No doubt. But it’s mine, and I’m sticking to it. 
Nice Killing Joke link, though.
No doubt. But it’s mine, and I’m sticking to it. Nice Killing Joke link, though.
Paul Gulacy on Master of Kung Fu. 'Nuff said.
Dave McKean
Dave Sim/Gerhard (god, the Regency Hotel is just spectacular)
Bill Sinkiewicz
Robert Crumb
Jim Woodring
Mike Mignola (I love how he goes through a gallon of black ink for every page. :))
and, yes,
Phil Foglio. I have a weak spot for his stuff.
Neal Adams. Not only great, but 90% of comic art today owes a debt to him. He invented
I presume that we’re discussing artists as the people who do the drawings which is why Gaiman didn’t make the list (I’m aware of only one thing that he drew and it wasn’t that good).
I have to stand up for Sim/Gerhard as the greatest ever. They also have to be considered a team as Sim was drawing for Gerhard as much as the other way around. Their inventiveness with the medium is second to none (I think a step beyond Eisner) and I don’t think we’ll see anything close for a long, long time. Even guys like David Mack (who are awesome in their own right) can’t match the sheer beauty of Sim and Ger work.
Besides, when’s the next time that we’ll see a 1,000+ page coherent story, much less a solid 6000 pages of work?
I’m also going to throw Gene Colan as the most underappreciated of the otherwise mainstream artists. He was stuck in the slightly ghettoized Tomb of Dracula (which was itself a completely underrated series), but when Giordano wasn’t screwing up the inks, the illustrative quality that he brought to the work was unique.
Also, Katsuhiro Otomo. His work on Akira really set the standard that I haven’t seen beat in manga.
One of my most prized possessions is an original Sim sketch of Cerebus standing on the Wall of Tsi. I remember talking Sim into drawing it on one of his tours, and how remote and almost frustrated he seemed as he quickly pencilled it out. I suspect he wished it were him standing on the wall instead of Cerebus. I know how he felt.
As much as I loved Cerebus, and as much as I still reread High Society and Church and State, the bottom line is that Sim drove himself insane creating it. Where the early stories are nuanced, subtle, funny and intelligent, the later stuff is brutally misogynistic, distateful, elitist, badly paced and resembles the ramblings of a schizophrenic. Even more tragic was how the fall of Cerebus paralleled the destruction of Sim’s personal life - his famous falling out with Jeff Smith leaps to mind. Sim’s essays on the worthlessness of women and his own bizarre religious conversions are legendary for their irrationality and hysterical tone. Try as I might, I can’t separate the art from the artist, and I always wince when I think of Cerebus these days. I prefer to simply remember the early years, which were brilliant, and to look at my sketch, imagining myself standing on the wall of Tsi.
I’ve always been a big admirer of the work of Simon Bisley.
From the first image in that link, I can see why. However, my anti-Bisley prejudices have been well-documented.
“Coherent” is an interesting choice of words here. 
–Cliffy
I date his mental collapse from his divorce.
Why do your links keep cursing at me?
The artwork is great, which makes it even more unfortunate that the majority of their work constitutes unreadable paranoid ravings.
Sean Phillips
Daniel Zelzej (sp.?)
Jock
Eduardo Risso
Marcelo Frusin
John Romita, Jr.