Carl Barks tops the list of greatest comic book artists of many devoted fans around the world. He has often been called the Good Duck Artist by avid readers of all ages of his Disney Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics.

He's been called the "Rembrandt of the COmic Strip" and the "Greatest Generation's Cartoonist-in-Chief."  No comics artist has so heavily influenced his medium and no cartoonist has seen more imitators than Milton Caniff, the creator of Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, and Steve Canyon.

Steve Ditko is an American comic book artist best known as the artist and co-creator of Marvel characters Spiderman and Doctor Strange.  Whichever feature he drew, Ditko's idiosyncratic, cleanly detailed, instantly recognizable art style, emphasizing mood and anxiety, found great favor with readers.  Ditko was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990, and into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 1994.

Will Eisner's career spans the entire history of American comic books, from his formative days in the 1930s into the 1940s when he revolutionized narrative sequential art with his internationally famed series The Spirit, to the 1970s when he created the contemporary graphic novel form with A CONTRACT WITH GOD, to the present!

In 1939, brand-new Marvel's first-ever comic book featured an anti-hero named the Sub-Mariner, created by legendary artist Bill Everett. From the superhero and horror genre, to romance, crime, and suspense, Bill Everett was a master of the medium.

The art of Frank Frazetta has influenced and inspired generations of artists, fans, designers, and movie directors.  His interpretation of Conan visually redefined the genre of sword and sorcery, and had an enormous influence on succeeding generations of artists.

Virtually every artist in comics is indebted to Jack Kirby.  His imagination is widely regarded as the most fecund and influential in the history of comic books, from his c0-creation of Captain America and early innovations in visual story-telling in the 1940s to his unsurpassed creative period in the 1960s, when he created and co-created such characters as the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men, the Silver Surfer, Sgt. Fury, the Black Panther, and many more.

Joe Kubert's career literally spans the history of comics from drawing Hawkman in the 1940's and his tour de force stints on DC's war comics (Sgt. Rock, The Unknown Soldier, Enemy Ace) in the 1960s through more personal projects over the last 20 years such as his Eisner Award-winning graphic novels Fax from Sarajevo and Yossel: April 19, 1943.

In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spiderman, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he headed the first major successful challenge to the industry's censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, and forced it to reform its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

Widely considered one of the finest draftsmen to ever work in comics, the cantankerous Alex Toth cut a swath through almost every publisher.  Alex Toth elevated virtually every story he drew to a master class on design, graphics, and visual narrative.

Wally Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work on EC Comics's Mad and Marvel's Daredevil. He was one of Mad's founding cartoonists in 1952.  Wally Wood's hypnotically detailed, lushly expressive brushwork brought to life menacing thugs and grotesque aliens, not to mention some of the most heart-stoppingly beautiful women ever to sashay across a comic book page.

Check out the rest of our comic masters section!