Are your fave writers/artists still pretty much those that

[Ziggy Stardust]

were writing/drawing your first comics?

And, if so, do they stand the test of time or is it more of a nostalgic thing.

[Paradox]

Since it's guys like Alan Moore and JH Williams III, Kurt Busiek and George Perez etc. they tend to be guys that are around my age or younger, so they weren't doing comics until decades after I started reading comics.

[FanboyStranger]

No, with the exception of Walt Simonson. The first comic I ever bought for myself was X-Factor 10, which featured Walt's art, and I've loved his work ever since. Yet, I think he's gotten even better over time, especially when you look at his work on Michael Moorcock's Multiverse, Orion, Elric: Making of a Sorceror, or the Starslammers series he did in the early '90s.

Most of the creators whose work I love these days are people I discovered as an adult. I can't imagine my eight year old self having much use for Eddie Campbell, but I can't get enough of his work these days. Or Bryan Talbot. Or Matt Wagner, etc, etc, etc...

I will cop to having a soft spot for some writers and artists whose work I grew up with like Steve Engelhart, but I wouldn't necessarily place them among my favorites. (I try to place myself within the context of the time the comics were published. To use Englehart as an example, his '70s run on Dr. Strange reads as almost quaint these days, but in the '70s, it was quite the radical work.)

[Reptisaurus!]

were writing/drawing your first comics?

And, if so, do they stand the test of time or is it more of a nostalgic thing.

Yeah, not even close. :)

I had *awful* taste as a child. Just terrible. (WAY into Transformers.)

[Ziggy Stardust]

I will admit to it being a little of both for me.

But when the list has people like Perez, Buscema (John and Sal), and Roy Thomas on it, I htink that's ok.

[dan bailey]

Definitely, at least where artists are concerned. A couple of today's pros -- Amanda Conner & Cliff Chiang -- would probably make my list of favorites, but otherwise they're people who were longtime pros (the Severins, Russ Heath, Ditko, Wally Wood, Curt Swan, etc) by the time I started reading comics with any regularity back in '67 or so.

My favorite writers tend to be guys working today, like Jeff Parker & Dan Slott, but I think that's mostly because I'm more conscious of writers' identities than I was as a kid.

[Paiute 1]

Definitely as you said when the Buscema's, Perez, Thomas, Englehart were at there best and yes they stand the test of time.

[benday-dot]

Focusing on artists:

When I was a kid (a Marvel kid mostly) I loved among others Barry Smith, Jim Starlin, G. Perez, Neal Adams, Bernie Wrightson, and the Buscemas (especially John), but I also liked as a youngster not particularly original, but still very competent guys like Pollard and Buckler. I still like all those guys to varying degrees, but it certainly happened that more and more I began to really embrace John Byrne and Frank Miller, as those two started to take Marvel by storm. Miller's work on DD remains a centrepiece of my comic book consciousness

Still, now I have to state that my favourites are Jack Kirby (above all others), Steve Ditko, Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, Wally Wood, Will Eisner, and Gene Colan. And guys like Jim Aparo, Murphy Anderson and Gil Kane also now stand extremely high in my regard. It is both odd and understandable I suppose how the great legends of the game took just a little longer to shine brightest in my esteem.

[Polar Bear]

My favorites then were (writers) Stan Lee and Bill Mantlo and (artists) Michael Golden, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Steranko.

As the years have passed, I've discovered the following:
(a) Stan Lee was much more self-referential than I'd ever realized, and I think that's part of the charm. I can pick up virtually anything he wrote in Marvel's Silver Age and disappear into the comic.
(b) Bill Mantlo had his good days and bad days. Rom was an especially good day.
(c) Michael Golden is amazing. That said, it turns out that a lot of the Batman work I'd thought was by Golden was actually by Don Newton, so he was one of my childhood favorites without my ever realizing it.
(d) Early Barry Windsor-Smith is amazing; however, I find most of what he drew after 1985 or so somewhere between forgettable and unpleasant.
(e) Steranko was a great cover artist and storyteller, but his weaknesses as an artist are visible on almost every pair of pages.

Good thread topic!

[Alex Dragon]

It's complicated. There are old favs I like but I tend to think most of them hit their peak at some point and I don't enjoy their newer compared to some of their past work.

My fav comicbook artist of all time is Neal Adams. I still look at some of his older stuff and it blows me away. However, I'm not nearly as big a fan of his work from about the time of his CONTINUITY COMICS work til today. It may be mostly due to the inking. I like the older "slicker" looking stuff and I think his newer work is a bit "sketchy" and his characters are less fluid than these days. I still like his work and perhaps overall he may be a better artist but I like the "slick" Neal better.

