The Decade According to Multiversity: Best Artist

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we have four wildly different writers then as we all chose a different top artist for the decade. Of course, there can only be one actual winner, and it was a scrap between the only two artists who managed to make it on all four of our lists. Oddly enough, they also happened to be the artists on the first two runs of The Authority…but who was it?

Join us after the jump to find out, and make sure to leave a comment to let us know who we missed. Assuredly there are many, so state your case and let’s get the discussion going.

10. Gray Frank

9. Ivan Reis

8. Ethan Van Sciver

6 (tie). Steve McNiven

6 (tie). Bryan Lee O’Malley

5. Alex Ross

4. Pia Guerra

3. John Cassaday

David: Why do I think that John Cassaday is the best artist of the past decade? Well, when I think of what I want from an artist, it’s two things in particular. Iconic imagery for one and the ability to make readers suspend all disbelief with their art. Let’s go through those two ideas individually.

Iconic imagery, by title, by scene:

Astonishing X-Men: Wolverine perched on Scott and Emma’s bed in an angry and sarcastic manner, the X-Men hanging out on a small version of Hawaii rendered by the Danger Room, the “we have to astonish them” page as the X-Men walk out in uniform, Lockheed dominating Ord, the return of Colossus as Kitty just stares straight forward shocked, “Am I finally dead?”, the huge group of mutants break in for the cure to the mutant gene, our first fastball special in forever (good god…that is just the first arc…let’s wrap this up). How about one of the most memorable images in the decade for me – Kitty phasing the bullet from Breakworld through the Earth. I was distraught looking at that.

Planetary: Elijah Snow in his suit, everything about Island Zero, Snow freezing a 4 into New York City, Ambrose’s “death”, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula vs. Snow…you name it. Although nothing tops the cover to issue #26.

For the suspension of disbelief aspect, I guide you to nothing else besides the aforementioned Holmes and Dracula versus Snow scene. Nothing about this scene should have made sense, yet in Cassaday’s expertly rendered art that highly emphasizes fantastical realism, nothing seems out of the ordinary. Even when they go to Island Zero, nothing rings untrue. His gift is in his ability to make the most outlandish imagery realistic, and by doing so he accomplishes something truly fantastic. This is why he’s the perfect partner for Warren Ellis and Joss Whedon – true idea men who say “I want this” and Cassaday looks at them and says “I can do that.”

Not to gush too much, but this guy is the best. There is nothing else I can say about him. He’s just utterly exceptional, in every way an artist can be.

Matt: Without John Cassaday, you would not have one of the greatest comics of all time. End discussion. There’s just no way around it. With Warren Ellis’ Planetary, many of us discovered an artist who absolutely 100% helped to define what a comic book should be, and without his skills and talent, I don’t care how good of a writer Ellis is — Planetary just would not be as good of a comic. No one could do it but Cassaday. And despite delays for a variety of reasons, Cassaday finally finished the art of Planetary this year to huge acclaim and great success. The reason the book was as great as it was was due to Cassaday’s ability to emulate positively any style Ellis’ mind threw at him. You want a John Woo action film? BAM. Issue 3. Done. Next! You want to cover every era of Batman comics? How about the Planetary/Batman crossover? Next! You want monster movies, Godzilla, and versions of the popular Brit-invasion of comics from the late 80’s, early 90’s? Done, done, and done. Cassaday is by far one of the largest and most underused talents in the industry.

I would be hard pressed to find a large handful of people who adore his work from his run on Astonishing X-Men with Joss Whedon, though. While Planetary allowed him to create his own world from scratch, drawing the X-Men meant having a set standard of rules for what already existed. Of course Cassaday would tackle said rules with great skill and accomplishment as he drew the entirety of what would go on to be one of the most popular X-Titles to new and old readers alike. Cassaday brought all of the characters to life in an epic adventure as the X-Men dealt with remnants of their past as well as new threats. And again, you wouldn’t have had a book as good without his art and his art alone. Cassaday has a way about his artwork that makes it absolutely incomparable to the point that even the possibility of a different artist seems like an outlandish and outrageous idea. His lifelike characteristics and pulp-noir style of art make Cassaday one of the greatest talents on the market, and more creators need to put him to work beyond just covers (I’m looking at you, Kieron Gillen).

Gil:Oh John Cassaday. Without you, some of my favorite books would look entirely different than they do today. This guy has worked on some of the best books in the past decade, and I can prove that with just two titles: Astonishing X-Men and Planetary. His work is so polished and versatile, that his characters look so different. Sometimes artist’s tend to draw the same face (not necessarily a bad thing), but John’s designs don’t do that it’s fantastic, and I can’t give this guy enough love. I’d also like to take a moment to point out that he’s the only one on this list who actually branched out of “just” comics and got to direct his first work (an episode of Dollhouse, thanks to his friend and collaborator Joss Whedon). Good work.

