Creator: Kurt Busiek

The fanboy’s dream and an ideal franchise player.  He wrote a lot of letters to comics, then suggested a major plotpoint to resurrect Jean Grey.  Marvel took the idea.  And then hired him for Marvels–one of the most groundbreaking series of the ’90s.  From there, he went on to create the Thunderbolts (which enabled him to reimagine lots of D-list characters), filled in continuity gaps in Untold Tales of Spider-Man, rebooted both Iron Man and The Avengers, and much, much more.  Explosively creative, he has also had extensive indie and DC success.  But we won’t talk about that here, except to say that Astro City was amazing.