I was a huge John Byrne fan once apon a time. Now I'm not much of a fan. That's strange for me to say because in some ways he's actually a better artist theses days. Just my opinion but the way I see it doesn't look like he puts any real effort into his work these days. I think his work is full of shortcuts and lacks creativity it once had. I think Byrne could be one of the best and popular artists working today if he made the effort or had strong emebellisher to put in the work needed.

George Perez is another fav who I feel hit his peak years ago and I just don't enjoy his new quite stuff as much. He's the flip side of Byrne in that I feel he puts in the work but the work he's putting in doesn't appeal to me as much. I still think he's very good there are just a few aspects of his art that I don't like.

Frank Miller. I've never thought Frank was a great technical artist and acknowledge that his strength is in his storytelling and powerful images but these days I just don't like his art. Frank seems to be purposely trying to make his characters uglier. For me it's to the point it's distracting. Plus the high contrast black and white thing has worn out it's welcome with me. Yeah, I understand it's a bold statement, I agree it's a bold graphic style, it even looks cool sometimes, but I'm tired of seeing it in every single panel and every picture/cover/pin-up. It loses impact when it's always used. And frankly Mignola does it better.

Hey!...I just thought of a fav's work from that era who's work I think is better and enjoy them even more today: Mike Grell. I loved his LEGION OF SUPERHEROES back in the day and I think his current stuff is much stronger and like it even more....even though we don't see much of it.

[Babylon23]

Yes and no. Jack Kirby remains my favourite artist to this day, and I'm still a huge fan of John Buscema, Gene Colan, Gil Kane, Keith Giffen, Jim Aparo, ALan Davis, JRJR, jim Starlin, Bernie Wrightson, Jerry Ordway and George Perez amongst others.

There are a whole slew of artists that I've come to appreciate that I would never have been a fan of when I was younger - Dick Dillon, Alex Toth, Will Eisner, Don Heck, John Romita Sr., Brent Anderson, Guy Davis come to mind.

But there's plenty of more modern artists that I consider amongst my favourites. Darwyn Cooke, Mike Allred, JH Williams III, Chris Sprouse, Ivan Reis, Dale Eaglesham, Michael Lark.

[Roquefort Raider]

I think it's cool how most of the posts here are a variation on "it depends", showing a nuance in judgment that I associate with readers of older material.

For my part, enthusiasm for this or that artist has changed (or not) according to several factors. Sometimes I learned to recognize someone's talent over time; sometimes I realized that what I had thought was great was not really good but was little more than pretending; sometimes my tastes changed one way or the other; sometimes the artist's touch changed; sometimes I just got fed up with someone's work even though I can still see that it has great qualities.

For writers, my tastes haven't changed as much. I did come to develop a greater admiration for a certain type of writer that I'd qualify as "quiet", whose stories manage to include a strong plot, good dialog, good pacing and not be too derivative without resorting to flashy tricks. As a younger reader, I was more interested in bombastic stuff, revoltin' developments and grand epic stories; as an older reader I learned to love the simpler stories. (Speaking of which, I agree 100% with Lone Ranger's recommendation of Alex Toth's Zorro. That was brilliant storytelling, with not one imperiled multiverse nor resurrected time-displaced cyborg sideckick in sight).

[edhopper]

Barry Smith and Gene Colan. No question about withstanding the test of time.

[Eumenides]

were writing/drawing your first comics?

And, if so, do they stand the test of time or is it more of a nostalgic thing.

I got into Marvel when Liefeld and Jim Lee were all over the X-Men and McFarlane was on Spider-Man. I have a nostalgic love for these stories, but I don't consider any of these people a favorite of mine. My first comics also included Bill Mantlo, Roger Stern, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Jim Shooter, Steve Engleheart, pretty much anyone involved in Marvel from the mid-'70s to the mid-'90s.

I still admire the work of Stern, Shooter and Engleheart on Avengers, for instance; I do think they stand the test of time as great superhero comics. I think Claremont's X-Men is as great as it could be; and Byrne's Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight remain favorites too.

But I wouldn't buy anything new by them, to be honest.

On the other hand, I can't get enough of writers I discovered in my late teens: Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Hugo Pratt, Jean-Michel Charlier, Alberto Breccia, Peter MIlligan, for instance.