Brandon: My experience with Cassaday lies in his Astonishing X-Men and Captain America work. I sadly have never read Planetary (I intend to fix
that). In the two titles I’ve seen his work I have been really impressed with his realistic figures and the way they effectively convey their emotions. While I don’t have much to say about Cassaday I will say I enjoy his work and can see why he’s made it into the top three on our list.

2. Bryan Hitch

David: Bryan Hitch managed to be the artist for whom Warren Ellis coined the term “widescreen comics” on their collaborative run on Wildstorm’s uber-action comic The Authority. This title helped Hitch develop his perpetual splash page and hyper-detailed art style to the nth degree, as Ellis provided him with many opportunities to display expansive visuals with detail on every corner of the page.

This of course became Hitch’s trademark as he went on to work on The Ultimates with Mark Millar and tackle many of the same visuals in much the same way. This allowed for a lot iconic imagery in his work, in particular another of the most notable images of the decade with Captain America pointing at his forehead as he asked the Skrull leader whether or not he thought that letter stood for France. Hitch’s level of detail and dynamic images led him to many of the same memorable moments that Cassaday ran into, yet he had a weakness that I felt Cassaday did not have: his character models and poses tended to overlap and start feeling redundant as you saw more of his work.

That qualm aside though, Hitch is without a doubt one of the best artists of the decade. The sheer level of detail he could accomplish on a page is astounding, and the fact he was involved with two of the best action titles of the decade meant that he was able to give us some of the most powerful imagery around.

Matt: If there was such a thing as “blockbuster action artwork,” Bryan Hitch would be it. I cannot think of anyone truly better at intense action sequences with landscapes so detailed more than Hitch. Let’s takes a look back at a little comic called Ultimates, shall we? During the second volume, many of the issues were intensely plagued with delays, with various reasons as to why. Most notably so, the last issue of the book. There was a several month delay before that issue came out. But when it finally did, what did we get? We got an amazing fold out set of pages that defied the standard comic book presentation, filled with intense artwork of all the characters we’d grown to love and hate ready to face off in epic battle. And this is what you can always expect with Hitch — intense and grandiose images that go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to detail

Of course, Hitch is one of those incredibly talented individuals with some of the most impressive work from the past decade. While he is best known for his Mark Millar collabs on Ultimates vol. 1 and 2 and Fantastic Four (during which he provided some amazingly detailed imagery), he started his work with Wildstorm’s (now) biggest title, The Authority with Warren Ellis, where Hitch would design the basic characters that would go to sell the highest amount of book and spin-off stories in Wildstorm history. He spent a year over at DC working with Mark Waid on JLA before returning to Marvel, and now he’s drawing the next “blockbuster smash”, Captain America: Reborn, which features the return of Marvel’s greatest heroes and was perfect because Hitch by far draws the best Captain America I’ve ever seen. But that’s not all! Hitch also served is a concept artist for the two Ultimate Avengers films as well as doing character design for Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and he was contracted by the BBC to do concept design in 2005 with the relaunch of Doctor Who, with his biggest contribution being the interior design of the TARDIS. So after co-creating two huge titles, doing the art of an important era defining book, and designing the freaking TARDIS – if that’s not some of the impressive work of the decade, I surely don’t know what is.

Gil:He’s one of the more surprising entries on the list in my view, but not for his talent. Hitch has the ability to make things both superbly realistic, but also extremely gritty. He also had some of the most memorable scenes in the medium, just in the Ultimates run. Who doesn’t love Captain America beating the holy Hell out of Giant Man (as a giant!) for beating his wife? It was so immensely fulfilling, you have no idea. Sometimes his schedule gets the best of him, but really, if you look at the top of our list, punctuality is not an issue. We love quality, and that’s what these guys give us.

Brandon: He’s another artist who had tons of problems keeping a schedule over the course of the last decade. He is probably the worst of a whole
gaggle of creators who couldn’t stay on track for one reason or another in a decade that saw far too much of this behavior occur. In the end, works like Ultimates hold up so much better because people like Joe Quesada waited for him to finish his work. At the time many bitched and complained but in retrospect it was clearly the right
decision.

Aside from his lateness he’s also known for his ability to render amazingly realistic figures on the page. His art for a time was second to none in this regard. The only person close to him was the man who came in at #3 John Cassidy. Hitch’s character designs and art for Ultimates would soon start to bleed into things like Smallville where the JLA character’s costumes are clearly more realistic based like
Ultimates. His art teamed with Mark Millar’s story helped Ultimates become one of the most influential titles of the decade. If only it had been more consistent it might have actually had more issues and time to make it the best. Unfortunately, there was that whole really late thing.

1. Frank Quitely

David: My favorite fact about Frank Quitely is the fact that his name is actually a pseudonym that is the transposed version of “quite frankly.” Well, that and the fact that he was one of the most electric and powerful artists of the decade, jumping from high profile project to high profile project and always escalating it to a level it had not reached yet. His work with Mark Millar (The Authority) and in particular Grant Morrison (We3, Batman & Robin, New X-Men, All-Star Superman) really exemplified this, as he became very known for his innovative layouts and nuanced and electric imagery.

