If Shakespeare And Michaelangelo Teamed Up...

Vladimir Nabokov & Gustav Klimt do Big Numbers #0.

I've been known to describe Krazy Kat as resembling what Joyce and Picasso might have done with Tom & Jerry. Nonsense, obviously.

I always used to love it when letter writers in Marvel comics, generally, compared Stan and Jack to Shakespeare and Michaelangelo.

There have been writers who have made a name outside comics who have done comics, of course - Whedon of late, Delany, Bester, Vachss. The only comic artist I can think of who made a real big name as an artist is Lyonel Feininger.

I was kind of after the real-life ppl who made the crossover :)

It was Stan who started it surely - it was his 'why comics are theoretically good' argument. Even though it is RUB!

"There have been writers who have made a name outside comics who have done comics, of course - Whedon of late, Delany, Bester, Vachss."

You forgot Gaiman.

My bad. :)

Does it count if the creator's adapting his own work to the medium (cf. Harlan Ellison)? Granted, Ellison also did funny books (for DC).

I think Bruce Jones (writer, recently of Incredible Hulk, formerly of Ka-Zar & various DC horror books from the 70s) had a semi-notable career as a fantasy ARTIST prior to getting into writing.

Gaiman did the reverse name game, though, right?

Well, Peter David and JMS started out on the tv scriptwriting (and licensed novel, in PD's case) end of things before doing comics, right?

I haven't read his last couple of books, but I bet Dan Simmons could do a good comic. His books are usually very visual, lots of set pieces.

JSM did; Peter David didn't. PD was working for Marvel in some other capacity before he became a writer. He got on the licensed novel kick after he began work on DC's Star Trek series.

David worked in the sales dept at Marvel.

Gaiman was a making-a-living writer before he did any comics (freelance features and interviews, short stories, a book on Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, a book of funny quotes from shit sci-fi done with Kim Newman]) but it's fair to say that he made his "name" as such in comics.

Didn't Neil Gaiman spend a very long time writing letters for Paul Raymond magazines (Fiesta, Club, Men Only et al)? I'm sure I remember Hunt Emerson saying this at one point (who also spend a fair amount of time in said... ahem... organs).

I seem to recall that Mr. Gaiman also wrote a teen book about Duran Duran before he hit the big time.

Bruce Jones was indeed a fairly well known comic artist in the fantasy vein long before he wrote a single issue of THE HULK (just don't tell Wizard, who voted him "best newcomer" in 2002 or somesuch, thirty years after he got his start.)

I have said this before, and I'll say it again, I would really dig seeing Carl Hiaasen write Green Arrow.