CBR's #5 All Time Favorite Artist & Writer

Over on the CBR Forums, Brian Cronin asked those in the community to vote for their favorite comic writers and artists of all times. He assembled those votes and earlier this month began revealing CBR's All Time Top 100 Writers and Artists. To see the results for yourself, along with a description of each writer and artists, visit this thread for the Top 50 writers and this thread for the Top 50 Artists.

Last Friday, Brian brought us up to #6 on each list and now we're ready to bring it home! All week long we'll reveal the final five vote getters, with the #2 and #1 artists revealed on Thursday and the #2 and #1 writers revealed this Friday.

To bring you up to speed, here's a quick list of the vote getters thus far, how many overall points they received and the number of first place votes cast in their favor.

Now, without any further delay, the #5 CBR All Time Favorite Artist and Writer! The following commentary is provided by Brian Cronin.

#5 ARTIST: Alex Ross - 315 points (9)

After a stint at Chicago's American Academy of Art, Alex Ross broke into comics in the early '90s, doing work for Now Comics.

His biggest break, though, was in 1993, when he collaborated with Kurt Busiek on the smash success, "Marvels," where readers first were introduced to Ross' trademark photorealistic and imposing painted work.

Ross helped design (and drew covers for) Kurt Busiek's "Astro City," as well.

In 1996, Ross followed up "Marvels" with "Kingdom Come," with writer Mark Waid, which was another critical and commercial success.

During the late '90s, Warner Brothers began promoting Ross' work with fine art prints of his drawings. In addition, he worked with Paul Dini on a series of large-format one-shots featuring the most popular DC characters, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel.

Also during the late '90s, Ross worked with writer Jim Krueger on the Marvel Comics series "Earth X," which was based on some ideas and designs Ross had done for Wizard Magazine, in which Ross designed the future of the Marvel Universe. Ross would design the characters and do the covers on both "Earth X" and its two sequels, "Universe X" and "Paradise X."

Ross' art reached perhaps its largest audience when, in 2002, he was asked to create a promotional poster for the 2002 Academy Awards.

Currently, Ross is working with Jim Krueger again, this time on a 12-issue series for DC starring the Justice League called simply "Justice." Ross is co-writing the book with Krueger and painting over Dougie Braithwaite's pencils.

#5 WRITER: Frank Miller - 535 points (9)

Frank Miller was already becoming a popular artist while working as the regular artist on Marvel's "Daredevil" with writer Roger McKenzie. Miller soon began co-plotting the book with McKenzie, and eventually, about a year or so into the run, he took over as the book's writer. In his first issue, he introduced the assassin and former lover of Daredevil, Elektra. Miller's run on "Daredevil" was both a critical and commercial success. After finishing work on "Daredevil," Miller did a creator-owned mini-series for DC called "Ronin." Miller's next big success was in the mid-'80s, where he managed, in one year, to do a seminal run on "Daredevil" ("Born Again" with artist David Mazzuchelli) and on Batman ("Dark Knight Returns").

Miller also wrote the classic "Batman: Year One," again with Mazzuchelli. He also did an "Elektra: Assassin" mini-series for Marvel with artist Bill Sienkiewicz.

Around this time, Miller made a foray into Hollywood, writing the scripts for two "Robocop" sequels.

During the '90s, Miller mostly worked at Dark Horse Comics, only stopping off at Marvel to do a Daredevil mini-series with artist John Romita, Jr., that was essentially Daredevil: Year One.

For Dark Horse, Miller did "Hard Boiled," with artist Geoff Darrow, and "Give Me Liberty," with artist Dave Gibbons. It was at this time that he also began his "Sin City" series. "Sin City" was recently adapted into a successful movie by Director Robert Rodriguez, who gave Miller co-director credit on the film.

In 2000, Miller came back to DC and Batman for a sequel to "Dark Knight Returns," titled "Dark Knight Strikes Again."

Currently, Miller is working on a film adaptation of Will Eisner's "The Spirit," while writing "All Star Batman and Robin" for DC (with artist Jim Lee). He has an upcoming Batman project for DC, in which Batman reportedly fights Al Qaeda.

We invite you to discuss this list with our readers right here on the CBR Forums. To participate all you need is a CBR Forums account and registration is free. Join the discussion today and share your thoughts on this list and who you would have picked.

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