That he also managed to possibly out-detail Hitch on The Authority and give us some the most powerful Superman visuals I’ve ever seen (yeah, I’m saying possibly ahead of Alex Ross) sealed his spot as one of the top artists of the decade. Like the other two members of the top 3, he’s well known for his delays, but when you’re dealing with one of these artists it is pretty much impossible to complain. The talent is so rich, you just cannot rush it.

Matt: When it comes to artwork, you will never find anyone even remotely like Vincent Deighan, or as he is known to the comic community – Frank Quitely. His style of art is so unique and thematic in its existence that no one could ever compare to his work. With many artists, it’s easy to put them into categories or compare how their art looks compared to another artists. Quitely, however, is in a league of his own. Most notable to me and to us is his frequent collaboration with Grant Morrison throughout the decade (New X-Men, WE3, All-Star Superman, Batman and Robin) is what we really put him on the map for any of us, as his ability to truly capture the insanity of Morrison’s writing make Quitely such a unique talent within the industry. In fact, with titles like New X-Men and Batman and Robin, you’re hard pressed to find any fanboy who doesn’t lament the overall lack of Quitely throughout the entire series, because without Quitely’s style the whole book doesn’t flow as well as it could.

It’s hard to boil down the essence of Quitely’s work without looking at it directly. It’s that way that his lines are so straight yet so wavy at the same time, and how he can truly accentuate the ugliness of a character unlike anyone else. The original character design of Scarlet at Dr. Pyg (from the recent Batman and Robin) were truly disgusting, and not in the “that art is terrible” way, but in the “wow, he really capture their essence” way. Such has always been the case of Quitely, especially during his run on New X-Men with the Beak character designs. But Quitely also knows how to design a character that doesn’t just represent extreme darkness. His art work WE3 not only created 3 absolutely adorable animals (under incredibly harsh condition), but his panel design and set up of scenes broke the mold for what was to be expected. The way that he overlayed a two-page spread with hundreds of tiny panels depicting action sequences was and is still so unique , and it could only be done by an artist so “out of the box” like Quitely.

Gil:I’m not sure there could be anyone more deserving of being on the list, let alone on the top. Armed with one of the most unorthodox styles, it’s hard to not be instantly drawn into a book simply because his pencils are on the cover. It just pops out and has a distinctive style that you really can’t confuse with any other artist on the market. His knack for otherworldly visuals are only matched by one Ethan Van Sciver (as evidenced by their work on New X-Men) and when one of the best writers uses you as his go-to collaborator, you know you have to be good.

Brandon: Quitely was all over all the best books of the decade. Critical and fan favorite projects alike were graced with his art. The only thing
he had working against him was his inability to keep a schedule and remain the main artist on these great titles. Despite his inconsistent stints on titles he still turned in some fantastic art that helped to bring fans to the titles as well as keep them there.

Titles that Quitely worked on this decade include but aren’t limited to New X-Men, All-Star Superman, Batman and Robin, JLA: Earth 2 and The Authority. All titles that were both critically and fan acclaimed. In the case of Authority he helped to redefine the superhero genre. With New X-Men he helped breathe fresh air into a franchise that many believed to be stale. Every title that he’s contributed has gained much from his presence and his art constantly seems to get better.

Not only has he been on these titles that fans have enjoyed but as I said he is critically acclaimed. Winning 4 Eisner Awards and one Harvey Award over the course of the last decade. A mantle full of trophies to go along with bags of fan mail that sing his praise. If this isn’t the artist of the decade I’ll eat a pair of tread marked undies.

Individual Lists

David

1. John Cassaday
2. Pia Guerra
3. James Jean
4. Craig Thompson
5. Mark Buckingham
6. Bryan Lee O’Malley
7. Frank Quitely
8. Bryan Hitch
9. JH Williams III
10. Alex Maleev

Matt

1. Alex Ross
2. Bryan Hitch
3. Ivan Reis
4. John Romita Jr.
5. David Finch
6. Frank Quitely
7. Francis Manapul
8. Steve McNiven
9. Salvador Larocca
10. John Cassaday

Gil

1. Gary Frank
2. John Cassaday
3. Steve McNiven
4. Bryan Lee O’Malley
5. Ethan Van Sciver
6. Frank Quitely
7. Ivan Reis
8. Alex Ross
9. Mark Buckingham
10. Bryan Hitch

Brandon

1. Frank Quitely
2. Pia Guerra
3. Bryan Hitch
4. Ethan Van Sciver
5. Mark Bagley
6. Ryan Ottley
7. Alex Ross
8. JH Williams III
9. Steve McNiven
10. John Romita Jr.

Surely you have an opinion on this! Got something to say? Let us know in the comments and weigh in with this fun poll!