Following "Classic Runs"

And are you talking about wholesale creative change, or just cog replacement (cf. Lee / Ditko becoming Lee / Romita on Spidey)?

Also, your assessment of Tom V's Swamp Thing is totally OTM.

It's true for non-spandex stuff too, though - post-Franquin Spirou and post-Goscinny Asterix are both very depressing.

Well, Fournier's stuff's not that bad. And do not forget that the Franquin run on Spirou is post-Jijé, which is also considered a classic. Though Franquin really upped the ante, yeah.

The first issue after Grant Morrison on JLA is actually really good! But then Mark Waid turns up.

On the other hand, Gaiman in Miracleman is great, ranks easily among the best of his work.

Those JLA issues Mark Waid scripted are quite possibly the worst thing he ever did, along with the six or seven issues he did on Avengers and X-Men.

I guess I agree with Chuck on Morrison's "kiss of death". Doom Patrol should have been retired with his last issue, Animal Man seems to have gone too "Vertigo" following his departure, JLA turned into an obnoxious franchise (I'm very sick of pretentious fans misusing the word "icon" to describe DC's superhero properties, as well as the vogue for referring to said superheroes by using their civilian names, as if they were real people with actual personalities-- all this seems to have been GM's fault), and Marvel's returning to spandex X-Men in the comics after he'd brought the characters back up to date was a total misstep and a waste of time. (Why did they bother? They wear black leather in the movies anyway!) I dunno, was Ann Nocenti's Kid Eternity series any good?

Even more, if somebody asks me about Grant's Kid Eternity, I would have to say that I liked it but I don't remember a thing about it other than it felt like a proto-Invisibles. On the other hand, if I got asked about Nocenti's run, I'd have to admit that to this day I haven't forgotten KE #6 "Eating Pop Porn", and I doubt I ever will.

But I agree with Andrew about Ellis, at least about 90s Ellis.

Rick Veitch, not Tom Veitch, on Swamp Thing was good all the time and did get better as he was going along.

Ann Nocenti's Kid Eternity was awful, but crucially, Grant's version wasn't any good either.

I think a case of a great run being followed by another great run is the Levitz/Giffen LOSH and the "Five Year Gap" Legion, but I know that there is a lot of controversy and much arguing around the FYG. And you could make a case that it's not a complete change of creative teams.

Does anyone these days still believe that the 5YG Legion wouldn't have been fantastic if it had gotten more than three issues in before being crapcocked about by DC editorial fuckwittery?

I am a sad panda.

Most of the post-Crisis Levitz was still with Greg LaRocque as I recall, one of the longest-running, and also lamest, Legion artists evar. But it was great when Giffen came back and redesigned everyone's costumes straight away! And then Levtiz had them bitch about it in the dialogue. The final storyline was a bit anticlimactic, esp. because Giffen dropped back to layouts so he could get started on the 5YG series.

And if Delano's Hellblazer run was uneven (although still pretty great at times), the Ennis run was even more so. I just re-read it and I'm not a fan. Although I honestly think that Jenkins might've been the only writer after Delano to really have a grasp on John Constantine's character. Which is not to say that the Jenkins run isn't wildly uneven, as well.