I think Brian Azzarello, Darwyn Cook and Joe Kelly were definitely overlooked on this list. Easily the best writers of dialogue and characterization to ever grace the page. 

Otherwise I have to say

1.Grant Morrison- All star Superman might be the greatest comic I have read in my lifetime. Not to mention Animal Man, Arkham Asylum, Doom Patrol, WE3, New X-men. Easily the most inventive man in the business.

2.Alan Moore- Watchmen is arguably the most literary piece ever written for the medium. This is what makes Alan Moore great, but also tends to drag him down as a writer. He's a brilliant writer, but he seems to hate the genre which he works in.

3.Warren Ellis- Possibly the smartest man working in comics. Every story that he writes is a giant mind melting experience. Planetary alone puts him on this list.

If anyone seriously thinks you can't make a G.I.JOE movie without it looking like complete crap, watch G.I.JOE: Resolute on Adultswim.com right now. In one hour Warren Ellis was able to take everything that is cool about G.I.JOE and make it even cooler. Imagine if he had 2 hours give or take to do that? Oh, and they made all of the original joes uniforms very reminicent of the original comics/cartoons but modernized them brilliantly for all the people who are defending the generic black body armor they are wearing in the movie.

Seriously, I'm calling for a re-do right now, and begging them to let Warren Ellis handle the script.

I definitely wouldn't say he is out of the running just yet. I have my doubts that they will even consider announcing an actor for a very long time when it comes to Thor.

gauley, I wouldn't necessarily say that the Eisners are the beat all end all final authority on a good book. I mean Powers won for best new series back in 02, and I thought that was pretty bad as well.

Wow, that Phantom design is horrible. I had my suspicions judging from the castin announcement yesterday that they were going all "Smallville" with this, but man, this is even worse than I thought.

I love the Phantom, I really do. However, one of the main elements I love about the character is the pulp sensibilities that it was never shy of. I have to commend the original movie for that. It fully committed to the pulp 1930's appeal. I really hope that this sci-fi series fails and that the proposed Phantom movie revamp goes through, I think whoever handles that will be a bit more respectful of the character.

Oh, and just to offer the counter opinion I think that UMBRELLA ACADEMY was pretty awful with the exception of James Jeans amazing covers. The series has an interesting concept, but the execution I thought was pretty bad, especially the further into the series it got. I really don't know how it mustered so much hype AFTER it came out.

Honestly for what may have started as a blatant toy tie-in, G.I.JOE actually turned out to be one of the most consistantly strong comics during the 80's.

 Larry Hama I think really wanted to compensate for the cheesy nature of the cartoon and toys by coming up with some of the most intruiging and adult stories he could conceive for the comic book series. I mean the series touched on everything from Vietnam post traumatic stress disorder to strong Nazi youth parallels. For what may have started as  a cheap cash in, it turned out to be pretty amazing.

Naturally the studio went with the dumb overblown route, when they actually had something really great to draw on. I'm sure it's going to come back to bite them in the ass........Then again Transformers made crazy money and that was a huuuuuge pile of dog shit.

Chris Pine is just about as perfect as it gets to play Hal, the only problem I could see is that Hal Jordan will be a very similar character to the Captain Kirk he is portraying in the new Star Trek.

The only person I could see being better than Pine would be James Marsden, and that would cause all sorts of problems since he was a major supporting character in Superman Returns.

As for the lack of R-rated films, I think WB needs to re-evaluate and never-say-never. Their upcoming Suicide Squad movie will just look ridiculous if they try and tone it down to PG-13. They just need to work on more apporpriate marketing strategies than they did with Watchmen.

Jason Statham is a HOORRRIBLE choice for Deadshot. It looks as though they are trying to make Suicide Squad just another schlocky b-movie actioner. Deadshot is a pretty complex and humorous character, something that Statham isn't. Floyd Lawton has always been kind of an everyman type character despite the fact that he is a killer and expert marksman.

Sam Rockwell is absolutely perfect to play Deadshot. He has the humor, the character, and even the intensity. Plus the man can grow a killer stache.

[url]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/whiteguymikey/sam_rockwell.jpg[/url]

CCH Pounder is a great choice for Waller though, I have been championing her to play the part since she did the voice for her on JLU.