, for an all too short time. And then there's Nicieza's run on Cable/Deadpool which was pretty decent too, and Carey used him quite well during his first year on X-Men. At one point I couldn't stand Cable, and now he's one of my favorite characters.

Peter David's Hulk was another big one for me, like 17 years ago or so. I was bored to tears by the old Hulk TV show, which was my first exposure to the character. I thought the Hulk was all brute strength and anger, no depth to him, and then when I started getting PAD's Hulk I couldn't get enough. PAD doesn't do it for me much these days but when I was a teenager it was golden.

Grant Morrison's Kyle Rayner (Cyclops and Emma too), and Joe Kelly's Deadpool would be major examples here as well.

Matt Fraction's Iron Man is the only one that's gotten me excited enough to read the series. I think his Angel is gonna be a contender too, by the end of his Uncanny run. And Paul Cornell's take on the Black Knight in Captain Britain/MI13 is genius. I always loved the character in theory but he's been kinda lame for the last 20 years or so, until now.