I'm a major BWS fan (and a non-artist), so take this as you will.

I think with a BWS piece, you have to take the story as a whole, envelope yourself in the atmosphere, and you don't even notice the technical flaws.  He's so incredibly gifted at developing "the world" of his stories and the atmosphere of that world that the little flaws don't really stand out from panel to panel.  It's a remarkable gift, and one that few artists possess.  The story as a whole is the important thing, and those individual panels with their flaws don't really matter except for how they build to a whole story.  To give another example, Walt Simonson is my favorite artist, and if you break down Walt's work from panel to panel, you see incredible discrepancies, from wonky anatomy to faces that are little more than impressionist squiggles.  Taken as a whole, however, it all seems of a piece, and those minor discrepancies are lost in a masterful expression of dynamism and power.  The elongated arms in a given panel don't seem so important when Thor is smashing in Surtur's face or Skurge is protecting the bridge of Hel on his own.  The story is what matters, and how it is told is the ultimate function of comic book art.  I think that gets lost in most comic book criticism, especially when it comes to the art.

Now, if you don't like BWS' work, that's totally cool.  To be frank, there's a certain vein of pretension that does run through his work.  It's hard to fault him as a storyteller, though.  I'd also argue that if we break down the work of those we kinda feel are the greats (from a consensus standpoint), you're going to find those flaws from panel to panel, but that sort of criticism is losing the forest for the trees-- it's not about each individual figure or background, but how they comprise a total story.

(Because, believe me, you don't want to see me do this for Jim Lee's work, to cite a BWS acolyte.  It's not my thing, but it's effective for a lot more people than what I generally like.)

A little bit ex-machina, granted, but as you point out, whatever course of action Thomas would've followed, it would've probably felt that way. One thing I have to grant him, at least, Rick gained those powers as a consequence of the Supreme Intelligence's plans, which where hinted, from issue 92 on. The part about all humanity hiding that power, is what I really disliked.

That I might accept as an explanation, and bear in mind I rcognised his progress : around the mid 80ies (a good 15 years after his pro start), I must admit his figure drawing is tolerable and sometimes even good. I'm a huse huge fan of the studio, Wrightson, Jeff Jones, some of Kaluta, but when I look at their common book, the BWS pages always stick out as eyesore, except with some of his paintings and illustration work :


Even if I could single out the first character's thumb drawing, the general qualities of the drawing makes me more tolerant of it as a whole.

Yet, with his sequential comic art, it just seems he doesn't bother most of the time, and I stand by every single observation I did on those panels, those are full of flawed artistic shortcuts if not plain anatomic and/or perspective mistakes. So when he later qualified himself as a storyteller, that might indeed be closer to what he is in the comicworld. but the early faults completly ruin the stories for me.
You see, you're probably right with Simonson (whom I don't care for that much but at least find interesting), he also features some of the same symptomatic flaws in his figure work, but at least he is mostly consistant with it, as is Jeff Jones or Wrightson! I usualy get the same feeling from BWS that I get from someone like Darrick Robertson, those mistakes PLUS inconsistancies and restricted range of facial figure and expressions, which makes it so different from Simonson. BWS doesn't try to be cartoony, on the contrary, which is probably where this feel of pretention comes from, as he ???often doesn't manages to pull it off.
When you look at Sienkiewicz, he only tried to compose those complex and artsy pages when he had reached the technical level to pull it off, you didn't see him try those Stray Toaster pages while he was on FF or even Moon Knight for the matter.

And lastly, believe me, I'm all for you going at the same thing with Jim Lee, I'll be in your corner, as I also am appaled when hearing people laud his anatomy (tha guy can't draw a neck for the life of him, especially in his low angles.
Ok, I'll admit I might be quite more severe on those points as my mom is an artist, my grand father an art ist lawyer/collector and I studied art as well, so please don't take it personnaly you BWS fans out there, I can understand ones affection for him especially if you grew up to it, I didn't, and on the contrary, grew up to some of his original influences, which makes it very difficult for me to fathom one wouldn't see how flawed his early work was compared to the praise it's getting. I'm just generally surprised I would be alone in finding those panels strikingly flawed...
But good call on the storytelling aspect

Its not so much his role as his grating personality that ruins most comics that he's in.