Best Writer of 2009
Jim Doom: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning!
I don’t know if I should call this a tie since it’s two guys, but I don’t know where you split them. Guardians of the Galaxy has been great, and War of Kings was amazing. I hear from Doom DeLuise that Nova and some of the other Kings books have been great too.
Honorable mention: Grant Morrison. I’m not sure I could’ve hated the conclusion to Final Crisis any more than I did, but his Batman & Robin book has been great. Keep this guy focused on straightforward superhero stories and he’s amazing.
Honorable mention: Jonathan Hickman. I’ve only recently started reading Fantastic Four, but I’ve loved what I’ve read. It completely captures that fun spirit I’ve been missing in most comics.
Fin Fang Doom: Geoff Johns!
Geoff Johns is the anti-Bendis. Just as I generally avoid anything written by Brian Michael Bendis, Johns’ name is usually enough to get me to pick up a new book.
For instance, would I have paid $4 for a Superboy comic if Johns wasn’t writing it? Of course not. Yet another “definitive” Superman origin? Nope. How about a Flash mini-series? What, are you kidding? Yet I bought them all and enjoyed them all.
And let’s not forget that Johns started the year by finishing the best thing to come out of Final Crisis, Legion of 3 Worlds, and ended it mid-way through Blackest Night, which is the most exciting thing to happen in DC comics since Sinestro Corps War.
Here were our favorite writers from previous years:
2008:
Doom DeLuise: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
Fin Fang Doom: Geoff Johns
Jim Doom: Ed Brubaker2007:
Doominator: Messiah Complex team
Fin Fang Doom: Ed Brubaker
Doom DeLuise: Ed Brubaker
Jim Doom: Brian Michael Bendis2006:
Jim Doom: Ed Brubaker
Doominator: Grant Morrison
Doom DeLuise: Kurt Busiek
Fin Fang Doom: Peter David2005:
Fin Fang Doom: Geoff Johns
Jim Doom: Geoff Johns
Colonel Doom: Geoff Johns
Jean-Claude Van Doom: Robert Kirkman
This category is why I am no good at best ofs. There are so many writers out there that I think are great, too many to list. It’s much easier to come up with a list of lousy writers.
Abnett and Lanning have done a great job with Marvel’s cosmic line. It might not sell like the Avengers books but it has a good core audience that keeps the line going. It’s certainly one of the positives of Marvel, too bad it gets overshadowed by the dumb things.
I need to catch up on those DnA (as people call them) books. And Hickman’s FF is really, really good. I’ve been waiting for trades on everything, but I read the first issues of his FF run when Marvel had the free previews online.
It’s a real plasuere to find someone who can think like that