The direct market in North America is primarily built around superheroes, so it’s inevitable that most writers and artists who want to make a living have to work in the genre at least occasionally. Unsurprisingly, not all writers are terribly well suited to it, even those who are otherwise highly skilled.
Peter Milligan: Milligan’s written some superhero-based material – X-Statix was a solid satire with heart, and Enigma had some interesting ideas about the genre – but for the most part he just can’t play it straight enough to pull off a mainstream superhero book. They might not be bad, but they’re certainly not up to his usual standards, and usually just disappoint his fans and piss off fans of the book and characters. Milligan often writes with a wink and a nudge – you know this stuff is silly, right? – that isn’t appreciated by audiences who take their franchises very silly.
Neil Gaiman: Both 1602 and Eternals seem billed as “Neil Gaiman does superheroes”, which isn’t a terribly good use of either the writer or the characters and concepts. Gaiman likes his stories full of characterization and obscure mythology and literature; Sandman may have its roots in the genre, but it quickly evolved into something else. He can do superheroes, of course – some days I think he could do absolutely anything – but it just seems like such a waste of his talents.
Greg Rucka: Queen & Country is a fantastic book. Gotham Central was pretty good, even if Rucka seems to be replicating his “tough and self-destructive female protagonist” bit too much. Everything else he writes runs the gamut from “okay” to “bleah.” He’s good at gritty, real-world stories, an approach that’s all right on Batman or Wolverine but still doesn’t do enough with the concept, and downright boring on something like Superman. Even the politics and espionage suffer in his superbooks: OMAC Project was an unreadable mess, and Checkmate feels like a dumbed-down Q & C further weighed down by DCU trivia.
Warren Ellis: Aside from Nextwave, which is more about poking superheroes with a stick, and Authority, which was about giving traditional superheroes the finger, Ellis’ superhero work seems so uninspired: Like Milligan’s work, it might not be bad, but you can’t help reading it and thinking “this should be so much better.” I’m not sure if it’s entirely the genre, or if Ellis has simply grown dispassionate about books he doesn’t own; newuniversal should be an interesting experiment, mixing the sci-fi weirdness he loves with some tweaked genre conventions.
Garth Ennis: Duh.